Organizations not only need to be staffed to meet the business challenges of today, but also need to prepare for the human capital and leadership challenges of tomorrow. A well developed succession planning process is an important component in successfully meeting these challenges.
Comprehensive succession planning efforts are comprised of the following steps:
Getting your employees focused on a set of common goals – and ensuring that employees work together effectively in pursuit of these goals — is perhaps the biggest challenge faced by all organizations.
While the exact format and structure of a teambuilding workshop depends on the issues being addressed and the size of the work group that is participating, common examples of teambuilding activities include the following:
In many cases, there are additional (usually preparatory) steps that also accompany teambuilding activities – for example, organizational surveys may be administered to highlight important issues impacting the team, or one-on-one interviews with team members may be conducted to summarize key topics prior to the actual group teambuilding meeting.
PDP can be counted on to partner with your organization through each step of the teambuilding process, including the determination of what specific teambuilding activities are most appropriate for your situation.
Successful organizations never rest on their laurels or accomplishments – instead, constant improvement and innovation is the norm.
It is important that this focus on constant improvement and innovation not only target technology and production-related issues. Instead, the workforce of the organization – particularly the managerial and leadership cadre – also has to be an area where constant improvement and innovation is the norm.
Each organization needs to be asking the following questions: Are our leaders and managers continually innovating and improving? In addition, are they regularly updating their skills, their knowledge, their abilities – and their perspective? PDP helps companies of all sizes ensure that their managers and leaders are enhancing their skills – and are innovating and growing.
Mentoring programs involve pairing a more junior-level employee with a more senior-level employee for the purposes of professional and personal growth. In well-designed programs, both the mentor and the mentee experience this type of growth.
Mentoring programs are an invaluable tool for building bench strength within the organization, and for increasing the capabilities of every individual in the workforce. In addition to creating a more skilled workforce, having a mentoring program can greatly help with employee retention issues – many employees (particularly so-called “Generation X and Generation Y” employees) need to work in an environment that provides challenge and development opportunities, and mentoring programs can help meet this need.
As the pace of today’s business environment continues to accelerate, successful organizations realize that they can no longer wait for needed mentoring and coaching to occur naturally — with today’s fast-paced environments, this “natural” or informal mentoring does not occur with any regularity. In addition, having a more formalized mentoring process allows the organization to shape the content and curricula of the mentoring program, helping to ensure that organizationally-relevant skills and competencies are developed as part of the process.
Most mentoring programs are at least one year in duration, with a formalized kick-off meeting, quarterly group follow-up meetings, and ongoing mentor/ mentee meetings to implement the mentee’s development plan and evaluate progress. Those participating as mentees generally set goals in categories such as the following:
The setting of goals in each of the above categories results in a well-rounded development plan for each program participant.
While the format and content of a mentoring program needs to be customized to capture the business outcomes most important to the organization, most mentoring programs include the following steps:
PDP can provide assistance with all aspects of mentoring program design, and can help ensure that your mentoring efforts are a success.
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