Winners of the i4cp 2020 Next Practice Awards Announced in Advance of Annual Conference

The recipients of the i4cp 2020 Next Practice Awards have been announced ahead of this year’s annual conference. Booz Allen Hamilton, Ford Motor Company, Grant Thornton LLP, and Lockheed Martin are recognized for leading-edge people practices that have positively impacted their businesses.

The winners will be honored on stage at the i4cp 2020 Next Practices Now Conference (March 23 - 26) at the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess in Arizona.

The award-winning submissions centered on initiatives to close talent and skill gaps and renovate culture:

• Booz Allen Hamilton—Facing unique talent shortages—skilled data scientists who also have the necessary clearance to work on national security projects—the global firm developed Tech Excellence, a multi-week, cohort-based program to upskill newly hired talent to meet role requirements. Since 2018, Booz Allen has scaled Tech Excellence to five additional high-demand areas and has seen 100% client placement rates and above-average employee retention numbers.
• Ford Motor Company—While launching culture change initiatives throughout the company, Ford, like so many companies, struggled to understand whether its initiatives were actually having impact and how. The company questioned traditional ways of gathering employee sentiment—such as surveying—and explored new data sources to create an innovative and comprehensive employee sentiment strategy. Ford now has a machine learning engine in place to interpret text input across languages, dashboards to monitor results in real time, and new communication approaches to reach more employees faster.
• Grant Thornton LLP—The audit, tax, and advisory firm launched a new, three-year leadership academy to build a ready pipeline for its next generation of partners in 2016, relying on technology to build and engage future high-potential leaders beyond in-person events and to build culture and highly collaborative networks amongst its next generation of partners. Senior managers who have successfully completed the academy demonstrate greater capability and cultural leadership, cross collaboration has increased, and a greater percentage of women are receiving higher rankings on their readiness.
• Lockheed Martin—The global aerospace and defense company has benefited from consistent growth in recent years, but with that growth has come increased demand for early career top talent, primarily in the STEM fields.
  To differentiate from other employers, Lockheed designed a large scale, all-day hiring event that can travel from university to university, complete with simulators, VR displays, and models of LM products. Since the event’s creation, college hiring has skyrocketed by 61% and intern hiring by 48%.

The discovery of next practices—human capital strategies that are highly correlated with market performance, but that few companies are employing—is a primary focus of i4cp’s research. To that end, i4cp looks to its network of member organizations to uncover world-class examples of next practices in action. The Next Practice Awards showcase the design, implementation, and measurement of innovative people practices that effectively address business challenges.

Detailed case studies of the four winning next practices will be published at the end of March, and the leaders of these initiatives will also be interviewed on stage at the i4cp 2020 Next Practices Now Conference. Limited space remains – sign up today to hear from the winners and other forward-looking thought leaders.