Internal Career Opportunity Program

11 Jun 2021, Singapore: In one of my HR Blog article on Talent Management Program - A Holistic Approach, I listed out that "Part 5 (a) Internal Career Opportunity Program" should be one of the elements of a holistic talent management program.

Listed below are just some of the guideline to establish an internal career opportunity program: -

• Make it a standard operating procedure for your hiring manager (ask yourself as a HR Professional) to always ask "Is there currently anyone can take over the vacant or new created job position?  
• Review the job description and person specification – taking into consideration the selection criteria for internal employees the minimum qualification and relevant working experiences to be considered for the vacated or new created job position.
• There must have a short-listing process to short-list both internal and external candidate application.
• Exemption management: Some companies has special exemption process to enable an internal employee to had the upper-hand for example ...

Internal candidate: minimum requirements, an engineering or technical Diploma / Associate Degree with a minimum of 5 years working experiences and current studying an engineering degree program form a recognized university or higher learning institution.

External candidate: minimum requirements, an engineering degree in mechanical with minimum 2 - 3 years working experience in aerospace industry.

Above are just an example of the requirements when I mean "exemption management". Some fair employment advocates may cited it is an unfair practices and debate on the ground of double standard. As a HR professional, I am in favor of the above practice if it does not infringe any employment law in a country. 

• Lastly, for internal candidate to received the employment appointment - usually their application will be scrutinized by a panel of the (i) hiring manager, (ii) the hiring manager's superior, (iii) the site HR lead, and (iv) a representative of the country / regional HR leadership.

I believe the above pointers will help your organization develop a framework for an internal career opportunity program.

You may visit my YouTube channel playlist "e-HRM" to watch some of the HR videos I edited.

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Introduction to Talent Management Program - A Holistic Approach.

06 Jun 2021, Singapore: The original request was to for me to write a short article about Talent Management or Individual Development Plan (IDP) and edit a video on it. I think this article will be one of the longest I have written, here it goes .... I am going to sharing my version of Talent Management Program from "A Holistic Approach".

If you don't like to read and prefer to view it thru video format - please click the hyperlink: Introduction to Talent Management Program - a Holistic Approach R1

A holistic Talent Management consist of the following: - 

• Part 1: Workforce Planning
• Part 2: Positive Employee Experience Program (separated into targeting new hirer and existing employees)
• Part 3: Learning & Development Program (Targeting new and existing Employees)
• Part 4 (a): Talent Development Program (Targeting Potential Talent)
• Part 4 (b): Job Rotation Program (Targeted at Potential Talent)
• Part 5 (a): Internal Career Opportunity Program (Targeted at existing employees)
• Part 5 (b): Succession Planning (Targeting critical position and manage the crisis of a sudden vacated key position)
• Part 6: Workforce Transformation (It is more of a project base rather than a functioning department) 

Part 1: Workforce Planning

Workforce Planning by itself, is a process of … 

• Analyze the current workforce
• Determine future workforce needs
• Identify gaps
• Implement solutions 

(Source: CIPD 2019 Workforce Planning) 

I will not spend time explaining Workforce Planning as I have 3 parts article on workforce planning - please click the hyperlink to visit the workforce planning pages in my HR Blog.

• Part #1 – Introduction to Workforce Planning 2.0: Part 1 - Workforce Planning 2.0
• Part #2 – Introduction to Workforce Planning 2.0: Part 2 - Workforce Planning 2.0
• Part #3 – Introduction to Workforce Planning 2.0: Part 3 - Workforce Planning 2.0

Part 2: Positive Employee Experience (EX) Program

What is Positive Employee EX Model / Framework? 

• An employee experience framework is essentially a structure or strategy to improve EX.
• Employee experience borrows heavily from the field of customer experience (CX) management. 
• Because of that basis, EX framework creation generally uses design thinking strategies to optimize the company's work environment, culture, HR services and events. Just as marketers have worked to understand the total customer experience at touchpoints across the entire customer journey, business and HR leaders can create employee journey maps, which are graphical representations of an employee's organizational path, possibly aligned with the employee lifecycle.
• Employee journey maps typically focus on "moments that matter," the junctures that most profoundly affect the experience. They can also focus on a specific type of employee persona or a particular part of the journey. These maps are key to building a successful framework.

