Getting creative
That ‘stretching to fit’ created a gap between
the graduates’ experience; the ‘real’ world in which they were operating; and the knowledge, skills and experiences the
programme was trying to give them.
Connected, concrete and challenging
Victoria Buckenham, Talent & Succession Lead, Emma Derbyshire, Development Specialist at RWE npower, and Jim Harvey, MD of HR Consultants, The Message Business, redesigned the RWE npower Graduate programme in 2013. The work delivered great results for the business and stakeholders were delighted to be recognised with the AGR Business Led Development Award in 2013.
B Victoria Buckenham Jim Harvey
uckenham, Derbyshire and Harvey wanted to continue to build a world class programme,
to ensure that RWE npower’s emerging talent was as ready as it could be to help the business develop a real competitive advantage in a very challenging market.
For the redesign, we asked ourselves a simple question - What makes for a world-class graduate programme? The answer? Most effective Graduate programmes share three common key features. They are ‘connected, concrete, and challenging’. (See Figure 1)
Now, in 2015, npower had made great strides in making the programme much more connected, and more challenging, but their research told them that they had to make the content of the programme more concrete and practical if they wanted to generate the results the business really needed.
Innovating World Class Content The programme content - online modules, face to face workshops and support materials, was too generic. It did not speak the language of the graduates, or of the business.
18 Graduate Recruiter |
www.agr.org.uk
It was a typical, externally sourced curriculum, in areas such as presentation, networking, strategic planning, negotiation etc. However, it was a set of tools and techniques that had to be ‘stretched to fit’ the experience, knowledge and understanding of the graduates.
That ‘stretching to fit’ created a gap between the graduates’ experience; the ‘real’ world in which they were operating; and the knowledge, skills and experiences the programme was trying to give them. It made the programmes less effective than we needed them to be.
The Challenge to Innovate Every development practitioner knows that they should involve the learner in the Learning Needs Analysis, at some level, and of course, the team had done that. But how many actually hand over the content design to the participants themselves?
The team decided to ask the graduates to ‘write the text book’ for themselves, to create their own development blueprint for the first two years of their careers. Buckenham says,
We wanted the Grads, to articulate what skills they needed most to develop in their earliest years at work to deliver maximum results for themselves, the business and the stakeholders.
Innovation Step one – Structure: agree the concept, form and timescales for delivery The team got 12 volunteers from the three active graduate cohorts from 2012, 2013, and 2014, and entered into a planned innovation process with them. The launch meeting in January 2015 was designed to help the graduates deliver the book that the graduate team wanted. They felt that the graduates needed that help in the first meeting, in Harvey’s words,
‘The graduates thanked us for our help and then set about improving the goals, the structure and outline that we had proposed to them. The new scope was so much better than a) our initial proposal, and b) our expectations of them, that we were inspired and persuaded to step back a little. The graduates had earned their right to own much more of the book’s concept and the content. The rest of the meeting could then focus on delivery.’
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32