Future plans

Natalie Lee

Director, People and Culture, Vestas Technology R&D

At Vestas Technology R&D Singapore, every employee has a development plan in their annual appraisal. We vet every plan and if it is not up to expectations in terms of clarity and quality, it has to be redefined till the outcome is reached. It is also tracked and reviewed during our mid-year review. All the development plans are consolidated to become our company’s total training plan and a budget is also set to ensure we mean what we say in being serious about employees’ development for both the short and long term. It is mainly focused on internal/external training, knowledge transfer/sharing, on the job training or short stints in various sites to close performance gaps.

The other longer term development plan between 3 - 5 years is top down, whereby head of departments identify the high performers, critical positions and people of the company and have another set of plans for them for career growth, succession planning and the building of technical competencies. This could involve overseas assignments, job rotations, stretch assignments, mentoring, etc.

Isabelle Claus Teixeira

Director of Talent & Organisation Development, Applied Materials SEA

In my opinion, it is a question of perspective and horizon. The key skill for any great leader is to be able to inspire a shared vision – a clear and articulated picture of what the strategy is and derive what the talent will be.

Create as clear as possible a vision of that talent and develop multi-year plans as the way to bridge the gaps you have identified. Use the annual process to check if you are on the right way or if something needs to be changed. It is like building a house – you start by creating the full picture of your house and then lay the bricks one by one and regularly check if the walls are straight and the paint dry.

Therefore it is key to start by taking quality time to define and envision what your organisation will be in the strategy, painting a picture of the processes, the structure, the culture and the talent you will need as competitive differentiators. Then decide on your roadmap of actions and use the annual processes to enable this roadmap and check your progress.

Peggy Leong

VP, Group HR, ECS Holdings

Most organisations have an overall strategic plan and people strategy forms part of this plan. Development plans for people are based on the competency framework of the organisation.

The old school of thought for development plans is to develop an individual vertically with structured classroom training. Development plans should take into consideration an individual’s exposure to different meetings with different participants, job rotation where an employee is given the opportunity to work in different jobs either within the same department or outside the department/country, and job enrichment as ways of developing employees, including coaching and mentoring.

Development plans for people is a continuous process and can be short, mid or long term depending on the individual’s potential. The annual performance management and development dialogue between manager and employee provides a platform to review the development plan in order to align with the organisation’s business goals. When there is a change to the strategic plan and different competencies are required to achieve the business goals, the development plan may change to achieve those competencies.