Digby Morgan’s second OD Thought Leadership lunch took place recently and was attended by a mixture of past and present clients and colleagues sharing experience gained at organisations including Motorola, Cargill, Sony Ericsson, and Alliance Boots. Attendees demonstrated a diverse range of backgrounds and included various Heads of People Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development and OD.

Following a short welcome and introduction from Digby Morgan’s CEO, John Maxted, Sue Chew, Director OD at EDF Energy, opened the discussion based on ‘The generation game - but not as you know it’. This was a summary of some of the people development challenges faced by EDF Energy – how do you attract and retain different generations across a disparate group of companies with different business models, employees, cultures and expectations.

Sue outlined the aspirations that have challenged the traditional ‘job for life’ culture that used to be top of the agenda for the ‘baby boomer’ generation with much of the mid to senior management grades now being taken up by ‘Generation X’ who see their careers as a series of challenges with more of a convoluted career path. This is then mixed with the ‘work hard/play hard’ expectations of ‘Generation Y’ who expect variety, a good work/life balance and a culture in the parent company that focuses more on networks and length of service. Additional challenges are posed by the breadth of workforce from service engineers to energy traders through to call centre operatives.

Sue’s introduction prompted a wide-ranging discussion that raised the following questions:

• In a ‘jobs for life’ culture, how can you attract and retain high performers from the X and Y generations whilst not disenfranchising your existing workforce?
• How do you persuade business units to release high performing staff to central talent pipelines?
• Should all high-potential employees spend time ‘on the shop floor’ to get a better understanding of the business they work in?
• How important are company CSR programmes in attracting “Generation Y” and do they have any effect on retention?
• Can western global organisations drive talent agendas in the face of the growth economies of India, China and Brazil?
• What are the best ways of managing talent in a culture of flexible hours and home-based working?

The discussion left plenty of room for future debate but some successful interventions that had had successful outputs included:

• Instilling transparency across the organisation to ensure opportunities are available across the business for everyone
• Use employee engagement as a measure for performance management and succession planning for managers
• Make high potential talent programmes available to everyone and ensure that they are refreshed regularly – including removing non-performers
• Introduce ‘seed core’ programmes to attract candidates from other graduate development schemes that may not meet their personal needs
• Spend time educating middle and senior managers on how they should be identifying and recognising the different developmental and aspirational needs of their teams

Digby Morgan will be hosting further OD Thought Leadership lunches soon so please contact Iain McAdam at iainmcadam@digby-morgan.com if you would be interested in coming along.

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