New Babcock MBA puts staff in the driving seat
By Hillary Cannon - Posted on 13 June 2013Hillary Cannon, Group Marketing and Brand Manager at Babcock Group highlights the benefits of developing a bespoke MBA as a major investment in staff…
Investing in talent management has never been more important. With the economy still facing uncertain times, companies rely on their existing workforce to innovate and drive forward growth. To help create the perfect conditions to this, good business leaders will want to incentivise people to build their career with and achieve new levels of professional development which will propel them to the top of their chosen industry.
Babcock is no exception – as a group we have enjoyed huge expansion in recent years. In 2005 our annual revenues were £760million but this had risen to over £3billion this year. A series of acquisitions brought a number of companies into the organisation each with its own culture and managerial approach. Our task was to make all those different cultures gel together to maintain a wider Babcock brand.
This week Babcock launched a new MBA aimed at senior leaders which marks a significant extension to our existing partnership with Strathclyde Business School. The new MBA is aimed at candidates with the identified leadership potential and ambition to progress into more senior roles to help drive forward the business in the coming decade and help to maintain our momentum.
We have enjoyed a longstanding relationship with Strathclyde – more than 850 Babcock employees have benefited in the last five years from a £2 million investment in executive education. Our latest development – the Babcock MBA – has been developed in close collaboration with academics to provide a programme which offers practical solutions to our day-to-day issues.
As a company which delivers complex and critical support to a range of customers in defence and civil markets, we need to be sure that people from across the Group have access to this new programme and we will be inviting a broad range of people to take part in the three year part-time programme.
We appreciate that the MBA will not be relevant for all staff but we have a clear idea of the type of candidate we expect to benefit. Existing high performers with potential to go further within their current business units who can demonstrate extensive management experience and exceptional ability will be encouraged to take their career to the next level.
We believe that Babcock has a responsibility to develop our people to ensure that we have the strongest and most effective leaders to manage our business in the future. Our longstanding relationship with Strathclyde has allowed us to develop the Babcock MBA programme, which is key component of our development plans.
The key factor in making this programme relevant is collaboration – the business school understand what we want and are delivering content which will help our staff do their jobs better and develop their career to become great leaders rather than just good managers.
Does your company invest in staff training or executive education? If not are the reasons cost related or do you not see the benefits? Let us know your thoughts on the issue in the comments section below…
