Female Talent Acceleration Program
The Opportunity
A national leader in the approach to diversity, equity and inclusion, this large Australian bank recognised the need to provide additional support to female talent in their Technology & Operations division.
Over the first 2 years the program cemented its reputation as a vital development initiative for female talent across Technology & Operations.
The remit for the 3rd year of the program was to broaden the scope of the program and elevate its impact to a full 12-month integrated program, provide more structured support for program sponsors to work with participants over the course of the program and provide participants with additional skillsets to enhance their potential through development of ‘differentiating capabilities’.
The Solution
With committed support from program sponsors and two alumni groups advocating the benefits, the program design was elevated to include:
Program launch
3 x 60-minute briefing sessions for Program Sponsors and development of Sponsor Discussion Guides to support sponsors to work with their sponsees throughout the duration of the program
1-day leadership offsite to build self-awareness and impact around their leadership brand and aspiration
1-day strategic challenge (action learning) workshop on complex problem solving frameworks applied to real business challenges
3 x 60-minute briefing sessions for Strategic Challenge Coaches and development of Strategic Challenge Discussion Guides to provide a framework for coaches to interact with their Strategic Challenge teams over the 2-month strategic challenge period
Development of 3 x Peer Coaching Discussion Guides to support Strategic Challenge teams to work together on the challenges
A Pitching Skills webinar aimed at providing participants with the techniques and frameworks to present their strategic challenge solutions to the Executive
½-day Capstone event where participants pitched their strategic challenge solutions to the Executive
The year 3 learning journey below provides an illustration of the participant experience.
The Impact
Overall feedback from the client was very positive with regards the level of insight and thoughtfulness of the work.
Engagement with people leaders and employees contributed to rich feedback and iteration, built buy-in and increased visibility of the business case for DEI.
The organisation is now integrating some of the report findings into their leadership development strategy.