Tesco Ireland: Building leadership capability

Company Description:
Tesco is Ireland’s leading food retailer serving over 1 million customers weekly from 107 stores throughout Ireland and employing over 13,000 people. We are committed to delivering low prices, value, choice, range and service. In addition, we are also proud supporters of the Irish food industry and last year alone Tesco bought €65 million worth of Irish food and drink exports, ranking Tesco ahead of France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands and the USA.

Business Issue:
The ability to attract and retain great staff is the biggest challenge for any business. It is essential that people feel they have an opportunity to develop and move on within a business. We felt the need to implement a development programme to retain and grow talent within the organisation in response to a rapidly growing business.

Solution Applied:
• Following annual reviews, staff have career discussions with line managers to ascertain their career plan and their readiness to move on. Talent planning meetings are held with line managers to effectively plan resource requirements both current and future and identify people that have the potential to move to a bigger job.
• Once agreed, selected candidates go onto a tailored programme, ‘Options’, to equip them with the skills they need to succeed in a bigger role. The `Options Programme’ is a combination of training to build leadership capability as well as operating and general skills. One element involves `planned experience’ where the individual works on a project to develop his/her capability within our leadership framework. A process of continuous improvement is managed through assessments and feedback. The Programme is suited to any area of the business and is supported by well-researched and high quality training material.

Company Benefits:
According to Sam Shepherd, Format Personnel Manager, “Talent planning and Options ensures we have a trained pool of internal talent to draw from when roles become available. It also gives our employees a sense of recognition and a clearly defined career path”.

Stakeholder Benefits:
According to an Options candidate, “Working alongside talented and driven people provides me with great support and encouragement from sponsors and colleagues. I really see opportunities and a progressive future for me within the business”.

Challenges:
• A tendency to promote staff early off the `Options Programme’ to fulfil our resource needs.
• Candidates need to take ownership for their development and drive the programme.

Tip:
• Design and build a leadership programme framework that can be customised based on the target audience.
• Monitor progress at every stage of the programme.

Departments Involved:
Personnel and all departments across the business.

Solution Champion:
Sam Shepherd, Format Personnel Manager, sam.shepherd@tesco.ie

Year
2008