WEST PALM BEACH, FL — July 9, 2013 — Corporate leaders who have created outstanding programs in global leadership development and strategic workforce planning were recognized recently when Best Practice Institute announced its 2013 Best Practice Awards.
BPI is a leadership development center which serves many of the world’s top corporations. The organization named 15 award winners in Global Talent Solutions and five in Workforce Planning and Analytics. Each winner is the senior talent management executive of his or her organization.
“The great thing about BPI’s Best Practice Awards is that these award winners have been singled out for honor by their peers in the corporate business world,” said Louis Carter, BPI founder and CEO. “There is no higher praise than when your counterparts at other companies recognize you for being the best at what you do.”
The 2013 BPI Best Practice Award winners (in no particular order) are:
Global Talent Solutions
– Leslie Joyce, Novelis
– Brian Bules and Natalie Woodford, GlaxoSmithKline
– Dan Coombes, Monsanto
– Shannon Banks, Microsoft
– Paul Reevs, Triumph Group
– Troy Hayes and Craig Mundy, Ingersoll Rand
– Brian Fishel and Scott Smith, Bank of America
– Tanya Clemons, Pfizer
– Sue Hale, Hilton Worldwide
– Christopher Henry and Michelle Ditondo, MGM Resorts International
– Roger Cude and Dave Adrian, Walmart
– Deb Tees, Lockheed Martin
– Donnell Green, BlackRock
– Michael Perman, Gap
– Ernesto Sanchez, PepsiCo
Workforce Planning and Analytics
– Juliette Trollope, National Grid
– Russell Klosk, Hewlett-Packard
– Michael Manning, Edison International
– KC Bradley, ConAgra Foods
– Ross Sparkman, Devon Energy
Keeping Up with Growth in Emerging Markets
Sue Hale, vice president of Leadership Development at Hilton Worldwide, is among the 15 Global Talent Solutions winners. Hale was recognized for Hilton’s exceptional programs for developing internal talent, especially their hotel General Managers.
Hilton has 4,000 hotels across 90 countries under 10 industry-leading brands, including Hilton Hotels and Resorts, Waldorf Astoria, Doubletree by Hilton and Hampton Hotels. The company has added more than one thousand hotels since 2007 and has nearly one thousand hotels in its pipeline.
“To effectively resource this growth, we need a strong pipeline of leadership talent in our hotel operations at all levels up to and including general manager,” Hale said. “Our general managers are one of the ‘differentiators’ that distinguish Hilton Worldwide from other hospitality companies.”
Asked what sets Hilton Worldwide’s leadership development programs apart from others, Hale answered, “We have a true commitment from our business leaders. Many of them have come up through the business, and they really see it as an important part of their job to develop the next generation of leaders.”
Preparing for ‘Retirement Deluge’
Michael Manning, senior manager of strategic workforce planning, human capital analytics and employee engagement at Edison International, is among BPI’s five Workforce Planning and Analytics winners. Edison International, which includes Southern California Edison, “keeps the lights on” for more than 14 million people.
Manning was honored for designing and launching an enterprise-wide workforce planning solution in the face of what HR Magazine has called a “retirement deluge” in the electric power industry. Up to 40% of workers in the industry are eligible for retirement this year, according to the magazine.
Edison lured Manning from Merck & Co. in 2010 with the mandate to develop a strategic workforce planning program, which launched in July 2011. Manning noticed immediately that the industry was going through a challenging period of transformational change with a need to invest in aging infrastructure, address the retirement risk of an aging workforce, and understand the workforce implications of new technologies.
In 2010, the company had 18,230 employees and $10 billion in operating revenue. By 2012, the workforce had been reduced by 9% to 16,515 employees, while operating revenue increased 19% to $11.9 billion.
“With the need to invest in aging infrastructure to maintain safe and reliable service, while controlling costs for our customers, it has become increasingly important to plan for our future workforce and to plan for it in a way that aligns the workforce strategy to business strategy,” Manning said.
