Career Development for the Shoes of Tomorrow

By: Darrin RobertsRachel Clements

Kent WuCorinne Bradney

Mission

• One for One• With every pair you purchase, TOMS

will give a pair of new shoes to a child in need.

• Attract other companies to follow this mission.

• Shoe Drop • Invite employees’ family to

participate in sending shoes to children

• Experience different culture

Why Choose this topic?

• This company is too young to have a mature career development system in place for their employees.

• TOMS Shoes should consider beginning to grow its career development for its employees while it is still a young company.

History and Purpose

• In 2006, American traveler Blake Mycoskie found some poor children who had no shoes to protect their feet in Argentina.

•Using the purchasing power of individuals to benefit the greater good is the main purpose of the company

Methodology

Method of Finding Information• Google Search• Website searched

• Employee Blog• Corporate division searched

• Forbes.Com• Treehugger.com• Los Angeles Times• Contacted TOMS headquarters

• Called• E-mailed

Development

Findings

• Young Company started in 2006

• Flat organizational structure

• Employees under 30 years of age

• Age mean suggests employees open and flexible

• Mostly invest in “Agents of Change”

• Rapidly growing company

Conclusion

• Little to no career development in place for full time employees

• Development for interns in place: Good Start!

• Grow and shape young organizational structure

• Develop happy employees

Philosophical Foundations and Recommendations

Why are employees looking for career development opportunities?

• Changing skill requirements • Flattening organizations • The boomer bulge • Increased automation • Contingent workers• Shifting career expectations

Philosophical Foundations and Recommendations

Three steps to job enrichment:• Identify an organizational need or opportunity consistent with one's own career development interests• Prepare a plan to address the need by changing the nature of one's work• Start lobbying and building the necessary alliances for gaining support for one's ideas and new role in the organization

Philosophical Foundations and Recommendations

Organization’s response to Career Development

• Driven by business needs• Maintain a vision and philosophy of career development• Senior management support• Communicate and educate• Management involvement, • Employee ownership• Career development resources

 

Philosophical foundations and Recommendations

Benefits of Career Development

• Psychological success• Increased work satisfaction• Increased self-esteem• Increased commitment• Increased motivation

Philosophical Foundations and Recommendations

• Recommendations• Yearly strategic planning meeting• Communicate strategic plan and business

needs to employees• Implementation of period based assessments,

job training, and peer review• Objective and subjective goals and feedback• Development of an internal career services

– Track employee progress– Mentorship program– Facilitate continued education

Implementation and Recommendations

 Our consulting firm’s opinion is that it is the job of organization to provide the resources for career development, but left up to

the individual employee to take initiative and seek these resources. After our evaluation of your company, and our

recommendations, we would like to provide a detailed description of how they can be implemented into TOMS

current business strategy.

Implementation of Recommendations

• Mandatory assessments to ensure best fit for employee in company including:

• Strengths Assessment – upon hiring new employee

• JPEA – upon 3 years of employment

• Career Anchors – upon 10 years of employment

It is important to use these incremental assessments to adjust and redesign individual employees job description to maintain peak performance and greatest use of strengths for each employee, resulting in an increase of company productivity and decreasing costly employee turnover.

Implementation of Recommendations

Communication• Develop standard communication procedures to relay the needs between the Human Resources Department, employees, and managers. • Build on current Mass Communication to reach clients• Use social media to communicate the TOMS message

• Coordinate events• Provide advertisement for specific promotions• Customer feedback

• Provide mandatory career development and encourage furthered education• Quarterly offer training• Encourage further education and career development:• Tuition reimbursement• Reimbursement for Training or Conferences• Encourage employee coordination with companies outside of TOMS

Implementation of Recommendations

Internal Mentoring program• Human Resources

• Identify employees ability to connect

• Interns• Opportunity to meet as a group with Executive

• Employees• Weekly time investment by supervisor

• Supervisors• Bi-monthly time investment by Executive to nurture and develop supervisor

• Executives• Weekly team meetings within Executive Team to maintain accountability• Monthly meeting with mentor outside of company

Implementation of Recommendations

Performance reports and feedback• Employee Appreciation

• Annual Employee Appreciation Day• Employee of the Month• Employee successes advertised

• Yearly 360 degree Evaluation• Employee performance evaluation• Company-wide meetings

• Bi-yearly Productivity report• Identify productivity

• provide feedback• Identify Weaknesses

• Quarterly Productivity Report• Productivity report• Team meeting for coordination and communication

Implementation of Recommendations

Benefits of Implementation

• Decrease of employee turnover• Increase of skilled and valued employees• More creative input for organizational growth• Financial growth