Why the time for talent development is now.

In times of crisis and survival for businesses and corporates, leadership and talent development programs often are put on the back-burner. But then, if anything, is the time that we should be focusing on developing internal talent. Some employees have more time on their hands with which they could learn something new; others might be looking to upskill in this rapidly evolving work environment. MOOC providers such as Coursera and Udemy have seen a huge spike in demand. People are looking to learn new things and develop themselves, so why should that be any different for in-house programs?

Last year we caught up with Tony Pusic, previously VP EMEA operations at Merck about the importance of developing talent within the organization. Over the years Bolster has worked closely with Tony to run several of their ‘Talent Summits’. This is what he had to say;

Why hold a Talent Summit?

“With the Talent Summit we were looking at creating a true talent factory in Europe” Tony tells us. They identified key talent from across diverse locations and helped accelerate their career paths within MSD. Alongside the primary benefit of upskilling key people, it also helped to grow talent within MSD rather than recruiting externally, and improved the retention of top talent. As Tony noted; “We were able to bring some 20 to 30 people from different and diverse locations in Europe and Africa. We really created something special, something innovative and experiential; something that was very different than the talent’s day to day work.”

Due to the hard work and investment from MSD, the Talent Summit was a great success. But Tony recalls the responsibility he felt at setting up the summit; “You get a group of people together for two or three days it’s a huge responsibility … my biggest fear was that I would have 20-30 people all in one place and I would be wasting their time.”