General Electric Co Talent Management

General Electric Co. has become a company that is championed for its effective talent-management processes, which is considered by many to be a best practice for talent management. GE's technique consists of a formal, structured review process that works to drive success, "Session C" (Cairns, 2009). According to GE, "The purpose of Session C is to assess the leadership talent of the organization to determine the level of performance as well as potential strengths, development needs, and succession planning." (Cairns, 2009). Within the process, there are multi-level reviews that flow down the employment levels (Cairns, 2009). It starts at the top with the CEO and his direct reports, on to the operation business leaders and direct reports, and proceeds downwards until it gets to the lowest-level leaders. The head of each level would assess levels that are up to two or three levels below them (Cairns, 2009).

The assessment will first consist of a brief, open discussion of the employee's performance appraisal document (Cairns, 2009). Within this document are a list of accomplishments, strengths, developmental needs and plans, and career interests of the employee (Cairns, 2009). Each individual will then receive one of three ratings: Top, Highly-Valued, or Least- Effective performers (Cairns, 2009).

At first, Session C required a forced distribution ranking of the ratings, requiring 20% to be rated as Top performers, 70% as Highly-Valued performers, and 10% as Least-Effective performers (Cairns, 2009). However, the forced distribution system was met with some controversy and push-back from the employees (Cairns, 2009). Eventually, the forced- distribution requirement was removed, but the distribution of ratings over time remained similar to the forced-distribution format (Cairns, 2009).

These discussions were able to stimulate conversations between the individual and the supervisors that fostered