Connections

Issue 2 • Volume 3 • April 10

PEOPLE

What's New in Talent Management for 2010?
By Karen Tracy, vice president of talent management

Oldcastle Material Group's (OMG) Talent Management team focuses on identifying, developing and leveraging talent across the organization. Below are development highlights from our training and human resources directors of what "Managers of Managers" and "Managers of Others" can expect in 2010.

Training on Performance Management Basics
(Teresa Phillips, training director)
Managers help others do the work that ultimately helps the organization to be successful through guiding and directing the performance of employees. To accomplish this, managers must ensure employee performance aligns with the direction and strategy of the organization. To assist them in achieving this alignment of activities, OMG has partnered with AchieveGlobal, a world-class training company, to design and deliver Performance Management Basics training to employees who are classified as "Managers of Managers" and "Managers of Others."

The OMG Performance Management Basics course teaches skills to help managers prepare to conduct different types of performance-related discussions. The curriculum is comprised of four courses: Planning for Performance Discussions, Clarifying Performance Expectations, Conducting Performance Reviews and Correcting Performance Expectations.

Each module of the curriculum has been customized with OMG-specific examples and exercises. The program, which launches in June, is designed to be delivered as the managers actually complete the Performance Management activity in SuccessFactors. The goal is to get the appropriate learning content to the right learner at the right time. Managers will attend the Conducting Performance Reviews course between December 2010 and February 2011 when they need assistance completing their team reviews.

Each division is currently working with the Talent Management team to design an implementation strategy that poses the least disruption to work cycles and delivers critical training to their management level employees.

Preparing for Future Recruitment
(Jennifer Moore, human resources director)
The success of an organization is directly related to the quality of its employees. Although Oldcastle is not actively hiring during these difficult economic times, we are implementing tools that will position us to hire successfully when the market improves.

Interview Architect*, a structured, behavior-based interview tool that allows hiring managers to select specific competencies to focus on in the interview, will be introduced this year. Behavior-based interviews that are linked to core competencies have been shown to increase selection success rate, as well as positively affect organizational performance and retention. Interview Architect will serve as a common selection tool throughout Oldcastle. The Materials Group will conduct "Train-the-Trainer" sessions on Interview Architect in May and June for the division HR staff, and HR staff will then train their respective hiring managers as needed throughout 2010.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact your division HR representative.

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