At GTECH Corp., about 750 workers – the leadership tier of the staff – have formal career development plans. Their skills and credentials are in a database, and every year they work with their bosses to determine what they need to do to keep growing toward their goals.
At Washington Trust Co., all senior managers have been asked to identify potential successors within the bank, figure out the skills, experience and education they’ll need, and support their professional growth so they’re ready when the time comes.
This, many human resource experts say, is the wave of the future: Call it talent development, career ladders, succession planning – the bottom line is, to ensure a strong, stable staffing outlook, especially at the top, employers are increasingly looking in-house.
A recent survey by Right Management Consultants, a subsidiary of Manpower Inc., showed 43 percent of 168 companies polled were training and coaching high-potential employees so they could rise to senior management, and 39 percent were promoting such executives.
Only 29 percent, by contrast, were hiring executives away from their competitors.
“More companies prefer to build their own future leaders from the ground up,” said Chuck Mollor, regional vice president for Right Management in Boston. “They are assessing their high-potential employees to identify which ones have the qualities they desire in senior-level managers, and then providing them with the necessary training.”
The forces driving this trend were a topic of discussion at a Northeast Human Resources Association conference last month in Providence: At the top, baby boomers’ impending retirement will mean numerous vacancies and, potentially, big gaps in institutional memory and knowledge.
“Looking at work force demographics, there will be fewer workers, and the competition to recruit new talent is pretty high,” said Eric Gasbarro, vice president for human resources at Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Rhode Island. “I think it’s going to be important for organizations, because of the cost and the competition out there, to develop their talent from within.”
At Bryant University, a team was charged with assessing staff-wide training and development needs, and that has led to such things as assigning “learning teams” from across the organization to work on projects together, developing new skills and contacts, said Linda S. Lulli, associate vice president for human resources.
“One of our strategic goals is building organizational capability,” Lulli said. “That means building for the future and making sure we have the talent that we need to be successful.”
Next on Bryant’s plans is a database of its employees’ skills and credentials. Lulli’s office has set up a Web-based HR data system from Ultimate Software that allows workers to log in and review their benefits, update their addresses, etc. All but six of Bryant’s 660 employees signed up, she said. This year, they’ll be encouraged to develop their files further by expanding on Bryant’s records of their education, skills, languages, etc.
GTECH is already using such a database, said John Pothin, vice president of human resources. It includes their education, credentials and certifications, work history, job assignments within GTECH, and their aspirations for the future.
“Some people want to be the CEO of the company, and some people are quite happy in the job they’re in,” Pothin said. “We try to focus on people who have potential and aspirations.”
Each year, GTECH picks a small group of promising employees from across its worldwide staff – from the United States, to Brazil, to Europe – and assigns them to a project together for a year to develop them as global leaders. At the year’s end, they deliver their work to senior management. “It’s been a good learning vehicle, and it keeps it relevant to the work that they’re doing in the company,” Pothin said.
At Washington Trust, Kristen DiSanto, vice president for human resources, said the bank promotes staff development at all levels. At the top, it has a new succession planning program, and it works particularly hard to recognize and develop “stars” within the organization. But it also provides “career paths” at the branch level, allowing credit analysts to grow into portfolio managers, then commercial lenders, for example.
“Some of our best talent comes from inside the company,” she said.
Even blue-collar workplaces are increasingly taking this approach. Dick Keenan, human resources director at Gem Plumbing & Heating Co. and an instructor in Bryant’s human resource management program, said the company has an extensive staff development program, including an in-house school to train apprentices and to further veterans’ education.
Gem pays for journeymen to get the training to become masters – all workers pay for is their books – and it offers in-house classes once a week, with expert guest speakers. It’s all part of the company’s efforts to retain staff in a “very competitive” environment.
“We encourage education and training, period,” Keenan said, “because the more knowledgeable our staff is, the higher the quality of their work, and the more efficient we are.”
