Context:
This retailer was undergoing a huge amount of change and required a complete overhaul of its Talent Development strategy. Despite there being corporate offices and retail stores, there was an office-centric culture. Employees didn’t have any formal goals, the outdated Learning Management System was only accessible by office-based employees and store managers, there was no succession planning in place and the Talent Development team were not viewed as adding significant value to their business stakeholders.
Approach:
My approach centered around understanding the corporate objectives and the perspectives of key stakeholders across offices and retail stores. Analysis of what was learned enabled a strategic plan to be created, which was then prioritised according to business needs and organisation readiness.
The Talent Development team was restructured to align more to the new strategy and a cross-functional team was formed which led on procurement for essential technology.
Outcomes:
Change occurred at pace with new Learning Experience and Performance Management platforms being procured and implemented in four months. This enabled every individual to create goals that were aligned to overall strategic priorities and were discussed in quarterly check-ins by the employee and their manager. Learning became more social and peer-to-peer in nature, creating stronger links between the international teams and enabled learning to be accessed by any employee, in any country, at any time.
A succession process was created which identified successors and their key development requirements for the top 50 roles in the organisation and a mentoring programme was launched to support female leaders.
This phase of the transformation programme established the credibility and capability of the Talent Development team to drive subsequent change.