Career Sponsorship

A few weeks ago I was invited to a Diversity Seminar arranged by Ernst and Young and organised by the delightful Stephanie Jeffs.  One of the panellists, Simon Walker of Talent Smoothie, struck me as a particularly wise man and we agreed to meet a few days later.

Amongst other things, Simon and his team have been doing a lot of research related to Generation Y and during our conversation an idea started to form in my head.  Your initial response may be “that could never work” but then significant change often requires the thinking of the unthinkable!

Let’s start with the challenge. 

On the one hand, organisations want to hang on to their most talented people and retain the value that they have invested in their development.  Generation Y however are a highly flexible generation and see no problem in developing a CV that involves numerous different companies, so long as they have been able to achieve demonstrable success through interesting and engaging projects and experiences.

Equally we know from research that approximately 70% a person’s development through their career is based on their experiences at work, rather than training courses etc. Experiences such as managing a complex project, rebuilding a dysfunctional team, opening a new market, closing a business etc. are incredibly developmental, particularly when considering the key competencies of leadership.

For many years now organisations have sponsored students through university, as a way to avoid having to compete for the best talent after they have graduated, so what about career sponsorship?

How would it work?

Imagine that you have recruited a young person who you have identified as future high potential talent, they have worked with you for a few years and they are looking for a new challenge.

Within your business no such challenge exists at the moment and you know that what they need at the moment is, for example, to work in a foreign country.

Rather than simply let them leave, you help them to find an appropriate job, possibly with a business within your supply chain or client base.

When they take up the new job, you continue to pay them a small retainer for which they commit to come back for a couple of days each year and share with you and maybe some of your younger up and coming talent, what they have learnt about business, management and leadership, from their new working environment.

You retain a mentoring relationship with them so that even if they leave that new job and move on to yet another business, the relationship continues until such time as you have an opportunity to re-integrate them into your own business again.

Obviously you could not retain this relationship if they went to work for a direct competitor.  Equally, any new employer would need to be informed of the relationship and the individual would need to be contractually bound to maintain only one such sponsorship arrangement.

What do you get from it?

First and foremost you build outstanding loyalty with someone that you have identified as a high potential candidate for your business.

You can develop the individual potentially faster than you would within your own business by giving them the freedom to explore their own potential and have the flexibility that Generation Y seem to value more highly than previous generations.

For a relatively low development cost, the individual not only increases their commercial acumen and leadership skills but they share that wisdom with your other talent as they learn it.

You would build a reputation as an employer of choice for talented individuals.

What are the pitfalls?

Oh I am sure that there are many to be found and those who fear change will find many more than I could even imagine BUT remember if you can when people started to do this with under-graduates, there were many who said that it could never work.

As I said at the beginning, I was only trying to think the unthinkable because something will need to change if we are to retain the loyalty of this and successive generations and what worked for previous generations may not be the ideal solution in the future.

You may currently spend significant sums helping people go through MBA programmes, and they still leave when they have gained the badge.  This may not be the eventual solution and equally it may not work for all businesses but CEOs all over the world are telling me that something has to change if they are to create sustainable and inspired organisations!