Are you a high potential? The chances are in your favour. The UAE ranks 12th for the number of “hi-po” employees globally and one in three professionals have the capacity to become leaders in the future, according to a study by CEB, a member-based advisory company. Mohammed Farid, CEB managing director for the Middle East discusses the traits and abilities these types of employee commonly have and explains why, somewhat confusingly, a high performer is not necessarily a high potential whereas a mid-level performer could be.
How do you define a high potential employee?
There are three factors that really matter in high potential. They are ability, so their ability to do the job, and that is a combination of personality traits and cognitive abilities. For example, leading and deciding, coping with pressures and setbacks [which they have to be good at] and cognitive ability, which is a combination of verbal and numerical reasoning.
And the second factor?
The second is aspiration – to really aspire to the next level. Not everyone has the aspiration to move upwards. The third one is engagement – the likelihood of them staying with the organisation. If you have someone who has a very high ability and very high aspiration but they are not likely to stay in the company they cannot be a high potential.
How do companies assess each of these areas?
For the ability side, which is the personality traits and the ability, we usually recommend using psychometrics and based on that you can identify … if they have the potential in those competencies and if they have the cognitive ability to do the job long-term. From an aspiration perspective usually we recommend using aspirational interviews probing more into their long-term plans for the future. The engagement bit is a questionnaire for the manager and the person because the manager will know if the person is likely to stay.
Once you have identified this high potential employee, how do you deal with them?
Say you have identified someone who has it all. Based on that you need to invest into development programmes. It might be training. It might be coaching. It might be mentoring depending on what we have identified based on that assessment. The problem is that you might not find everyone has everything.
What if someone has everything but engagement?
If they don’t have the engagement, that will be something for the company to decide because if they are not likely to stay I wouldn’t invest in that person. If people don’t have the aspiration you can start talking to them about the value proposition of the organisation and sell the idea a bit. Sometimes people don’t have the aspiration because they don’t know what’s waiting on the next level.
Should you treat high potential employees any differently from the rest and if so, how?
You would develop them and you would fast-track them, because most likely they are your potential leaders for the future, but you don’t want to create a sense of difference between different people in the organisation. You need everyone. You need mid-level performers. You need high-level performers and you need the high potentials. And by the way, research has shown that not all high performers are high potentials.
Why is that?
High performers might be doing a very good job at the current level but you could promote them to a level of incompetence. But high performers will get them noticed to be potential high potentials. Sometimes you might find some people in the organisation who might be mid-level performers. When you really assess them for talent they might have the qualities to be high potentials, but you might need to push them to the next level where they can flourish. Maybe the job they have now is not really getting the best out of them.
Companies like yours sell talent measurement software, but do you have to implement expensive programmes to identify high potential employees? Or is it something any company can do, even smaller enterprises?
Talent measurement solutions are not expensive and if you compare how much you would have to pay to identify potential compared to a bad recruitment decision or a bad promotion decision, that would be very minimal, less than 1 per cent or a fraction of a per cent of a recruitment cost. For example, if you hire someone in an organisation and after six months that person turned out to not be very good, you have to pay his salary for six months, benefits and all of the costs. So all of those costs are huge compared to trying to identify from the start if he is the right fit for that hi-po or not.
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The smuggler
Eldarir had arrived at JFK in January 2020 with three suitcases, containing goods he valued at $300, when he was directed to a search area.
Officers found 41 gold artefacts among the bags, including amulets from a funerary set which prepared the deceased for the afterlife.
Also found was a cartouche of a Ptolemaic king on a relief that was originally part of a royal building or temple.
The largest single group of items found in Eldarir’s cases were 400 shabtis, or figurines.
Khouli conviction
Khouli smuggled items into the US by making false declarations to customs about the country of origin and value of the items.
According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he provided “false provenances which stated that [two] Egyptian antiquities were part of a collection assembled by Khouli's father in Israel in the 1960s” when in fact “Khouli acquired the Egyptian antiquities from other dealers”.
He was sentenced to one year of probation, six months of home confinement and 200 hours of community service in 2012 after admitting buying and smuggling Egyptian antiquities, including coffins, funerary boats and limestone figures.
For sale
A number of other items said to come from the collection of Ezeldeen Taha Eldarir are currently or recently for sale.
Their provenance is described in near identical terms as the British Museum shabti: bought from Salahaddin Sirmali, "authenticated and appraised" by Hossen Rashed, then imported to the US in 1948.
- An Egyptian Mummy mask dating from 700BC-30BC, is on offer for £11,807 ($15,275) online by a seller in Mexico
- A coffin lid dating back to 664BC-332BC was offered for sale by a Colorado-based art dealer, with a starting price of $65,000
- A shabti that was on sale through a Chicago-based coin dealer, dating from 1567BC-1085BC, is up for $1,950
Ziina users can donate to relief efforts in Beirut
Ziina users will be able to use the app to help relief efforts in Beirut, which has been left reeling after an August blast caused an estimated $15 billion in damage and left thousands homeless. Ziina has partnered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to raise money for the Lebanese capital, co-founder Faisal Toukan says. “As of October 1, the UNHCR has the first certified badge on Ziina and is automatically part of user's top friends' list during this campaign. Users can now donate any amount to the Beirut relief with two clicks. The money raised will go towards rebuilding houses for the families that were impacted by the explosion.”
Skewed figures
In the village of Mevagissey in southwest England the housing stock has doubled in the last century while the number of residents is half the historic high. The village's Neighbourhood Development Plan states that 26% of homes are holiday retreats. Prices are high, averaging around £300,000, £50,000 more than the Cornish average of £250,000. The local average wage is £15,458.
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
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Global events: Much of the UK’s economic woes were blamed on “increased global uncertainty”, which can be interpreted as the economic impact of the Ukraine war and the uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariffs.
Growth forecasts: Cut for 2025 from 2 per cent to 1 per cent. The OBR watchdog also estimated inflation will average 3.2 per cent this year
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Spending cuts: Overall day-to day-spending across government cut by £6.1bn in 2029-30
Tax evasion: Steps to crack down on tax evasion to raise “£6.5bn per year” for the public purse
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MATCH INFO
New Zealand 176-8 (20 ovs)
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