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Sara Bovey Covey (00:02)
It’s those moments where the leaders get to align on who’s thriving, who needs support, where potential is emerging, and then what the organization needs next.

Susan White (00:13)
Welcome to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast, where we help HR and business leaders embrace joy in the workplace. I’m Susan White, owner of Susan Tinder White Consulting, an HR consulting practice. Joining me is my co-host and dear friend, JoDee Curtis, who is owner of Purple Ink, a large-scale HR firm that I’m an executive collaborator of.

Today, we’re going to talk about talent reviews. “What is a talent review,” you might be asking. Well, a talent review is a structured discussion where leaders assess employees’ performance and potential to identify future leaders and their development needs. We believe that our listeners who are primarily business leaders and HR professionals are frequently asking themselves if they have the talent on board to meet the current and future needs of their organizations.

Once you know the competencies, both the technical and behavioral skills that your enterprise needs to fulfill your mission, your vision, and your values, it is smart to take a good hard look at who’s on your team today. What are their skills? How might you help them develop further? Or maybe what type of talent you don’t have and how can you import that talent that has those skills and abilities in order to achieve the goals the organization has?

We know that you need to have the right people with the right skills and competencies in the right roles at the right time for your organization to succeed. We think talent — doing talent reviews with some type of regularity, I think is a really smart pathway for you to ensure that.

So a key component of most organizations’ talent reviews is succession planning, which uses insights from reviewing your talent to really prepare individuals to fill critical roles when vacancies eventually occur. You don’t want to have a critical staff member to leave a hole in your organization when they depart that ends up taking a long time to fill. A 2023 SHRM survey reported that only 21% of HR professionals reported having a formal succession plan in place. To me, that’s really scary.

To determine who’s the best successor candidates for all of your key roles, you need to start with a really good understanding of the talent that you have, which is why I’m really excited about today’s topic. If we do a good job with talent reviews, we fortify our organizations to withstand challenges that surface, like unexpected staff departures, unanticipated leaves of absence, and other staffing-related surprises. JoDee, how about you? What is your background doing talent reviews? How have you used this concept?

JoDee Curtis (03:02)
Yes, so admittedly, I’ll tell our audience that I had to ask Susan earlier, what does she think is a talent review? But I have, you know, I’ve been in professional services pretty much my whole career, where this was, we never called it a talent review, but we were constantly looking at talent, right, and really were succession planning for lots of different roles at the same time almost all the time. Yes, so I think it’s an important process to be going through and thinking back now or even currently in my own firm, I’m asking the question, am I doing that as much as I think I am, you know, and to have a more structured process on it, I think would be helpful.

Susan White (03:59)
I think that’s great. As you know, I came from a large corporate background and I will tell you, talent reviews was really kind of an integral part of the HR business partnering function. So what we would do in this large corporation is that we would do our normal performance evaluations every year, certainly like clockwork, but separate from that, usually three, six months out from that, we would go through a talent review process for the top echelons of the organization, you know, usually, I would say, through like vice president level.

And the point of it would be is that we want to go back and take a look at all of the talent we have inside, not only how are they performing, so performance evaluations was a strong component of it, but also what were those individuals’ potential? Do they have the capacity to do more, to be more, to maybe cross fertilize the talent they have to other parts of the organization?

Part of the talent review was not only assessing performance potential, but does the person want more? So it often meant having conversations with some of your emerging talent or some people very highly thought of. What do you want out of your careers? Because if we have people that really don’t wanna do anything else, that’s great. We want them to keep performing where they are, but you don’t want to include them as a successor candidate for another higher role because you’re gonna be wasting your time and their time.

JoDee Curtis (05:25)
Right.

Susan White (05:25)
You also need to think about for the particular roles, these critical roles that we think some of our talent to someday fill. Do we need to get them more education? Do they have the professional credentialing that they might need? Do we need to send them to courses or do we need to send them to conferences to widen their network? What do we need to do from a development standpoint? So all of that really wraps into what the talent review was.

And we would come out of there with, here’s who we see as potential staff we have in-house who could fulfill some of those really important jobs for us in the future. And here’s what we’re going to do with those people between now and then. Now, I will tell you, it’s not a perfect plan. I love organizations getting more intentional about it. But things happen, right? Sometimes we think we’ve got two or three years’ runway to develop an individual. And guess what? Next year, that critical job opens up, and we need to take that person in-house and plop them into a job before they’re fully baked. That’s OK. You know, sometimes you’ve got to learn on the job. But hopefully we’ve started to take measures. We understand where the gaps are, and we can work on that while the person is there.

