Career Development

For several of our clients, we have implemented processes, tools, and training to empower employees to take ownership of their professional development. Our Self Development Cycle is a process that starts with reflection on future aspirations, past experiences, and feedback. We provide guiding questions, sometimes in the form of job aids or worksheets and other times in the form of online surveys. Then we teach employees how to turn those insights into a set of goals and a plan of action. We also teach them how to leverage their network to create a personal board of directors, how to access expertise, and how to get the most learning out of any experience.

A national specialty sales training department for a large biopharmaceutical company was challenged by its stakeholders to develop a structured onboarding process that improved consistency and time-to-proficiency, while leveraging an online curriculum and peer mentoring.  Prestera FX was asked to develop the mentoring framework, onboarding materials for new hires and their peer mentors, as well as training for those peer mentors. We established a mentoring skills framework by benchmarking key success factors for mentors, then used that model as the basis for the onboarding materials and training.  The process, tools, and best practices were implemented through an elearning module and in-person workshop.

We helped a large insurance company implement a mentoring circles program globally. Through the program, peers from different management levels come together in groups of 8-10 to form groups that meet regularly in person or virtually to discuss career development and leadership development topics of their choosing.  Though the groups are chaired by senior leaders, each circle’s participants act as peer mentors, helping each other learn, develop, and achieve shared goals.  Our team designed the training materials to support the formation and kickoff of these circles and provided tools to support the process.

Several pharmaceutical clients have asked us to help them turn sales representatives into field trainers. Our programs can help sales managers identify reps with high potential to be strong field trainers, using our Mentor Readiness Survey. Those selected go through online and classroom training to help them learn the skills needed to deliver training, mentor peers, support new hire onboarding, coach struggling colleagues. The training is often complemented with field trainer guides that provide structured activities and tools for trainers to use with their colleagues.

A global chemical manufacturer intended to build a corporate university that organized and mapped training content to a variety of job-specific capabilities. We conducted interviews and focus groups with chemists, engineers, sales professionals, and their managers in order to develop capability frameworks for various job families. These frameworks gave insight into the key tasks and activities associated with each position, how much relative time was spent on each, which were considered most important to the organization’s success, what skills were required to be successful, and which were the most difficult to master. We inventoried and evaluated existing courses, identified gaps in the library relative to the key skills, and organized the library by capability and mapped them to skills-based curricula.

We tailored our Three Kingdoms Program to a professional services leadership team to help them initiate conversations with their employees around professional development. The program included a process and tools for conducting a team assessment, identifying and prioritizing development needs, and creating a team-based development plan. We also trained managers on how to conduct the actual conversations with their employees, using demonstrations and role play activities. As managers started engaging their employees, we monitored their progress and coached them until they were comfortable with the process. Employee morale and engagement improved.