There are certain questions that keep coming back when I speak to HR professionals or managers about talent management. The most common one of all: Should you tell your employees who has been identified as talent? 

At first sight, this might seem like an odd question. Why should you not? But when you think about it, there certainly are a couple of relevant concerns. For one, managers and HR often worry that if you tell someone that they’re a talent, they will start resting on their laurels and stop trying – a phenomenon often referred to as the crown prince syndrome (Dries & Pepermans, 2008; Dries, 2013). There is also the fear that the talent nomination will create pressure and stress. 

Even more common is the fear of how the non-selected employees will react (De Long & Vijayaraghavan, 2003). Announcing that some individuals are high-potentials indirectly tells others they’re not. HR managers often worry that this will lead to lost motivation, resentment towards the organisation, and increased turnover. Working with Nordic organisations, I've also repeatedly encountered another concern: whether explicitly singling out a small group sits comfortably with strongly egalitarian organisational cultures. Still, the issue of transparency seems to haunt organisations in most countries. 

'Secret' talent decisions don't stay secret

So, how do companies handle this matter? When I first wrote about this question in 2017, one finding particularly fascinated me: organisations were considerably less secretive than they thought they were. Church et al. (2015), who surveyed 80 companies with well-established talent management practices, found that only 34 percent formally announced talent decisions. However, out of the 66 percent that did not formally tell employees, 18 percent reported that the managers told employees informally, and 33 percent reported that employees found out on their own. Thus, only in 15 percent of companies did talent status remain genuinely undisclosed. This was echoed in another study by Campbell and Smith (2010), which found a whopping 91 percent of employees reported that they knew their own status, but only 69 percent of those indicated that they had been formally told. 

We don’t know exactly how these numbers have changed since then. My guess is that explicit communication has become more common. At least in my own work, I've seen talent management functions become increasingly sophisticated about the problems secrecy creates – more on that below. But judging from the conversations I have, there is still a substantive share of companies that keep their talent decisions hidden, because of the same old concerns. 

For high-potentials, explicit nomination is mostly good

So let’s take a closer look at how those concerns hold up. Interestingly, there is little support for the crown prince syndrome. If anything, research has more consistently shown that there are positive effects of being appointed as a high-potential. Björkman et al. (2013), for instance, found that employees who knew they were considered talents were the most committed to the organisation. Furthermore, Campbell and Smith (2010) found that formal talent designation had a much more positive effect on high-potentials’ loyalty than informal designation. In my own research, my colleagues and I found that employees selected as talents start identifying more with both management and the organisation, in turn leading to increased citizenship behaviour – i.e., going the extra mile for the company even when it’s not in your role description (Wikhamn, Asplund & Dries, 2021).  

There can be downsides, of course. As a designated high-potential, you start expecting more from the organisation in terms of career development. If those expectations fail to materialise, positive reactions can turn negative over time (Tyskbo & Wikhamn, 2023). But this is less about the talent designation per se, and more about whether you as an organisation can put action behind the words. 

What about those that are not selected?

Somewhat less is known about the reactions of those not identified as high-potentials, although the picture has cleared up over time. Björkman et al. (2013) found no significant negative effect of knowing you were not designated as a high-potential. What has turned out to cause a lot of negative reactions, however, is when HR decision processes are perceived as obscure (cf. e.g. Sumelius et al., 2014) or outright unfair (Gelens et al., 2014). More recent research has found that being outside the talent category can generate motivation to attain that status, but also self-protective responses and attributions. In order to avoid the latter, it’s important to present talent designation as a dynamic label, rather than as a stable identity (Jooss & Krebs, 2024). 

Transparency is great, but explainability is greater

Some clear conclusions can be drawn from this. First of all: Keeping talent decisions formally secret does not mean they remain secret in practice – and ambiguity and secrecy about talent decisions is seldom the way to avoid adverse impact. The risk of negative reactions is much higher if the process appears as opaque.

Nine years later, I would ,however, add some nuance. Yes, there are good reasons to be transparent about talent decisions. But transparency lies downstream from explainability. 

If you tell someone they are a talent, you should be able to explain what that means, why they were identified, and what happens next. If someone wasn't selected, you should be able to explain what the organisation values, how talent decisions are made, and how people can develop. And talent status should describe an organisational judgement at a particular point in time, not become a permanent label attached to a person.

Perhaps the question was never really whether we should tell people. The better question is whether we've built a talent system we're comfortable telling people about.

This text is a re-write of a piece I wrote for my then-blog as a researcher in 2017.

References

Björkman, I., Ehrnrooth, M., Mäkelä, K., Smale, A., & Sumelius, J. (2013). Talent or not? Employee reactions to talent identification. Human Resource Management, 52(2), 195–214. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21525

Campbell, M., & Smith, R. (2010). High-potential talent: A view from inside the leadership pipeline. Center for Creative Leadership. 

Church, A. H., Rotolo, C. T., Ginther, N. M., & Levine, R. (2015). How are top companies designing and managing their high-potential programs? A follow-up talent management benchmark study. Consulting Psychology Journal: Practice and Research, 67(1), 17–47. https://doi.org/10.1037/cpb0000030

DeLong, T. J., & Vijayaraghavan, V. (2003). Let’s hear it for B players. Harvard Business Review, 81(6), 96–102, 137. 

Dries, N. (2013). The psychology of talent management: A review and research agenda. Human Resource Management Review, 23(4), 272–285. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.hrmr.2013.05.001

Dries, N., & Pepermans, R. (2008). “Real” high-potential careers: An empirical study into the perspectives of organisations and high potentials. Personnel Review, 37(1), 85–108. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480810839987

Gelens, J., Hofmans, J., Dries, N., & Pepermans, R. (2014). Talent management and organisational justice: Employee reactions to high potential identification. Human Resource Management Journal, 24(2), 159–175. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12029

Jooss, S., & Krebs, B. P. (2024). Employee reactions to perceived ‘non-talent’ designation: A social comparison perspective. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 35(17), 2916–2940. https://doi.org/10.1080/09585192.2024.2385400

Sumelius, J., Björkman, I., Ehrnrooth, M., Mäkelä, K., & Smale, A. (2014). What determines employee perceptions of HRM process features? The case of performance appraisal in MNC subsidiaries. Human Resource Management, 53(4), 569–592. https://doi.org/10.1002/hrm.21604

Tyskbo, D., & Wikhamn, W. (2023). Talent designation as a mixed blessing: Short- and long-term employee reactions to talent status. Human Resource Management Journal, 33(3), 683–701. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12485

Wikhamn, W., Asplund, K., & Dries, N. (2021). Identification with management and the organisation as key mechanisms in explaining employee reactions to talent status. Human Resource Management Journal, 31(4), 956–976. https://doi.org/10.1111/1748-8583.12335