What is Edison International doing any differently than other companies in workforce planning? Manning said the biggest difference may be that Edison is doing any workforce planning at all, citing statistics that only half of all large companies have a workforce planning strategy and only one third of them plan more than six months in advance.
Edison’s program puts a huge emphasis on capturing data from numerous sources and creating meticulous workforce metrics. In a significant departure from how many companies do their workforce planning, at Edison each business unit projects its own workforce needs.
“HR shouldn’t own workforce forecasting,” Manning said. “The businesses are the experts in their respective areas. They know what’s on the horizon for their businesses. This approach makes it their forecast. We are the facilitator.”
Selection Process
Best Practice Award recipients were nominated by BPI’s Senior Executive Board, composed of the top talent management executives of 20 of the world’s largest corporations, including Bank of America, Ingersoll Rand, Walmart and GlaxoSmithKline. Nominees were then presented to BPI’s 10,000 corporate and individual members for feedback before the winners were selected.
The Global Talent Solutions awards recognize programs that:
– Successfully addressed a clear need,
– Are based on diagnostic and assessment measures,
– Reflect and support the company’s business strategy, and
– Were developed with involvement of the company’s senior leadership.
The Workforce Planning and Analytics awards recognize programs that:
– Focus on capabilities and capacity, resulting in greater efficiencies,
– Create a shared language for workforce processes and metrics,
– Achieve full stakeholder engagement, including ownership by individual businesses,
– Are communicated effectively, and
– Reflect and support the company’s business strategy.
“The team is absolutely thrilled. They are the ones who truly make it all happen,” Hale said. “To be recognized for what we do by these world-class companies is a true compliment, and something of which we are very proud.”
Manning was also eager to share the credit, saying, “It’s not just me being recognized. There was a whole team of people who did this. I think it is really exciting.”
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ABOUT BEST PRACTICE INSTITUTE
BEST PRACTICE INSTITUTE is a leadership development center, think tank, peer network, research institute and online learning portal. Its focus areas span all aspects of global leadership development, workforce planning and talent management. BPI was named to Leadership Excellence magazine’s “Best in Leadership Development” 2012 ranking. Best Practice Institute has corporate and individual members in about two dozen countries on five continents, including executives and employees of the majority of the Fortune 500.
BPI services and activities include innovations in assessment and online distributed learning, cutting-edge business research, a faculty of hundreds of thought leaders and business leaders, a wealth of online knowledge including hundreds of webinars, and intimate, ongoing consultation provided to its premium membership. BPI’s website, www.bestpracticeinstitute.org, offers members a treasury of research, case studies and more than 300 interactive webinars led by BPI faculty members, which include world-famous thought leaders and Fortune 500 executives. Human resources training and accreditation (PHR, SPHR, GPHR) are available. BPI also offers www.Skillrater.com, a 360-degree assessment tool built on a social networking, cloud-based platform.
LOUIS CARTER: Since founding Best Practice Institute in 2001, Louis Carter has led the company to become one of the world’s top associations for leadership and human resource development, with more than 42,000 subscribers, receiving Leadership Excellence’s Best in Leadership Development Award and Training Industry’s Innovations in Leadership Development Watch List. Carter has written eleven books on best practices and organizational leadership, including the Best Practice series and the Change Champion’s Field Guide, published by John Wiley & Sons.
Carter became chairman of the Best Practice Institute Senior Executive Board in 2005 after Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, Bank of America, Corning, Saudi Aramco, Volvo, Boston Scientific and The Gap became founding corporate members. Carter is creator of www.Skillrater.com, the new 360-degree feedback tool based on a new social networking platform, and creator of the BPI Online Learning Portal on www.bestpracticeinstitute.org. He received his undergraduate degree from Connecticut College and Brown University with honors in political science and economics and his graduate degree in social/organizational psychology from Columbia University with honors.
FOR MORE INFORMATION or to schedule an interview, please contact Louis Carter: 800-718-4274; lou@bestpracticeinstitute.org.