The Talent Box helps you visualize employees across two Performance Review questions. Use it as a traditional 9-Box for talent mapping, or customize the axes to compare other Review dimensions that are meaningful to your organization.
By plotting employees on a matrix, you can see how responses to two Review questions relate to each other, making it easier to identify patterns, explore outliers, and support calibration and talent planning discussions.
How the Talent Box works
The Talent Box takes two questions from your Performance Review form and uses them as the axes of a matrix:
One question appears on the horizontal axis.
The other appears on the vertical axis.
Each employee is placed in the box that corresponds to their responses to those two questions.
For example, select Performance and Potential to create a traditional talent-mapping view.
If both questions use a three-point rating scale, the result is the familiar 3 × 3, or 9-Box, matrix.
However, you aren't limited to a traditional 9-Box. You can select other compatible rated questions from your Performance Review form to create a Talent Box that reflects the dimensions you want to explore.
Tip: Start with Performance and Potential if you want a traditional 9-Box. From there, experiment with other question combinations to explore your Performance Review data from different perspectives.
Open the Talent Box view
Go to Performance Reviews and open your Review Cycle.
Click Talent Box.
Select the two Performance Review questions you want to compare.
You can select ratings or rated questions from the Performance Review form to plot your talent.
Choose what to compare
The questions you select determine what the Talent Box represents. This gives you flexibility to use established talent-management frameworks or create a view based on the questions that matter to your organization.
For example, you might compare:
Performance and Potential
Value Creation and Trajectory
Results and Behaviors
Keeper Test results
Other Performance Review questions that use compatible response scales
Different combinations can reveal different patterns within your workforce.
Note: The Talent Box is only as standardized as the questions you choose. Selecting Performance and Potential can give you a traditional 9-Box experience, while selecting other questions lets you customize the matrix for different talent and performance discussions.
Understand the results
Each box in the matrix represents a combination of responses to your two selected questions.
Employees appear as avatars or initials in the box that corresponds to their responses. This makes it easy to see where individuals and groups cluster.
The percentage shown in each section of the matrix helps you understand how employees are distributed across the Talent Box at a glance.
Click an employee avatar to open their Performance Review and explore the context behind their placement.
Use the Talent Box to uncover insights
Depending on the questions you choose, the Talent Box can help you:
Identify high-performing and high-potential employees
Highlight employees who may benefit from additional support
Spot unusual rating patterns and outliers
Detect inconsistencies in manager assessments
Discover employees who may otherwise be overlooked
Explore relationships between different Performance Review dimensions
Support calibration and talent planning discussions
The Talent Box is designed to support the conversation rather than provide a final assessment. Use what you see in the matrix as a starting point for exploring why employees are positioned where they are.
Filter the data
Like other Performance Review visualizations, you can use the Talent Box alongside available Performance Review filters.
Apply filters to focus on specific employee groups, such as department, tenure, or gender. You can also combine filters to explore trends within particular populations and compare how distributions differ between groups.
Best practices
Choose questions that match your goal. Use Performance and Potential for a traditional 9-Box, or select other dimensions to explore a different talent question.
Review the overall distribution first. Look for broad patterns before focusing on individual employees.
Explore different question combinations. Changing the axes can reveal relationships that aren't obvious in other Performance Review visualizations.
Compare relevant groups. Use filters to explore patterns across teams, departments, or other employee populations.
Investigate clusters and outliers. Open individual Performance Reviews to understand the context behind an employee's placement.
Use the Talent Box to support discussion. Bring the visualization into calibration and talent-planning conversations, alongside other relevant context.
Note: The Talent Box provides a visual representation of Performance Review responses, not a complete assessment of an employee. For a more complete picture, consider employee feedback, performance history, and manager context alongside the visualization.