Maturing technical ladder eco-system:

Situation

An organization with its focus on wireless telecommunications has technology as a core element of its overall brand. However, over the past few years the technology brand had shed some of its weight. For scaling from its current position to the targeted several-fold size it was imperative that the organization strengthens its technology brand. And aligning technical talent pool to the organizational goals was a critical first step.

Challenge

To restore the faith in the technical career path, just updating some documents and publishing on the intranet was clearly not going to be enough. Actions and consistent messaging was required on all fronts: structure, processes and cultural enablers.

Actions

We partnered with the corporate HR. Refined the technical competency framework to a simple and understandable form. Conducted focus group discussions with engineers in all the locations either face-to-face or through tele-conference calls. We started participating in the processes like promotion review and see the how the competency framework is used. The exposure led automatically to career counseling. This helped engineers clarify their doubts regarding their career path.

Results

Slowly but surely the engineers started getting convinced that the organization indeed values senior technical specialists. They also started seeing when contribution is in line with organizational goals and when it is not. This improved the alignment of the technical talent pool.