Speaker 1: What is a nine-box talent review grid? Hey friends, Josh here, founder of HR University, and in this video we'll talk about a unique concept called the nine-box talent review grid, or the nine-box grid for short. But before we get into it, don't forget to subscribe to this channel for regular HR University updates. Now let's go ahead and jump in. So the nine-box grid is an individual assessment tool that evaluates an employee's current and potential level of contribution to the organization and places the employee into one of nine groups accordingly. For example, there are hard-working employees who do well in their role, but have little growth potential and are still great to have on your team. You also have all-rounder employees who perform well and have great potential. And at the same time, you may have low-performing employees with low potential who will require a lot of management attention and are unlikely to improve, and they require a different approach. McKinsey created this nine-box grid in 1970. Since then, HR institutions have broadly accepted this as a great matrix to use and an important concept to include in their talent management processes. And today, the nine-box grid is still one of the most used company tools for worker evaluation. It helps business owners identify new talent and high-prospect employees. The tool also evaluates how well or how poorly employees perform during their working hours, if they are truly cut out for the job they're doing, and if they have any potential of improving their existing skills. The nine-box grid shows the company's HR department and managers an overview of employees' abilities and downsides and their productivity or the lack thereof. It's quite easy to use and it'll give you a holistic approach to assess your employees with flexibility. And this is what the official nine-box talent review grid looks like. Let's discuss what each box stands for. As the term suggests, the grid has nine boxes that you can see represented in a horizontal and vertical row. The horizontal row or axis designates performance, whereas the vertical row or axis represents the potential of a particular worker. The higher up the worker goes on the axis, the more room there is for expansion of the worker's potential. And the further a worker goes on the right of the grid, the better their performance. Now, if you have employees that, let's say, fall on the lower left side of the grid, this is where things can get tricky. These employees are considered the least effective achievers and have the poorest chance for advancement. As for the employees that fall to the lower left side, they are the most successful achievers and promise a great future. They fall on the utmost upper right box of the grid, meaning they're both high performers and have great potential to develop their skills even further. And now for the secrets on how to create your own nine-box grid. The first step to creating a nine-box grid would be to evaluate the employee performance. Every box, whether vertically or horizontally, has low, average, and high markings. And here, the performance boxes are horizontal and scale left to right, with the utmost left box suggesting the lowest performance. Using the data collected through these performance boxes, managers can assess their workers' performance. Initially, if your workers fall on the category box of low performance, it means they do not meet their work criteria at hand. And most of the time, they also fail to meet their specific work goals. And the average performer is just that, average. These employees somewhat fit into the job description and work ethic that they belong to. They'll moderately align with the job needs, as well as their personal goals. And the third type of employees includes those that fall into the high performance category box, meaning they can satisfy each and every job criteria, as well as their personal goals. As for how you should assess the criteria of which employee into which box falls, here's the drill. First, you have to know that the framework is based on the clear employee role within the firm, and the way that the employee satisfies the role's criteria. But that's not all, though. Some managers, for example, will choose to evaluate employees' performance based on other aspects, including personal objectives, teamwork, and feedback findings. The next grid phase to discuss is evaluating the potential of the employees. And this phase is quite similar to the performance phase, since the category of potential is graded identically to it through indicators such as low, average, and high potential. But rather than trailing just performance, analyzing potential uses all performance data collected to decide if employees are presently performing close to their maximum potential. Potential also classifies whether the employees are improved in their work role, or if they're suitable for gaining promotion. When an employee falls in the low potential box, this means the employee is working at peak output, and they're not likely to enhance their potential. The cause of this is mostly due to the employee's absence of desire to work at their maximum potential. And if a worker falls into the next category of average potential, they most likely have the ability to advance from their present position. The advancement is assessed in relation to their skills. However, here performance can take a crucial key point of assessment as well. For the employees that belong in the box of high potential, they're entitled to advancement in a job position, either right away or as soon as possible. It's not easy to evaluate a worker's potential, even though the technique is, quite frankly, the same as the performance one. Poor or mediocre performance may demand further instruction, or come to the conclusion that the employee might not be at all suited for the position. And with all this information, you need to assemble the puzzle pieces accordingly, evaluating all necessities from a potential and performance standpoint. And that will give the HR management or the general manager a clearer picture of their status. If every company's employee falls into the lowest row, they can still perform duties and work-related activities, but their development to become even better at their job will be constrained. Keep in mind that this doesn't necessarily mean that all workers should belong in the utmost upper right corner of the grid. You should also consider the fact that the company may not be satisfying their professional objectives and personal aims, and that they may begin to apply for jobs elsewhere. So keep in mind that all nine boxes in the grid can be interpreted from an employer and employee view. And one more thing before we go. Consider that the nine-box talent review grid isn't flawless. In fact, it's mostly subjective, so it doesn't quite measure aptitude. And it certainly isn't generally transparent for all company types. The genuine worth of the assessment of this grid is made through subsequent debates. And this grid isn't appropriate to make your final decision on any employee because it lacks additional context, including basic things like their relationship with their manager and team members. However, it is a great tool to identify your worker's general position and make positive or negative notes about them, depending on what's their potential look like and how well they perform, of course. And there we have it. In this video, we covered the topic of the nine-box talent review grid. If you enjoyed it, make sure to like this video and subscribe to our channel, and that way you can keep up to date with everything HR. And I'll go ahead and see you on some of our following videos. Cheers.