At Symposium Events Talent Management and Leadership Development Summit 2019, HRreview spoke to Aimee Badcock, head of HR, personal health and sleep and respiratory care (SRC) at Philips UKI.
HRreview: What benefits have you seen in your own company’s approach to learning and development and talent management?
Ms Badcock: My belief is that you should take a very structured approach to talent management so, for example, at Philips, we do two Talent Review meetings per year where we don’t only just focus on succession planning and career scenarios but also development and learning outcomes. This is a very transparent process that all of our employees and our senior leadership are involved in and ensures employees are aware that we take their learning, their development, their growth and their career planning very seriously. This is critical for me in terms of building a learning culture.
HRreview: Can you tell us a bit more about your learning strategy at Philips?
Ms Badcock: In terms of learning outcomes, we operate a 70/20/10 learning model so most of the experience and learning people do is on the job. I’m very, very passionate about learning culture and this can be done by formal learning programs but also by things like encouraging feedback, self-reflection, projects or even working in teams you wouldn’t usually work in.
HRreview: How do you motivate people who are not selected for talent management and learning and development schemes?
Ms Badcock: My philosophy is that everyone is talent and that’s something we also believe very heavily in at Philips. Most programs should be open to all although I understand that that you’re always going to have targeted interventions. Things like mentoring schemes, access to e-learning or actually providing employees with experience in other parts of the business they wouldn’t normally get access to are really beneficial ways to develop people quickly and at all levels.
HRreview: How are you preparing your future workforce?
Ms Badcock: The organisation should really be focused on building their workforce of the future and one way that can be really successful is using the apprenticeship levy to build skills, to re-skill or to upskill in areas that organisations couldn’t afford to buy from the market. For example, at Philips, something we’ve done is really invest in our data science and analytic capability through the apprenticeship levy and that has had fantastic rewards.
HRreview: How has data helped to support your strategy?
Ms Badcock: For me, data is absolutely critical and ensures you get buy in from senior leadership very, very quickly. Something that I found very successful is applying LEAN methodology to problem solving. So, for example, if your employee survey results show declining engagement, applying a problem solving approach enables you to put in interventions to increase it in the future and it’s something everyone can be brought into.
HRreview: How do you ensure that diversity is one of the cornerstones of your talent management and learning and development strategy?
Ms Badcock: One of my favourite quotes is ‘diversity is being invited to the party, inclusion is being invited to dance’. That is something I’m very passionate about and that’s something which is very topical within businesses. There’s lots of things you can do to increase diversity and inclusion within your business, not only on gender, race, age but also diversity of thought and skills. Something that I’ve found very successful in my role is giving employees access to projects in different areas of the business that they wouldn’t usually gain experience in. This really helps them to diversify their thoughts and gain experiences in areas they wouldn’t have previously. Another thing that is very effective in ensuring that on interview panels, you have both male and female interviewers to ensure you get that balance. Also, unconscious bias training is absolutely critical to employ now in every area of your organisation to ensure you have role models in every bit of your business.
HRreview: How important is it to get the balance between talent management and learning and development?
Ms Badcock: In my view, they are both interlinked. A fantastic dialogue means that the focus will be on talent management and learning outcomes and dialogue is the most important part of talent management.
Monica Sharma is an English Literature graduate from the University of Warwick. As Editor for HRreview, her particular interests in HR include issues concerning diversity, employment law and wellbeing in the workplace. Alongside this, she has written for student publications in both England and Canada. Monica has also presented her academic work concerning the relationship between legal systems, sexual harassment and racism at a university conference at the University of Western Ontario, Canada.
