“ We make our development program relevant both to our employees and to where we are going as a business,” says DuPont’s Doris Steimel. ”We don’t just tick boxes, we think it through.”
If you work for DuPont, you know what it takes for the company to succeed.
You can read all about it — actually, you’re expected to read all about it — printed in the company’s breakdown of the core competencies that it must find and grow in its people, and in the functional competencies that it must cultivate in each of its divisions, from admin to marketing.
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For every DuPont employee, in fact, their year starts with a meeting with their manager to set out a development plan. That plan has the onerous-sounding purpose of identifying goals and objectives for that employee for that year, with the idea that the employee’s progress can then be charted through the year and assessed at the end.
For farmers, this might seem a corporate make-work project, a big-brother exercise that keeps the boss looking over your shoulder.
On the inside, though, it looks different. For DuPont employees, from veteran execs to the newest hires, the company’s robust development process makes their work more challenging and fulfilling, and it makes the company’s culture more transparent and open.
In short, says the company’s Canadian human resources lead Doris Steimel, it’s a strategy designed to make DuPont a better place to work at the same time that it creates a better workforce for the company.
The development process is built around a series of formal, individual meetings, Steimel says, because the schedule ensures that it happens. Every employee gets an initial meeting to set objectives, a formal mid-year review to check progress and provide feedback, and then a year-end review.
The year starts, Steimel says, by asking, Where am I now? What are my goals? How do I get there? Then, the employee and manager work toward the year-end question: Did I achieve my goals?
The process also works, says Steimel, because it’s collaborative. “Some of it involves training, sometimes of it involves mentorship,” Steimel says. Most of it, however, is focused on work opportunities, which can often be the most valuable learning and growth experiences, arranging for employees to work on new teams, for instance, or to take on new assignments.
Some employees get a ramped up development process, especially if they’ve been identified for leadership or it it’s expected they’ll quickly grow through a succession of positions. The process is also matched with corporate forecasts. If the company expects to bring on a new product in three years, as an example, it will use the system to get the right people into the right positions so they’ve got a full staff on hand for the launch.
By building a process around training and growth, Steimel says, “it’s not that complex.” Employees not only have clear objectives, but they also understand the “line of sight,” Steimel says, that connects those objectives to the company’s business goals.
It lifts morale and improves performance, Steimel says. “If we can make work challenging and developmental, that’s where we want to be.”
