One means of improving productivity and engagement in your workplace is to replace struggling employees with better ones. There are many wrong or harmful ways to do this, but there is a method that works if applied with diligence and care.

First, let's cover [one] of the less successful ways. [A] well-known method for changing the talent of an organization is the forced stack-ranking and purging of employees perhaps most commonly associated with Jack Welch and GE. We have found this to be one of the laziest manifestations of performance management. [See "Evaluating Employee Performance (Part 2)" in the "See Also" area on this page.] We will focus here on contrasting this "de-selection" approach with an approach based on an understanding of employee talents and how it can be used to reliably hire new employees in a way that obviates the need for regular purges.

When we talk about "talent," we mean those natural tendencies that exist deep within us. These are the aspects of our personality or behavior most resistant to change. This is a much more precise usage of the word "talent" than is generally meant in common parlance where one's natural abilities and traits are considered together with acquired skills, experience, and attitudes.

Our research shows that some traits do not change much over time. There is ample evidence supporting the genetic or developmental basis for many of these traits. Does this mean that a given talent or trait is absolutely fixed? Not necessarily. But it does mean that our genes and our physical and social development all impose some boundary conditions on what we either can or choose to learn easily. In some respects, those relatively fixed talents are what define us as individuals in that they represent the product of all the billions of choices and circumstances that brought us to the present moment.

In hiring and managing individual employees, it's important to understand what is difficult to change (talent) and what is more easily changed or acquired (knowledge and skills). Once you hire someone, you are largely stuck with their talents, whereas you can still impart new skills and knowledge. Without a clear understanding of these two different aspects of ability, you will have an incomplete picture of how talents play into hiring decisions and could become more prone to making hiring errors.

Consider, for instance, an example from education research. Students with more ability often report studying less than, yet perform better than, their less-gifted peers. Given two students of equal ability, however, the one who exerts more effort performs better.

If we ignore study habits, we might be tempted to think performance is all about raw talent. If we ignore that raw talent, we might be tempted to think performance is instead all about effort. But when we remember to consider both aspects, we begin to understand how talent and effort contribute to results in combination.

We have met resistance to using a talent-based selection method in a number of organizations. The objections to this approach generally fall into one of three categories. Talents, the objectors contend, cannot be perfectly identified; they are not fixed; and we all have talent and can do anything we want to if we work hard enough. We will now consider each of these objections in turn.

Talents cannot be perfectly identified

Though it's true that talents can't be perfectly identified, this is not saying much. There are a many things in life that we can't perfectly distinguish yet are perfectly useful to do. Selection instruments are not accurate enough for certainty, but they are reliable enough to have practical usefulness. This is no different from the clinical evidence for pharmaceuticals and medical procedures -- often, they are not 100% effective either, especially when used incorrectly.

Talent assessments need to be used intelligently with an understanding of the domains of talent one is trying to address and the accuracy with which one can measure them. If this is done, a well-constructed and psychometrically sound selection interview will reliably predict how job applicants will perform.

Two major studies of selection interviews have been published since the mid-'90s. In each study, hundreds of independent studies were aggregated, and we found that individuals with high interview scores had higher performance, whether measuring that performance in terms of sales volume, production records, or supervisor ratings. The interview scores did not perfectly predict performance, but they did a good enough job to be extremely useful.

Talents are not fixed

Performance is not merely a function of talent. Performance is also dependent on motivation and experience, on how a person is managed or led, and on having the right materials and equipment to do the job at hand. Talent, employee engagement, and experience are interrelated, and together have a multivariate relationship to performance.

But this does not imply that our core talents are not stable over time. There is growing evidence that we develop stable traits at relatively young ages, and that personality traits at a broad level are universal across a wide array of cultures.

Copyright Ó 2008 The Gallup Organization, Princeton, NJ.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted with permission.  Visit The Gallup Management Journal at http://gmj.gallup.com/

Article from The Gallup Management Journal