A global and extremely well-known organization headquartered in Europe with operations in India realized the need to prepare the entire organization towards a structured career management process. HR Footprints Management Services team was invited to conceptualize and design an intervention to address the need.
What was the need?
The organization operates in the high-tech engineering industry. To address the scientific requirements of high complexity, they hire the cream of talent from the best of the institutes. As an employer, the client organization enjoys a great reputation and consequently hiring from institutes of excellence has been easy. 
The challenge however is to provide career advancement and engagement. They realized that an excellent brand name and better than market salary are good to attract talent; but to engage them, the organization needs to do more on career management!
Who was the sponsor?
Interestingly, the business leader, who is the technical head of operations in India, felt the need. He could sense from his interactions across the organization that this is one latent need, which needs to be addressed. The initiative gained greater strength because it was seen as a business need by the business head and not taken up as another HR initiative.
What was the approach of HR Footprints?
As always, HR Footprints Management Services team made efforts to understand precisely the need of the client organization. Meeting with the Business leader and the HR team besides reviewing some of the internal survey results helped in defining the need precisely.
Self-awareness was identified as the main driver for career management. Towards this, the HR Footprints team designed a personalized introspective workshop mainly aimed at talented team members. However, it was also important to engage the managers in the process of career management. Therefore, as a first step, HR Footprints team designed an interactive communication workshop with the managers. It was then followed up with a series of introspective sessions for the entire organization.
Towards the end of the initiative, HR Footprints team trained managers in some more nuances of managing career conversations.
What was the result?
The results of the entire initiative so far have been very encouraging. Some of the positives are:
1. Team members realized that they needed to own up their careers and they need to take initiative within the organization to advance their careers.
2. Specific formats and frameworks designed by the HR Footprints team provided structure to the career management and are made available as a resource within the organization.
3. Managers felt responsible to support and guide the team members.
4. Career management gained greater visibility within the organization.
Overall, great momentum was created by enhancing the ownership among the team members and readiness among the managers.
What next?
-> Internal HR team needs to maintain the momentum by facilitating the career conversations and setting up a system of executing the outcomes of such conversations.
-> Managers need to be appreciated and respected for their contribution towards such important talent management initiative.
-> Business leader needs to sustain the interest and continue to sponsor the same!
-> Finally, a few visible steps by the organization towards career advancement initiative taken by the team members will go a long way in creating confidence and credibility!