I guess the other kind of big surprise that often happens with talent reviews is that you’ve got great plans for that internal talent, and they leave the organization. And at that point, it’s like you’ve been spending time developing for them that job. Sometimes you’ve got to start over.

I think another gap that sometimes happens is that you look inside your organization, and you look at the people’s performance, you look at the potential, and you look at what people want to do, and you don’t have anybody in the pipeline that could take on one of your significant roles in the future. The beauty of doing a talent review annually or whatever cadence works for you is that you have the aha moment early and you’re able to import talent. You’re able to put together a sourcing strategy that when it looks like one of our critical roles is going to come open or we want it to come open or the person retires from it, how are we going to get that talent in, in-house?

And some organizations, part of their talent review is that we’re going to hire ahead. Maybe we have nobody lined up to be our CFO that, or nobody wants that job. Well, maybe we need to hire somebody now. Maybe the next time we have an opening in finance, we’re going to bring somebody in with the mindset that they’re going to be a successor.

Doing talent reviews, I think can yield a lot of benefits. In my consulting practice, I have had the opportunity to work with a number of small to mid-sized firms on their succession planning. And generally, it’s for the C-suite level. Sometimes it’s for, like, our number one revenue generator, so maybe our head of sales or our head of risk or whatever it is based on the business. I think it starts with a talent review. You’ve got to be doing your performance reviews. Yes. But putting together a formalized, I think annual is optimal, talent review process is a really smart strategic HR process.

So, well, we have invited a guest today who has passion for this kind of work. And we thought based on the work she’s done, the book she’s written, she might be someone who gives us some really new insights and good perspectives. It’s Sara Bovey Covey. She’s a leadership development expert and author dedicated to helping organizations build cultures rooted in clarity, compassion, and accountability. As the voice behind the Corporate Cheerleader, Sara blends warmth and strategy to empower leaders to thrive in complex workplace realities. She brings experience in people analytics, talent management and leadership education to every conversation and classroom that she leads.

JoDee Curtis (09:10)
Sara, thank you so much for joining us today.

Sara Bovey Covey (09:14)
It’s a privilege, I’m so excited to be here.

JoDee Curtis (09:16)
Thank you. Some of our listeners work in organizations that don’t do formal talent reviews. So briefly, how would you describe your perspective on what talent reviews are?

Sara Bovey Covey (09:30)
So a talent review is simply a structured, intentional conversation where leaders step back from their day-to-day and look at their people with clarity. It is not a performance review. Most actually happen mid-fiscal year, so that way you can kind of connect what they’ve been doing throughout the year and what the potential is for the rest of the year. It’s those moments where the leaders get to align on who’s thriving, who needs support, where potential is emerging, and then what the organization needs next.

Susan White (09:56)
So I know that you’ve written more than one book, but tell us a little bit about what inspired you to write a book about talent reviews and succession planning. And why do you think that’s really important here in 2025?

Sara Bovey Covey (10:08)
In 2025, especially, I’ve seen a lot of leaders that aren’t necessarily making choices based on long-term strategy of where their department is going. I see them making current decisions like the right now, almost knee-jerk. And when we are looking at talent review, we really want to explore the bench strength, what we can get from the team that we have currently, and then where we have opportunities to not only develop them or to bring people up to standard, but to bring people to the best place in their life.

And when we’re bringing out the best in our talent, we see higher engagement scores. We end up seeing more from our customers because our people are so well taken care of that they’re taking better care of our customers. And it just comes down to the conversation of if we are taking care of our talent the right way, we end up getting the best results. And so how can we do that? We start with talent review, where we know our team and we help develop them to what we need next.

JoDee Curtis (11:04)
I love it. And when you were describing what a talent review was, it’s not just, like, a meeting, but almost a mindset. What does that mean in practice?

Sara Bovey Covey (11:18)
So that means that you as a leader are constantly thinking about where your team is and where they could develop to next. A true talent review mindset understands that talent evolves from moment to moment. One day they could be ready to shine and the next day they may need to take a break or step back entirely. So that stretch project might transform an employee’s ambition practically overnight or it might send them into a spiral. And we don’t want any of those things for our employees. We want them to be at their best. And so that’s… That’s really where that mindset sits, is understanding where our team is and how to move them.

Susan White (11:54)
So, would you mind spelling out for our listeners the critical elements that you think need to be present in a solid talent review process and who should be engaged?

Sara Bovey Covey (12:04)
So I think that it starts with six tiers of things. The first is actually creating clear talent profiles. You may know your team really well, but when you are having these collaboration conversations, which I’ll mention later, it is really important to help other people understand where your talent has come from and what they have the capability of doing next. So really showcasing what they have in the beginning makes all the difference. And then what comes next is a performance and potential model, often nine box, 16 box, a narrative assessment or the now next model, which is my personal favorite.

