Pfizer first approached us as the Country Manager was interested
in pursuing personal development planning for many of his office
based staff, which initially included all of the marketing department,
and was extended to include the sales staff, training department
and senior people in finance. Having recently taken over in the
country, he was concerned that the marketing department in particular
was not performing at a high level, there was little leadership
or teamwork, and many of the staff did not appear to be natural
marketers. At that time he was considering removing some of the
weaker members of staff. His aim was to produce a company of world
class employees, which meant that every member of staff would be
able to be transferred to any Pfizer operation in the world and
be able to perform well.
Description
We first of all asked each employee to carry out a Thomas DiSC
personality profile. This was important to help employees understand
themselves and others in their team, as well as help them to put
together goals and learning appropriate for them. We also matched
their profiles against a desired profile for a Product Manager.
Very few of them actually came close to matching the desired profile,
but each of them had strengths in their own way. We helped each
person put together a personal development plan, considering not
only development for their job but tailoring the plan to their long
term personal goals. Every two months we would return to take new
employees onto the programme, mentor those already started and in
addition we carried out workshops for them in Leadership, Presentation
Skills and Image as part of their overall development.
Results
We
devised new ways for the marketing department to work with its existing
people to play to everyone’s strengths. This was mainly by
way of reassigning products to different types of people, depending
on the stage of the product in its life cycle and its differing
requirements in terms of marketing. Also a buddy system was introduced,
with two people with completely different strengths working together
to produce strength in all aspects of marketing. The overall result
of the restructuring and the personal development planning was that
employees took responsibility for their learning and started thinking
out of the box as to how they could improve and develop themselves
in ways other than just collecting certificates from training courses.
They were genuinely excited about learning and the morale and atmosphere
in the office became palpably upbeat. They achieved more at work
even though they were going home earlier and spending more time
with their families. Teamwork improved and employees started helping
each other in their learning. No one lost their job and best of
all, the bottom line became even better.
We
devised new ways for the marketing department to work with its existing
people to play to everyone’s strengths. This was mainly by
way of reassigning products to different types of people, depending
on the stage of the product in its life cycle and its differing
requirements in terms of marketing. Also a buddy system was introduced,
with two people with completely different strengths working together
to produce strength in all aspects of marketing. The overall result
of the restructuring and the personal development planning was that
employees took responsibility for their learning and started thinking
out of the box as to how they could improve and develop themselves
in ways other than just collecting certificates from training courses.
They were genuinely excited about learning and the morale and atmosphere
in the office became palpably upbeat. They achieved more at work
even though they were going home earlier and spending more time
with their families. Teamwork improved and employees started helping
each other in their learning. No one lost their job and best of
all, the bottom line became even better.