Developing a Talent Management Program – Part II

Socializing the Initiative

In Part I of this post, we discussed a client’s (National PR Services Firm) initial steps to gather information for a project focused on developing and launching a talent management program for employees. First, I apologize to my readers as it has been a while since I posted Part I, so please do reread Part I before reading Part II.

The kick-off meeting in April was well attended; none of the stakeholders missed the meeting – a total of 14 attended. It certainly helped that the President of the company sent an email to all stakeholders emphasizing the importance of this initiative and that he expected a commitment to participate by attending the 1 1/2 day meeting.  The agreed upon objective for this project was as follows:

OBJECTIVE: Develop a comprehensive talent management program from onboarding new hires to developing professional skills to high potential programs, all in an effort to support future succession planning initiatives.

The Project

During the meeting, the project of developing a comprehensive talent management program was broken down into nine phases (as shown below) rather than the initial five. It was expected that this would be easier to manage. The project was expected to be completed over a 2 year time period and some of the phases would be done in conjunction with another phase.

• Socialize the initiative
• Research and analysis
• Design and development of career paths
• Development and launch of mentoring and coaching program
• Development and launch of onboarding program
• Development and launch of professional skills training program
• Development and launch of supervisor training program
• Development and launch management and leadership program
• Launch of a Learning Management System

Much of the work of the project would be done in-house by employees. In fact, given the effort involved and the expected impact on the organization, the HR department was expected to add five more staff members over the next couple of months who would be focused solely on this project over the next two years. In addition, many of the other members of the HR department, along with representatives from all business units within the company, would be involved in the effort on at least 50% – 60% of the time. This initiative was considered to be essential to the success of the organization and was part of their strategic plan.

Socializing the Initiative

This part of the case study will focus on socializing the initiative – the first phase and frankly one of the most important! It was decided that it was particularly important to socialize and communicate the initiative throughout the organization. As you’ll recall was discussed in part I, currently talent is not well developed at any level of the organization and a recent employee engagement survey had shown the leadership group that employees were unhappy and not engaged in the business. This raised the concern that good talent would be lost as the economy picked up and other opportunities outside of the company became available to employees.

Without a good plan to socialize the initiative and get buy-in from employees, it was felt that the initiative would be a failed effort. In the past, little effort was put forth on socializing project initiatives and a concerted effort would be made for this project to spend significantly more time in socializing. As a side note, I have found through personal work and work with clients that spending time up front socializing initiatives – even small ones – makes a tremendous difference in getting the support and buy-in to keep moving forward toward a successful conclusion. Frankly it doesn’t have to be a large effort, but the amount of effort if you don’t do the socializing component can be tremendous!

Part of the socializing phase also included surveying a variety of employees to get input for development of the program. More on this later in this post.

First, here is an overview of the plan to socialize the initiative:

• Use SharePoint (already used in the business) to have a “one stop” location where employees can find out about the project, provide input, participate in surveys and poll questions, and ask questions.
• Schedule a number of breakfast get-togethers, lunch & learns and after hours social to talk about the initiative.
• Have members of the team bring up the initiative in the kitchen during coffee breaks, at the water cooler and in general hallway conversations – continuously look for feedback.
• Send out a variety of emails to employees regarding the initiative over the course of the project.

The first thing the team did was to send an email to all employees to discuss the initiative – the goal of the project, the reason for moving forward and their vision for the end result. The email also provided a variety of get-togethers – breakfast, lunch, and after hours – over a two week period to enable all employees to participate, learn more and ask questions.

The Survey

Surveys were developed to be sent to a variety of individuals to gather information for use in development of the talent management program. Besides all employees of the company, individuals who received the survey were those employees who had voluntarily left the organization within the last year.  Surveys were differentiated based on role within the company. So while there were some common questions asked, each survey also had up to 5 questions specific to that role within the company.  I’ll provide an example of this shortly.

The survey respondent groups included:

• Leadership team
• All management staff
• All current employees, divided up as follows:
• Within organization less than 2 years
• With organization 2 – 5 years
• With organization 6 – 10 years
• With organization 11+ years
• Employees who had voluntarily left the organization within the last year

As mentioned above, each group had up to five questions specific to their role within the organization. For example, for all current employees with the organization less than 2 years, additional questions were asked around their experience as new employees and specifically what they believe they would have needed to be successful. Questions for this group were as follows:

• What is the one thing you wish you had been provided or had known during your first week on the job that would have helped you more easily get started in your role?
• What difficulties did you have in getting up to speed in your role?
• How long did it take you before you felt comfortable with your role and the associated responsibilities?
•  (< 1 month, 1 – 3 months, 4 – 6 months, 6 – 9 months, 10 – 12 months, > 12 months)
• How long did it take you to navigate around the company and understand the business units worked together?
• (< 1 month, 1 – 3 months, 4 – 6 months, 6 – 9 months, 10 – 12 months, > 12 months, still not there)
• If an onboarding program had been available when you started, what would you have liked to have seen as part of the program?
• The ability to meet others in the company
• A review of each of the business units and their objectives/goals
• How my role fits in to my department/business unit
• A mentor to help me
• Various training classes
• A review of my benefits, performance evaluation process, etc. (HR-related information)
• Other?

The purpose of the surveys was to determine a starting point for development. By understanding where the issues lay, the project team would be better able to determine needs and requirements for the various components that comprise the talent management program. In addition to online surveys, small group discussions were set up to capture further information or to follow up on data collected from the surveys.

Stay tuned for Part III:  Research and Analysis