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What are some leading companies doing now to deal with the looming crisis of having the right types of employees to deliver on their business strategies?
The case study below illustrates why traditional approaches to workforce planning, employment branding, and recruiting no longer work in today's environment. Learn how a more productive and rewarding career progression, promotion, and retention strategy was deployed for optimum performance and talent management.
Case Study, Managing Engineers and Professionals
"At International Semiconductors and Software, each Division is divided into two job tracks. One is technical: employees choosing this career path take on roles and responsibilities that require technical competency. Those folks tend to be hard-core techies who find excitement and challenge in the engineering nodes, nooks, and crannies of their disciplines but aren't interested in supervising people. The other track is managerial: persons who choose this path desire a career that, in addition to developing their technology chops, gives them the opportunity to manage others.
"We allow people to choose where they want to go," says Carl Moon, Vice President of Engineering. "If they want to be a leader of people, we focus their career on management and people attributes rather than design and programming skills." Carl adds, "Since Moravec and Associates released us from the prison of job descriptions, 90 percent of my staffers are pursuing the technical track; the other 10 percent are future managers - leading technical professionals."
"There's Cynthia Monroe – ask her to describe her experiences with the dual track."
"I joined the staff five years ago as a lead technical staffer," Cynthia says. "However, I especially enjoy working on project teams and with people. During one of my performance reviews I told Carl that I wanted an assignment that would draw on my technical competencies and require me to lead and manage people.
"A few months later an assignment came up," Cynthia continues. "During that first year I led a team of five engineers and two technicians. Three years later I'm managing 30 full-time engineers and 15 sub-contractors as well as mentoring two college hires. The dual paths gave me a shot at showing what I could do. This opportunity to move up and through the glass ceiling couldn't have happened if I'd remained with my previous employer, since they use job descriptions."
"Have you thought of introducing this career path stream to lead scientists and sustain the research organization?" Cynthia concludes.
(The names of the persons, company and certain situations are disguised due to a confidentiality agreement. The actual client approved this case study)