L&D CASE STUDIES
One year ago we started thinking about a new leadership development program for eMAG. The needs of our leaders changed and became more diverse as the company grew. We started with a deep research phase. We talked to HR Business Partners and people managers in the organization to get insights. We took our time to analyze what we have discovered and built a long-term strategy we knew was so bold it was still a bit out of reach. But we were ready to take the first steps when COVID hit.
We took some time to figure out what was the best pathway, and we launched the program in mid-June. I’m a people manager in eMAG, and I can honestly say I love it. Mostly because it allows me to handpick whatever resources I need, without being bound to go through the whole experience just because the L&D team says so. Since I felt it was the kind of program we should talk about more, I brought a piece of it to Offbeat. I had a talk with Bianca Guta, Organizational Development Director in eMAG about what happened so far and what’s next.
Let’s dive in!
We designed Leadership Habits, our leadership development program, at the intersection of multiple events or needs:
This program aims to help managers develop habits that will guide them into building performant, engaged and autonomous teams.
We decided to shift the focus from developing competencies to developing small but meaningful habits. Our purpose was to speak in our client’s tongue and make it seem simple, accessible, and impactful.
Even though we did not scale our resources compared to last year’s initiatives, our purpose was to reach and support every manager. While also making them hungry for learning and curious about their development.
Based on our research, we identified four categories of behaviors that will help managers achieve their potential. We incorporated these findings into our plan, and now they represent the program’s modules:
Each module contains different initiatives designed to appeal to any taste in learning.
In essence, every people manager’s mission is to create engagement, productivity, and retention over time.
Having a strong analytical background, I believe in data-informed decisions. If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it.
Independent of the program, it’s been four years since we started measuring specific KPIs that can also help us assess this program’s ROI. As a goal, we’re trying to look at two types of measurements: perception measurements and reality measurements. For example, we started looking at data about employee engagement for each manager (we call it manager index), employee retention, and exit reasons. I think these are long-term KPIs, and we will be able to tell you after one year or two if we were successful.
If we talk mainly about this program, a big, hairy, audacious goal for us was that every one of ±500 managers should be active in the first six months. If we look at the participation rate in the first four months, we are at 92%.
We also analyze the NPS score for each initiative (internal/external), and we pivot by taking into consideration our clients’ feedback. For example, looking at this feedback, we pivoted along the way. We changed some subjects we approached, the type of learning experience, trainers, or started developing new initiatives.
We have a monthly newsletter addressed to the people managers in the organization. Your newsletter (Offbeat) is really cool and serves as a source of inspiration.
With curiosity and better than we expected.
People made time for learning and self-care, and we wouldn’t bet on that at the beginning. We are constantly receiving informal feedback that they want more. And we hope to start co-creating the experiences based on their needs.
The most common challenges were:
The biggest challenge is helping people choose the right learning experience for them.
When it comes to immediate plans, we are building a leadership community around the program. Using it, we plan to connect the participants by facilitating discussions about hand-picked case-studies on topics of interest.
In the long term, we are thinking about ways to personalize the learning experience and providing the right tools or the proper setup for self-assessment and progress review.
Good luck with your own leadership development program!
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