Assessing individual aspirations for better career growth

In the context of an internal mobility policy , HR practices primarily focus on assessing the skills necessary for the position while overlooking a crucial component: motivations!

Konrad Kleinholz discusses the importance of challenging traditional career paths with Ben Eubanks from Lighthouse Research & Advisory in a video .

Integrating Aspirations into an Intelligent Platform

We are witnessing a strong shift towards deploying intelligent platforms that consolidate performance, skills, and motivation data in one place. The Talent Marketplace is a solution where all employees are grouped based on their skills and motivations.

For instance, Neobrain has increased internal mobility by 45% for Natixis within nine months (see the complete use case). The future evolution of this internal recruitment lever is primarily the integration of short-term projects.

What does the term "Aspirations" of an amployee mean?

Aspiration is equated with the ambition a person seeks to achieve and is strongly correlated with a person's personal vision of their life or career. For example, one-third of executives in the latter half of their career aspire to start their own business, notably to reconnect with a passion or a more meaningful role.

What are the differences between Aspiration, Motivation, and Appetite?

Here are the differences between motivation, appetite, and aspiration:

• Motivation refers to the set of factors that drive a person to act or pursue a specific goal. It can be intrinsic (related to pleasure, sense of accomplishment) or extrinsic (related to rewards, consequences).
• Appetite is a person's natural predisposition or taste for something. It can result from innate or acquired skills, previous experiences, or personal interest.
• Aspiration focuses on longer-term goals.

In summary, motivation focuses on the factors that drive a person to act, appetite focuses on a person's skills and natural interests, and aspiration focuses on longer-term goals.

How to evaluate Aspirations in an internal mobility process?

Assessing the aspirations and motivations of each individual requires awareness from the talents themselves from the outset; it is about getting them to think about it so that they can verbalize it. Unlike skills, aspirations are less easily measurable, so we recommend evaluating the appetite to develop each of the skills to get an overall view of individual aspirations.

What are the benefits of assessing amployee aspirations?

Our experience highlights two main benefits of assessing aspirations:

1. Better Allocation of Training: Insufficient enthusiasm multiplies the learning time by 5 to 9 times. Thus, training motivated individuals first halves the time and cost of skill enhancement.
2. Smooth Transmission of Knowledge: A low level of motivation indicates a risk of loss in the short or long term. It is possible to anticipate the rare occasions when the organization must plan for knowledge transfer.

Combining 360 Feedback and Self-Assessment

The 360 Feedback 360-degree feedback helps employees step back and identify their strengths and weaknesses. It is an evaluation process focusing more on behavior than performance, based on observations from colleagues, supervisors, and sometimes even subordinates. Goodwill is a must!

The several steps of the 360 Degree Feedback:

1. Preparation: Employees are invited to participate in the feedback process and identify who will provide feedback on their work.
2. Gathering Feedback: Selected individuals complete a questionnaire or online form about the employee's behaviors, skills, and issues.
3. Comment Analysis: Comments are compiled and analyzed to identify trends and emerging themes.
4. Presentation of Results: Results are presented to employees in a one-on-one meeting or training, where they can discuss their strengths and areas for improvement and develop an action plan.
5. Follow-up: It is important to monitor the employee's progress to see if they have implemented corrective actions and made progress.

It is important to note that 360-degree feedback should be conducted anonymously to ensure objectivity. Additionally, the results should not be used for promotion or compensation decisions but as a tool for career development and performance improvement.

Self-Evaluation

The relevance of an organization's employee allocation mechanisms depends on understanding individual aspirations. We recommend assessing the motivation to develop each skill in the business repository.

Thus, the internal mobility system guarantees better objectivity in employees' career aspirations and provides reliable indications for managers and HR in internal recruitments.

As part of managing their skills, employees conduct self-assessments . This is an essential act but challenging to master due to various biases.

Engaging employees in completing their profile is facilitated by adding the "motivation" dimension: they indicate the skills they want to develop and those they have no interest in.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can imagine an equation that represents an employee's performance based on their skills and motivation.

This equation would look like this: Performance (P) = Skills x Motivation².

Neobrain distinguishes itself from other talent marketplaces by integrating this dimension into job suggestions and career path construction.