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Next Practices at Campbell's, Sears & Amway

How is the Campbell Soup Company taking leadership and talent development to the next level?
What has Sears done to revamp its talent review process?
And how is Amway creating a culture of learning?

Three case studies that provide insight into these questions are now available; while the full case studies are exclusive to i4cp member companies, summaries of each are available below. Campbell's, Sears, and Amway were each selected as semi-finalists for i4cp's 2016 Next Practice Award.

Campbell's 'Breakthrough Leadership'

Campbell Soup Company, a global food company with annual sales of more than $8 billion, created a "Greatness Agenda"—a strategic map that provides areas of focus, actions and commitments to guide the journey to becoming a company on the forefront of determining the future of real food.

One of the bold moves within the Greatness Agenda, is Campbell's declaration to become a high-performance organization through:

  1. Attracting and retaining a workforce that reflects the consumer base Campbell wants to serve today and tomorrow.
  2. Transforming the culture by placing the consumer first, driving decisions, and owning the results.

Breakthrough Leadership, Campbell’s cornerstone talent development program created for high-performing employees, is focused on empowering the workforce and leveraging employees as an ultimate strategic advantage in the pursuit of Campbell's Purpose. This customized Campbell program was developed in 2013 and has been highly successful in positively impacting employee growth, visibility, retention, connections and relationships between managers and their participating employees.

Read more about Campbell’s ‘Breakthrough Leadership’ (i4cp members only).

Sears' Revamped Talent Review Process

Having just demolished annual performance ratings and still on a soapbox about the research-backed benefits of this new approach, the last thing Sears Holding Company wanted to do was to continue to conduct a talent review process that was eerily similar to traditional performance review and perhaps more difficult to understand on a practical level.

In addition, the new performance solution was designed primarily around associates as a process that put tools directly in their hands to enable them to improve their performance without requiring sole reliance on their direct managers. Though managers had access to new reports to help support associate performance, it was felt that it was also important to provide tools designed exclusively for managers of others and their supporting HR business partners to facilitate strategic talent management and planning.

In order to create something easier to understand and execute, the Talent Management team returned to the basics by reconsidering the purpose of conducting talent reviews at SHC. At its core, their talent philosophy hinged on the importance of differentiating talent to guide more strategic actions that would maximize our return on investment in human capital. More plainly, they wanted it to be clear that talent reviews were an opportunity to step back as a team and discuss how their people are doing and what actions can be taken to support their continued growth and enhanced performance to ensure the right level, mix, and supply of talent to help SHC achieve its organizational goals.

Read more about Sears' Revamped Talent Review Process (i4cp members only).

How Amway Created a Culture of Learning

Amway is a global leader in direct selling, employing more than 19,000 people in 100+ countries and territories. The company offered its employees traditional learning, but it was limited, costly, and not aligned with the needs of employees. Amway's employees wanted immediate access to content, rather than having to wait for the next scheduled training.  They also wanted learning “just in time” and in smaller “bites” that were relevant to their success on the job. HR couldn't meet the demands for developing technical expertise, but knew that Amway had experts in the organization; however there was no solution to leverage them for the development of others. 

Amway needed to meet people where they were and enable employees and managers to “own” their development. In short: the organization knew they needed to drive a transformational change in learning.

The solution is Amway University—a social, collaborative, learning environment that gives every employee the ability to access learning anytime, from anywhere in the world. Employees can begin discussions to inspire others or learn more about a topic, post questions they want global colleagues to respond to, share videos, create and explore content from around the world, form or join groups around areas of interest, and more.

Since the launch, 94% of employees globally have visited Amway University. Employees can access the University anytime, anywhere. Communities are being created. Employees are creating content, leveraging the expertise of their global colleagues through forums and discussions, and driving their own development through both traditional and social learning.

Read more about How Amway Created a Culture of Learning (i4cp members only).

Read here