The conversation comes to that place of where are they currently and then what can they do next? And then we have calibration that follows as a fairness engine for the process where we can really make sure that we have highlighted these people’s now and next to the definitions that we were targeting from an organizational perspective. So that way we’re aligned so your good doesn’t mean my great.

Susan White (13:02)
The calibration meeting, I think, is so fundamentally important. I can remember thinking that when we got in there and we, like, put up on the board how certain managers, higher-level managers had rated their people. There’s some people that are such easy graders. They think everybody who works for them is a superstar and others who are so hard graders. And we get in there and in a calibration meeting, which is where you get the fairness. There’s people to say, “Wait a minute, Susan, I know that Jack is really much better than you rated them,” they say, “Well, I’m a hard grader.” You get a chance to really, hopefully as a group, right any wrongs that are in the evaluation system.

Sara Bovey Covey (13:36)
Yes, and we hear all the time there are so many different sides to a story. Well, there’s just that many sides to a person in the workplace. And so we want to be able to hear a 360 perspective of how they perform and give that little executive visibility a little bit more depth. So that way they’re not just hearing it from one manager’s perspective. They’re hearing about the comprehensive work experience, both upline, downline, all of it.

So, and that leads me to succession planning, which is a big part of it. This is where our organization is going next. This allows us to not have to dig into the fray to go find someone frantically, where we know we need to either develop or buy the talent and bring somebody in who has something that we don’t necessarily have in that moment. It allows us to be far more strategic in the projects that we take on, the customers that we partner with. It really helps connect those dots.

And then we have leadership accountability, not only for the confidentiality of this exercise, because nobody wants to see that they’re the low performer and nobody wants to be left in that box for too long. We want to develop them up into where they need to be or out into their role of choice. So in that space, we want them to also be accountable to the development plan that they create. You cannot just say we’re going to develop you and do X, Y, and Z and then not do it. That is a farmland for disengagement. In this economy, no.

And then follow-through is that final element. You have to make sure that you’re taking it all the way across. So then who needs to be engaged is the final part of your question. HR facilitates this, but this needs to be a leader-owned conversation. We are here to help guide and maintain that fairness, make sure that we’re utilizing the definitions, that we are interrupting biases. But the leader has to own the decision and the follow-through.

Susan White (15:26)
Yeah, I love that. Do you believe that when people have been identified to be a potential successor in the future, that we should tell them? Do you think, I know it’s an age-old question that some organizations are like, we don’t want to tell them because we don’t want to promise them anything. And I always say, I don’t think you should, you’re not promising anything, but you don’t want that person to leave you. You’re going to be developing them for purpose. But do you have, what’s your point of view on that, Sara?

Sara Bovey Covey (15:49)
So that’s why I like the now next model so well. It is not a promise of what’s next. It is what we are investing in you to get you where we think you need to go. And that conversation is hand in hand with the employee and the organization. So it’s not a, we want you there. It is a, we know that you want to be there and we want to help you get there. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that title because at the end we may have created a brand-new title for you.

Susan White (16:10)
I love that.

Sara Bovey Covey (16:15)
It is a conversation of collaboration. And when we have that, employees feel more valued. People feel more seen and more likely to stay.

Susan White (16:15)
Right. Yeah, yeah, I think that makes sense. Your books, you’re the Corporate Cheerleader, which I love that title. Yeah. How does the Corporate Cheerleader philosophy shape the way you approach talent review?

Sara Bovey Covey (16:36)
So it shapes the way that we look at talent review from coming from a place of clarity, fairness, courage, and care. We want to see people as humans, not boxes. We really want the humanity back in everything that we do from layoffs, which is what the first book was about, to talent review, and then as we move on into rehabbing recruitment and how we as parents handle navigating children into the business world.

So when we’re looking at this, we’re trying to humanize the experience and make sure that when we as organizations are saying that we’re going to do something, that we do it with the strategy of humanity first.

Susan White (17:14)
Mmm. Beautiful.

JoDee Curtis (17:15)
Nice. Sara, what do you think are some of the biggest challenges that leaders face during a talent review process?

Sara Bovey Covey (17:25)
So bias is the biggest one and it’s the easiest one to come by. And honestly, it’s the most human, especially when we’re looking at style, proximity, recency bias. These, they’re not malicious, they’re human and it can be, it can really hide potential. So that can be a really big challenge.