For details on Positive Employees Experience, please visit the following website: -

• Three elements of a positive employee experience:  https://www.hcamag.com/asia/specialisation/employee-engagement/three-elements-of-a-positive-employee-experience/238093
• Employee Experience: https://searchhrsoftware.techtarget.com/definition/employee-experience

Part 3: Learning & Development (L&D) Program

The L&D program is open to all levels of employees in the organization – minimally an organization will support employees development on compliance and regulations knowledge of various government agencies rules and standards.

Some organization has embedded their Education Assistance Program (EAP) as part of their L&D program. What is EAP? Why is it important for an employee long term development program? 

• EAP focus on providing an employee to undergo future academic qualification e.g., an employee with a diploma will be partially or fully sponsored to further his / her study into an engineering degree or master.
• EAP allow an employee to have career progression e.g., upon obtaining his engineering degree – as a senior technician, he will be able to pursuit an engineer position within his current organization. 

Part 4 (a): Talent Development Program

My definition for “Part 3: Talent Development Program” is an in-house experiential learning that provide a group of identified “talent” to undergo modules that were designed to expose them on the various knowledge and skills that is essential to an organizational.

For more detail on various organizations Leadership & Rotation Program, please visit the following Columbia University website: https://www.careereducation.columbia.edu/resources/leadership-development-rotational-programs

Part 4 (b): Job Rotation Program 

It is a structured program for an organization to have a periodical (e.g., every 3 year) to deploy their talent to another location or rotate the talent to another department.

This is done in a structured manner and the objective is to develop and expose the talent to all functional areas that is identified as part of their individual development program (IDP).

Job rotation program participants are usually the graduates of “Part 3 (a): Talent Development Program”. These programs compliments each other.

Part 5 (a): Internal Career Opportunity Program 

This internal career opportunity program by itself is no an actual program but a policy and process  to govern how existing employee can have career opportunity within the organization.

Usually, an employee must have completed a continuous 12 - 18 months on the current job before they are eligible to submit their internal job application for a vacant or newly created position.  

Part 5 (b): Succession Planning

The title itself already implement is no an actual program but a mapping of the organization leadership talent inventory.

Usually, most succession planning only cover 5% to 10% of the organization populations. It normally cover key leadership positions, and personnel. Sometimes the plan include critical functions of the organization e.g., finance, quality assurance, engineering, and etc.

Part 6: Workforce Transformation (WT)

Workforce Transformation (WT) is gaining popularity for organization that need to transform their current business process or going to diversity the organization.

Most WT in nature are set-up as a long term project / taskforce that study the various “future” options and make recommendations to the organization leadership on what programs to set-up to enable the transformation to happen.

Usually taskforce members are multi functions represented, has a balance of strategic and operational expertise, and an external expert might be engaged.

Conclusion: The Model

Enclosed is my Talent Management - a Holistic Approach model. It is just my own thoughts and some of talent management gurus may disagreed. I am coming from a HR practitioner perspective. People will ask me why in my model the Rotation Program is not part of the Talent Development Program - I have seen the pitfall of having rotation being part of the talent development program. It will be a separate article on-demand.

  

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Skills Required By a Change / Transformation Agent

04 Jun 2021, Singapore: Another topic given to me by one of friends, "What are the skills required to be a Change (or Transformation) Agent?"

I recalled my first time exposed to Change Management program was back in 1998 while I was working with Hong Leong Group Malaysia (a large Malaysia conglomerate) and they engage ODI (Organizational Dynamic Inc.) - a US consulting firm. I recalled the Group Managing Director who was the facilitator mentioned (i) change readiness survey, and (ii) organizational alignment survey. As a young Head of  Department for Human Resource, I asked the manager next to me, "What are these tools and why are we in this session?" It was the starting point of how I got into the human side of change management works but I was the only HR professional in the session. It was also the year that I enroll for the company sponsored MBA program and wrote my thesis on "Human Side of Change Management". 

With that, I would like to you to view the following video I edited to share my thoughts of what are the skills a Change or Transformation Agent should "ideally" have but not limited to those listed by me.

Click the hyperlink: Skills Required by a Change / Transformation Agent

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