How HR Leaders Can Use the Lepak and Snell Model to Focus Talent Investment Where It Counts

Most HR leaders are being asked to do more with less while still delivering on engagement, retention, and capability. Budgets, development time, and leadership attention often get spread evenly across the organisation, regardless of where they actually drive value.

The result is predictable: critical roles are under‑resourced, high‑potential people slip through the net, and HR ends up firefighting instead of shaping the future. The Lepak and Snell Human Resource Architecture Model offers a clear, evidence‑based way to change that by intentionally differentiating how you manage different groups of roles.

What is the Lepak and Snell model?

The Lepak and Snell model starts with a simple premise: not all roles create value in the same way, and they shouldn’t be managed the same way. It looks at every role through two lenses: how much value the human capital in that role creates for your organisation, and how unique or hard to replace that human capital is.

By mapping roles across these two dimensions, you create a 2x2 matrix with four distinct talent segments. Each segment requires a different approach to hiring, developing, and retaining people, giving HR leaders a practical tool to align people architecture with business strategy across sectors such as emergency services, tech, engineering, and retail.

Step 1: Map your roles into the 2x2

The first step is to classify roles, not people. The key question is: “What is the nature of this role in our strategy?”

Value of human capital (X‑axis)

• High value: Roles that directly drive competitive advantage or mission delivery, for example, incident commanders in emergency services, principal engineers in a tech scale‑up, or engineering design leads in safety‑critical environments.

• Low value: Roles that are necessary to keep the organisation running but don’t meaningfully differentiate you from competitors, for example, generic back‑office processing or standard admin.

Uniqueness of human capital (Y‑axis)

• High uniqueness: Roles where skills are rare, deeply contextual, or hard to develop quickly, such as niche regulatory experts, senior clinical specialists, or highly specialised R&D roles.

• Low uniqueness: Roles where skills are widely available in the labour market, such as generalist customer service or basic finance processing.

From this, you get four segments:

The mapping exercise itself is powerful. It surfaces assumptions about which roles truly drive strategy and where you may be over‑ or under‑investing today.

Step 2: Align your talent lifecycle to each segment

Once roles are mapped, the real power of the model comes from deliberately differentiating your talent lifecycle: how you acquire, develop, and retain each segment. This is where HR can stop spreading investment thinly and start making targeted, strategic choices.

Acquisition: grow, buy, or borrow?

Acquisition is about how you secure the talent you need: developing it internally, hiring it from the market, or accessing it through partners.

Criticals – grow and guard

• Hire selectively for potential, values alignment, and learning agility, not just current skills.

• Use robust, high‑fidelity assessments such as simulations, assessment centres, and in‑depth exercises.

• Build internal pipelines (for example, partner‑in‑training or future leader programmes) so you are not overly reliant on the external market.

Professionals – hire efficiently at scale

• Standardise job profiles and selection criteria to support consistent, repeatable hiring across multiple sites or services.

• Leverage employer brand, referrals, and talent pools to reduce time‑to‑hire and cost‑per‑hire.

Specialists – access when needed

• Maintain a curated panel of trusted external partners and contractors you can draw on quickly.

• Define clear statements of work so you buy outcomes, not just time, and build in knowledge transfer.

Doers – keep it simple and flexible

• Use straightforward selection focused on reliability, basic capability, and values.

• Design roles and rotas that can flex with demand, while continually exploring automation and digitisation opportunities.

Development: target your learning budget

Development is often where budgets disappear fastest. The model helps you decide who should receive deep, tailored development and who can be supported with lighter‑touch learning.

Criticals – deep, personalised development

• Provide coaching, mentoring, and targeted leadership programmes linked directly to strategic priorities.

• Offer cross‑functional projects, transformation work, or new‑site openings to build breadth and depth of experience.

Professionals – structured and scalable

• Build clear capability frameworks (for example, for store managers, middle managers, or engineers) and align learning pathways to them.

• Use blended learning – digital foundations plus practice and coaching – to drive consistent standards at scale.

Specialists – targeted, time‑bound learning

• Invest in essential technical certifications or updates to keep expertise current.

• Design engagements so specialists share knowledge with internal teams through clinics, toolkits, or shadowing.

Doers – essential skills and performance support

• Focus on high‑quality onboarding, safety, compliance, and core service standards.

• Use job aids, checklists, and simple digital tools to support performance rather than heavy training programmes.

Bridge the gap between potential and readiness

Once you are clear on where to invest your development budget, the next challenge is making confident decisions about who is genuinely ready for your most critical roles. Interviews and CVs tell part of the story – but they rarely show how people think, lead, and decide under pressure.

Our T2 Assessment Centre Playbook gives HR leaders and People Directors a practical toolkit to design assessment centres that:

• Target the capabilities that matter most for your Critical and Professional roles

• Create fair, evidence‑based selection and promotion decisions

• Connect assessment outcomes directly to development and succession plans

Retention and rewards: different promises for different roles

Retention and rewards should mirror the strategic importance of each segment, rather than following a one‑size‑fits‑all pattern.

Criticals – create a compelling long‑term deal

• Offer long‑term incentives (such as equity, profit share, or partnership models) and visible progression routes.

• Involve Criticals in shaping strategy and give them meaningful autonomy and influence.

Professionals – keep your strong core

• Provide competitive, performance‑linked pay and transparent development pathways.

• Make lateral and cross‑functional moves easy to keep careers fresh and broaden capability.

Specialists – mutual loyalty, not dependence

• For internal specialists, use interesting project portfolios and flexibility as key retention levers.

• For external experts, create “preferred partner” relationships so they know they are your first call when specific needs arise.

Doers – fair, humane, and sustainable

• Ensure pay, conditions, and schedules are fair and predictable, with a clear focus on wellbeing and safety.

• Accept some natural turnover but create structured routes for strong performers to step up into Professional roles where appropriate.

A practical roadmap for HR and People Directors

To land this in your context and secure senior buy‑in:

1. Start with one business‑critical area
   Choose a function or unit under pressure – for example, frontline operations in emergency services, engineering delivery, or a high‑growth product line in tech.

2. Map every role into the four segments
   Run a working session with leaders, using the 2x2 matrix on the wall. Where there is disagreement, pause and ask, “How exactly does this role create value?”

3. Choose two high‑leverage changes
   For example, you might redesign your assessment and acquisition approach for Critical roles, or shift a portion of generic learning budget into bespoke development for Criticals and high‑performing Professionals.

4. Define success measures upfront
   Track metrics such as time‑to‑fill for Critical roles, regretted attrition, bench strength for key positions, and performance in pivotal units (such as store performance, project delivery, or response times).

5. Turn it into a story, not just a model
   Translate the framework into accessible language for leaders: “We’re not labelling people. We’re matching our people decisions to where value is created in this organisation.”

How does this fit T2’s approach

The Lepak and Snell model sits naturally within T2’s human‑centred, practical, and impactful philosophy. It gives HR leaders a simple, evidence‑based framework they can use to make better decisions about assessment, leadership development, and workforce planning.

By combining this strategic lens with creative, real‑world design of programmes, assessment centres, and learning journeys, organisations can unlock the full potential of their people where it matters most.

Ready to apply this in your organisation?

You now have a clear way to differentiate roles, target your investment, and start realigning your talent strategy with where value is truly created. The next step is to test the model in one business‑critical area – and see what it reveals.

You can start by using the T2 Assessment Centre Playbook to sharpen how you identify and select talent for your most critical roles. From there, we can work with you to:

• Map critical roles using the Lepak and Snell model

• Stress‑test current assessment, development, and reward approaches

• Identify 2–3 high‑impact changes you can implement within the next 6–12 months