Chacana Web Ltd. - Jquery implementation of 9-box talent grid

Usage

Set-up

Download the files from the linked GitHub repo.

Include the JS files in the head or footer of your html file.

Give an element the class "talentgrid". It will be rendered as a Talent Grid, with the associated functionality.

This is set up in index.html and talentgrid-test.js so it should work out of the box.

This plugin has been tested on jQuery versions 1.11.1 and 1.12.4

Customisation

The settings are documented in talentgrid-test.js

These allow you to:

Modify the size of the grid
Change text
Specify the token image
Turn off the options to the right of the grid
Pre-place a token somewhere in the grid
Change the behaviour of the token (whether it is draggable and how easily it snaps to a grid cell).
Remove the overlays (the text that apears when hovering over a section of the grid)

To change the colours used in the grid, change the following CSS rules:

Future development

The following enhancements may be developed in a future release.

Reporting capabilities: Load grid populated with many users and a means of selecting an individual user
Allow for dynamic updates of grid through API methods
Allow for alternative layouts

About

Background

The 9-box Talent Grid is one of the most widely used talent management / succession planning frameworks.

Commercial software is available to meet this need, such as here, here and here

This is a flexible and easy-to-use Open Source implementation.

Controversy

A Twitter search for the nine box talent grid reveals mixed opinions.

There are many endorsements for this method of employee appraisal.

Several recent articles express a more critical attitude. This could be a testament to its popularity. For new alternative methods of evaluation, this is "the one to beat".

Common criticisms are that:

The framework focuses purely on the individual, leaving out their relationship to the organisation.
"Potential", in particular, is too subjective to measure accurately.
The framework leads to "putting people in boxes".

It is easy to see how this framework could lend itself to practitioners committing the "fundamental attribution error".

We are much more likely to explain other peoples' behaviour in terms of fundamental traits rather than happenstance.

If a judgement is made on how much potential an employee *has*, then we will be tempted to see this as an essential part of who they are. If we are thinking about ourselves we will be more aware of the situations we were in and how these influenced our behaviour.

The way in which an evaluation is presented makes a large difference.

In a study, a group of five year olds were told that a girl named Rose often ate carrots. Half of the group was also told that Rose was "a carrot-eater". This latter group was much more likely to predict that Rose would continue to eat carrots in the future (even when given other evidence to the contrary).

This highlights a risk of using the framework.