And then visibility gaps, just because the loudest person in the room has the most visibility to the CEO doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re the right person for the CEO to see. So as a leader, it’s your responsibility to identify these visibility gaps and build your team into being seen in the way that they want to be seen. I think that’s really important.

And then inconsistent standards. So not everybody leads the same way. And that shows really highly in these calibration conversations, not just the easy and hard grader, but the, “I assign extra work and I expect you to work 50 hours,” versus the “I want you to have a life, I would love for you to go and be a part of your family.” I had a manager once who told me that if I took my laptop on vacation, she would take it away from me for a week when I got back. I mean, and then I’ve also had managers that are like, “Cool, you’re taking your cell phone and your laptop, right? Because I might need to call you.” So your expectations at work end up transferring over into this conversation. And so where manager A may be like, “She did everything that I asked of her, but she didn’t do more, and so she’s only a C,” versus the person who, “She did everything that I asked her to do and a little bit extra, she gets an A, 10 out of 10.”

JoDee Curtis (19:00)
Yeah.

Susan White (19:01)
Yeah, it’s another good reason you need HR there as facilitator, really, or somebody who can help them see what they’re not seeing. So I love that. So you mentioned in your book that you created a framework to help business leaders overcome those challenges. Can you give us some insights on your framework?

Sara Bovey Covey (19:20)
Yes. So when it comes down to it, we looked at, it all comes down to the Is. I statements. So about Intention, everything starts with purpose and leaders must know why they’re evaluating talent before how. Information, we need clear talent profiles, evidence-based examples, and shared definitions. Interruption for bias. We need tools and language to spot and interrupt the bias. Questions like, is this a performance issue or is this a visibility issue? What evidence supports that? Really interrupting where those thought processes are coming from. Integration, so bringing talent review insights into everyday leadership practices, coaching assignments, exposure, sponsorship. And then Impact. Following through experiences, building the momentum all year, not just making this a one-time activity, but continuing to bring this in day over day over day and in our one-on-ones.

JoDee Curtis (20:14)
If listeners could make one meaningful change in how they approach talent reviews that could create a more JoyPowered® workspace after hearing your podcast today, what would you want it to be?

Sara Bovey Covey (20:29)
I want you to assume that potential exists and go looking for it. When leaders believe talent is present, even if it’s quiet, unconventional, or still developing, they start asking better questions. They create that visibility. They open doors. They coach differently. They see people more fully. And joy grows when people feel seen. And the talent review becomes JoyPowered® the moment leaders choose curiosity over assumption.

JoDee Curtis (20:55)
I love it! So well said! Yeah.

Susan White (20:57)
Me too. I agree. That’s great. So Sara, how could our listeners continue the conversation with you if they wanted to, and where can they get your book on talent reviews and succession planning and your other books?

Sara Bovey Covey (21:10)
First and foremost, they can find me on LinkedIn. That is the easiest way to get in touch with me. And I love the connection. It makes for better conversations all the way around, especially when you can see shared experiences. But I also have a website that is coming out soon and it should be out before January 2nd, so it’s coming, which is corporatecheerleader.org. And then for where to get the books, which right now it is “The Way We Let Them Go” and “Unboxed,” Corporate Cheerleader Guide series. Those are all on Amazon and then they will also be on my Corporate Cheerleader website shop.

Susan White (21:46)
Yeah, that’s wonderful. And we will put links to what you just mentioned on our show notes. So listeners, if you’re driving right now, don’t worry, you don’t have to write all that down. You will have links in our show notes. Great. Well, Sara, thank you so much for being here. It was wonderful.

JoDee Curtis (21:47)
Thank you. Yeah. Yes.

Sara Bovey Covey (22:02)
It’s been a privilege and a pleasure. I’m so excited. Thank you.

JoDee Curtis (22:05)
Yeah, thank you. Thank you.

JoDee Curtis (22:08)
Susan, it’s time for a listener question. “How can an HR professional grow skills without leaving their current job?”

Susan White (22:19)
Okay, I applaud the listener who asked this question because I think we all want to keep growing, right? And you don’t necessarily have to switch jobs or switch companies to do that. So I thought I’d share just a few things that I have seen really help HR professionals grow. First, one of my favorites is getting SHRM certified or HRCI, the Human Resource Certification Institute certification. It causes you to really go deep on all aspects of HR in order to pass the assessment, to get the credential, and then you’re gonna keep taking continuing ed hours or having deeper experiences so that you keep learning. It’s a very, think, formalized way to do it and a very useful way to do it.

