Tom Watlington
COO, Biosite Diagnostics
San Diego, California

“We realized that we just weren’t reaching the goals our team set out to attain… We were struggling to improve our sales and marketing management team’s skills and sales ability. Brainard Strategy recommended a series of assessments and interviews for our key talent. Once through the assessment he advised our executive team on ways to “map” our talent relative to our needs. We began to revise our hiring process as a means to find similar types of “smart” people whom we were always able to attract, but now we were better able to assess for “fit” with real data. We also were able to rightly move some key people into key roles and each and every person in our marketing and sales organization were given developmental feedback by our managers in a way that enabled open and “real” conversations about contribution and value. We then took our team through sales training and personal development planning activities based on the collective assessment information. Because of Brainard Strategy, our team is back on track.”

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Talent Acquisition & Talent Management

Developing a comprehensive Talent Acquisition strategy requires intimate knowledge of external and internal competitive practices, labor market intelligence, and objective assessment activities to help us determine CAN, WILL, and FIT… At Brainard Strategy we have partnered with corporate clients to reduce opportunity costs and time to fill, increase cost efficiencies in the hiring process and we have enhance selection process to more tightly define success criteria and therefore successful hires.

We first seek to identify the best pools from which talent will likely be found, we then sure up the “brand promise and the reality” of the work experience for your organization, then we seek to implement recruiting, selection, and on-boarding programs to best align with your business strategy and market position. This strategic process and systems approach delivers measure-able results for your most important investment, your talent! If what Jim Collins says is true, and it is… Then we will support you getting the “Who” right, and they will help your company get the “What” right…

Question: Once you get the “who”, how then do you keep them?

Answer:   TALENT MANAGEMENT

Talent management means exactly that: Brainard Strategy has partnered with hundreds of organizations around the assessment and development of talent. Whether at the individual, team, or organizational level we have designed custom approaches to fit the organization. Talent Management usually encompasses on-boarding, leadership development, performance management and/or succession planning, as well as downsizing and re-structuring for success.

Success Story

Challenge: A global Professional Services Firm had acquired three firms that needed to be merged together. This resulted in a need to create a career development roadmap to help attract and retain the best and brightest. Due to the amount of new employees coming from three different organizations there was a need to define and link individual performance to rewards and create a standard title structure.

Action: A profile was created to define performance and technical competencies required for success. Based on these competencies, a total rewards and performance management process was development and implemented. Lastly, the mapping of individuals to standard titles was developed

Result: The impact of this project on the business was immediate. Ninety-nine percent of the employee population formally set individual goals based on the strategic objectives of the business. Additionally, there was a significant increase in interim performance feedback. The long term outcome was the new understanding employees gained about their standing in the company and clarity on how to move up in the company. This clarity was supported by the standardized process for reward distribution that was implemented.

Success Story

Challenge: A highly competitive and rapidly growing Regional Telecommunications Firm was struggling with not having enough qualified managers. In addition, the organization had recently changed their business strategy. These changes were negatively impacting performance.

Action: Due to the organization’s needs, Brainard Strategy first identified the successful managerial competencies that were in alignment with the new business strategy. Over 300 managers participated in an assessment center based on the managerial competencies identified. A composite report of the assessment results was delivered to the organization and individual assessment feedback was given to each participant. Two important steps were taken based on the assessment feedback. First, individual development plans were created. Second, a 3-day tailored leadership training and business strategy program was designed and delivered to all managers.

Result: Based on this project, there was a 10% increase in leadership satisfaction scores that were shown to be correlated with store performance. Additionally, there was an increase in availability of competent managers to fill positions in new store openings. Since the project was aligned with the business strategy, the largest impact was the ability to incorporate the managerial competencies into the selection and performance management processes.

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