Long-Term Talent Management Mission

Science and technology company Merck relies on maximum transparency in talent management: The status of "high potential" is awarded based on clear criteria and for a limited period of one year. The goal: Tobias Möckel, Head of Talent & Leadership at Merck, aims to move away from rigid succession lists towards a dynamic, smart talent pool for success-critical positions.

– Tobias Möckel, Head of Talent & Leadership at science and technology company Merck, is convinced that talent management is a long-term mission.

At Merck, everything revolves around innovation, science, and technology. With around 63,000 employees worldwide, the company researches and develops new active ingredients and medicines, digital laboratory technology, and high-tech materials. Talent management is extremely important for Merck, as the group's success is based on attracting bright minds, retaining them, and motivating them to perform at their best. This is why the company has been working for many years to establish a "talent-first culture."

Möckel reports that the company has now taken a major step towards achieving this goal. Almost two years ago, he and his team established a new talent management process at Merck that focuses on identifying and developing high potentials. "In our understanding, high potentials are talented individuals who have the potential for success-critical positions in the company in the short or medium term," explains Möckel. Accordingly, there are 3,000 high potentials in the company—representing around 5% of employees. When a position critical to the company's success needs to be filled, Möckel's team forms a pool of suitable talent from the high potentials who are eligible at the right time.

What is new and special about this high-potential program is that it focuses on maximum transparency. Every high potential knows that they belong to this group. In addition, Möckel reports, the criteria that high potentials must fulfill, as well as their special privileges and duties, are also completely transparent.

These conditions include, first and foremost, a principle: High-potential status is only granted for a limited period of one year, but you can also remain in the pool for longer. With this new approach, managers follow an annual nomination process, regularly evaluate their high potentials based on the nomination criteria, and decide whether someone should leave the pool, for example, by changing jobs.

Being a high potential is therefore not a permanent status, but a privilege on probation. Those who belong to it for a limited period receive special training opportunities and take part in networking events. As a high potential, you also have access to certain limited assignments that are only available to this pool. However, high potentials also commit to giving something back to the company: "For example, you have to act as a mentor for talents who are not yet so far advanced in their career; we call this 'Talent Catalyst'," explains Möckel. High potentials can get involved in HR marketing, and peer-to-peer mentoring within the high potentials community is also part of this.

The aim is to make it completely normal to talk about who is considered to have high potential and is currently being considered for the relevant positions. It should also become normal that there are no static succession lists and plans, but that the potential and requirements for success-critical positions in the company change dynamically.

This transparency poses a challenge: "Of course, we have to communicate this in such a way that the 95% of employees who are not - or no longer - on this list do not find it demotivating," says Möckel. "It is therefore important that there are very clear and transparent criteria that must be met." Equally important, performance and potential are assessed separately. "For the high-potential assessment, it is not performance that is decisive, but factors such as willingness to learn and develop or agility," explains Talent Management Director Möckel. "We are currently in the process of providing our managers with even better support in applying these criteria." This is because the top managers in the various divisions have to nominate "their" high potentials every year.

The high-potentials program is currently only in its second year. "However, we can already say that our employee retention in the high-potential pool has improved since then," says Möckel. "This shows that we are achieving our goal of retaining high-potential talent and tying them to the company."

One success factor: "When developing the program, we involved the experts from the business areas right from the start. Central HR did not develop and implement everything on its own. We meet with talent experts from the various sectors and countries on a quarterly basis to exchange experiences," explains Möckel.

At Merck, it is common to switch between different business areas and functions. This has proven to be a great advantage, as there are many colleagues in Möckel's team who have not had a purely HR career but have worked in the healthcare or life sciences sector, for example. "That creates acceptance." And: Managers at Merck typically see it as a success for themselves when their talents move on to other areas, says Möckel: "This talent-first mindset is crucial."

Möckel's team has just introduced a new HR tool to further support the move towards a talent-first culture. "It shows me many important KPIs: How many employees have progressed, how have salaries developed, how many of the high potentials have done training?"

In the future, succession processes at Merck should become even more transparent and agile with the help of such tools. "We want to move away from succession lists for individual positions and work with dynamic pools instead," says Möckel. "I am convinced that if the data on employees' skills and aspirations is transparent, there will soon be no need for static lists at all."

What's more: "In future, a talent management system will be able to automatically and proactively provide us with information on which skill gaps still exist in the short or medium term for individual talents and how we can develop these talents and when."