Second thing I might just offer up is that you can take a course out there on HR practices, laws, labor laws that affect the industry that you’re in. A lot of companies will offer tuition reimbursement. Why not look at the local university, see if there are specific courses that would help you grow. Third suggestion I have is join an HR community where you live or a virtual one that you can tap into so that you meet other HR professionals, you get a chance to share best practices, and really maybe take advantage of any type of workshopping that, workshops that they do or other types of learning events.

Number four, I think it’s important to read, to listen, to watch podcasts, YouTube videos, SHRM’s quarterly HR magazine, blogs like HR Bartender, I really like by Sharlyn Lauby. There’s — check out hrdive.com, hrmorning.com. You’ll notice a lot of the news articles that JoDee and I pick up, it’s from our reading these online digital periodicals. It just, I think, really helps you stay abreast of what’s happening in the world of work as well as in the HR profession. Of course, subscribe to The JoyPowered® Workspace Podcast because, of course, we would love for you to keep listening to our podcast.

And then the fifth idea I had for this listener is do research on the topics that really interest you and consider introducing those concepts into the workplace. Maybe you read something about talent reviews or about succession planning or about pay equity or pay transparency or some topic. And maybe it’s nothing that’s on your radar in your organization. Why not come into the organization with some info and have conversations about experimenting with different things that are happening out in other organizations? I think you can learn on the job experimenting, trying things out, and really being innovative in your firm. So that’s my laundry list of ideas. JoDee, any that you might have?

JoDee Curtis (25:14)
The only other one, which you touched on a bit talking about doing research on topics that interest you, or I just remember a time in my career where our firm had hired outside consultants to do a very large project for us on developing competencies and revamping our performance management and our compensation system, the whole thing all at once. And I was invited and jumped at the opportunity to work on that project, which was kind of a stretch assignment for me, if you will, at the time. But also, I was working directly with our outside consultants and learned so much. And particularly, a main part of the project side I worked on was compensation, and that was really my first experience with that. So I think just looking for those opportunities or stretch assignments or, you know, as Susan mentioned, doing research on topics, right, that maybe you could bring to the organization, maybe somebody else in the organization you can learn from or even in working with outside consultants.

Susan White (26:38)
That’s a great one. love that. Volunteer for every project assignment you can in the organization, whether it’s HR-related or not. You’re going to grow. You’re going to learn. It’s going to help your marketability. You’re going to be better at what you do. So great, great advice. So good luck listener.

JoDee Curtis (26:44)
Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yes.

Susan White (26:55)
So it’s time for in the news. Money.com posted an article by Pete Grieve, that’s G-R-I-E-V-E, entitled, “5 Best Job Search Sites of October 2025,” that really caught our attention. And their picks are really from the candidate’s perspective, which I think is great for business leaders and HR people to understand where are candidates going to look for jobs. And that’s where we wanna be.

So here they are, the top five according to money.com. Number one is LinkedIn. No surprise. It got the best overall rating from candidates. LinkedIn has 551 million visits a month. A month! It blows my mind. Yeah. What’s number two, JoDee?

JoDee Curtis (27:38)
Number two is Indeed. They were the best for job diversity with over 176 million visits a month.

Susan White (27:56)
Interesting. Number three is Glassdoor. And the reason doesn’t surprise me. It was named best for salary information with over 27 million visits. I do think Glassdoor captures the best salary data. So it makes sense to me.

JoDee Curtis (28:10)
Yeah, I agree. I agree. Number four — I have to admit, I’ve only just recently heard of this, but they do have 1.3 million visits a month, so they’re doing something right — but is Simplify and they were the best for AI features. As an example, they use AI copilot that can autofill your experience, personal information and resume as you are applying for a job, which is a great candidate experience. So I love that.

Susan White (28:45)
Me too, me too. And then number five rounding out the list is ZipRecruiter, best mobile app with over 30 million visits a month. And this is really important that it’s a best mobile app because we know the majority of job seekers today, they use their mobile device to do their entire employment application all the way through onboarding, and so you wanna have a job board that is very agile and works very nicely on mobile devices. No surprise ZipRecruiter wins that one.

JoDee Curtis (29:13)
Right. Right.

Susan White (29:16)
All right, if you’re SHRM certified, you can get credit for listening to this episode. To get the code, go to getjoypowered.com/SHRM and fill out a short evaluation. When you finish the evaluation, you’ll get the code and a link to a proof of participation certificate. This code will expire on December 15th, 2026. Again, that’s getjoypowered.com/SHRM to get the code, and it’s going to expire on December 15th, 2026. Thank you for listening and thank you for your dedication to the HR profession.

JoDee Curtis (29:55)
Thank you for joining us and make it a JoyPowered® day.

Susan White (30:00)
Thank you.