Creating Winning Careers

In 2012, the Consumer Healthcare division of global pharmaceuticals and healthcare giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) established a programme called ‘My Winning Career’. It was part of an HR strategy designed to give employees greater knowledge and insight into the range of career options open to them in a matrix organisation spanning multiple job and geographic markets. The division had already established a sophisticated website detailing roles and required competencies, complete with links to a suite of e-learning and self-reflection tools. But Oral Health, one of four main global consumer product categories in the Consumer Healthcare division, found that people just weren’t taking advantage of it. And its employee engagement surveys showed that scores in the areas relating specifically to careers and development were not improving. “We felt we needed to do a better job in helping people consider how to develop their careers and in providing support for them to do that,” says James Hallatt, Global Head, Oral Health Category. “We had all sorts of tools and techniques and models and initiatives; what we needed was someone or something to bring those alive for people.” James turned to Helen Hambleton, a consultant and coach in leadership and organisational development, and head of consultancy People Untapped. She created a similar programme for two separate cohorts of people – 70 in total – within Oral Health, including the category leadership team and their direct reports, the R&D leadership team, the supply chain leadership team and the global design team. To prepare for the programme, delegates identified where they’d got to in their careers, and what worked and didn’t work in their current job. They did a values-based self-reflection exercise, a ‘career anchors’ exercise (based on Edgar Schein’s model) and they completed the Margerison-McCann Team Management Profile Questionnaire. The purpose, explains Helen, was to give them information and insights about who they were, what was important to them, what they loved and hated doing, and the implications of all this for their future career choices. The remainder of the programme consisted of four half-day workshops covering, in sequence: developing self-awareness (based on their pre-work); consolidating feedback (from, for example, their line manager, in order to understand their strengths, development needs, reputation and perceptions of potential); future career mapping (based on research into career options); and development planning. The workshops took place at monthly intervals, giving delegates time to consolidate what they had learnt, and to think about, research and discuss their options and opportunities with colleagues, bosses, their family and others. Participants also received a one-to-one coaching session. “The first workshop, which focused on helping people develop awareness of how their preferences play out at work, was really important,” says Helen. “We spent at least half the session on the Team Management Profile, going through people’s Profiles with them and getting them to look at the amount of time they spent doing the things they liked compared to the time they spent doing things they didn’t like. Once we’d assessed their current role and mapped it onto their ‘work preference distribution’ we used peer-to-peer coaching – guided conversations of about 20 minutes each way – to explore the implications.” Based on such insights, Helen got delegates in both the first and second workshops to identify ‘career choice factors’ – that is, criteria their careers had to meet for them to feel successful in the future. The overall point of the programme was to get people to think differently about their careers. As Helen puts it: “My goal was to move them away from the ‘I need to do this job next’ mentality to ‘who am I, what makes me tick, what do I enjoy and am good at, and what’s important for my future career?’” The programme has triggered some job moves – mostly within GSK. Helen did a personal career diagnostic with all delegates at the beginning of the programme and then again three months after it ended. The results were very positive. In terms of career direction, favourability rose from 61% to 81%, personal and career development rose from 52% to 74%, support for careers and development rose from 42% to 61%. Other engagement factors also rose – from 69% to 73%. “I always say to people: ‘Your career is your career and it’s up to you how you make it happen – but we will support you’,” says James Hallatt. “It is in GSK’s interests to have people who are fully engaged with their career development. I believe the net benefit of the programme Helen delivered for us is that it is helping people to take responsibility for thinking through and acting on how best they should manage their careers and make the most of the opportunities available to them. That’s good for them and it’s good for the company.”