Employee Development
Employees often ask "how can I make the most of my talent and realise my full potential?", whilst at CEMEX we often ask "how can we get the best from our people?" In reality spotting real talent is not always easy, neither is developing those who have real potential.
What is known is that successful organisations pay attention to developing its employees and identifying their talent – it is all about developing a sustainable competitive advantage in a world that is increasingly competitive and in which it is tough to be successful. For this, we need to be able to identify people who can lead CEMEX in the future.
Employee development solutions and career planning processes are critical to the success of the employee development and talent management process.
It is CEMEX’s training and development strategy to promote and drive a learning culture in all of its business units, which sustains the continuous development of employees, in order to maximise performance and provide for succession and planned expansion. Investment in employee development and training is a vital step towards increasing standards of service to our customers and towards improving the effectiveness of the way in which we manage our business.
CEMEX is committed to the continuous development and training of its employees. This means that by investing in development and training and by encouraging personal development we can ensure that employees are prepared for any future challenge. CEMEX expects line managers to take responsibility for the proper and effective management of their teams. To support this we aim to ensure that all our managers are trained and coached in the management of teams, giving them a range of skills to enable them to apply a variety of motivational techniques at a local level. In particular, we provide coaching in feedback techniques to ensure that key messages are delivered to individual employees as recognition for good performance, or to aid improvement where required.
This strategy is reinforced by our CEMEX Training & Development policies which have been developed to establish the criteria and general guidelines for in-house and external training of all of our employees. This includes identification of training needs; budgeting; arranging training and development activities; delivery and evaluation of training and maintaining training records.
In CEMEX, our Talent Review, Succession Management and Individual Develop Plan (IDP) processes, along with the training and development activities, are aimed not only at increasing the performance of our employees, but also at motivating them, by providing opportunities and challenges which will retain them in the business. As employees learn and develop new skills both inside and outside the classroom, a development programme needs to support both traditional and non-traditional learning. To support less formal learning, a blend of the development opportunities should be used to assist with an employee’s career progression.
Research shows that 70% of an employee’s learning happens through experiences on the job.
Learning from the varied experiences in any employee’s current role and mastering their current skill sets is a key route to enhancing their capabilities.
As the business continues to evolve and change, so does an employee’s role and responsibilities.
This situation provides employees with a chance to learn from new experiences and opportunities and strengthen/develop existing/new skills and competencies.
CEMEX offers opportunities to develop an employee’s knowledge and experience by doing a secondment in another part of the CEMEX business.
There may be the opportunity to get involved in projects within the wider operations team while undertaking their current role or exclusively being part of the project team for a defined period of time, based on an employee’s capability and aspiration to take on challenging new tasks and role availability.
Coaching is often required post training, to build on the basic skills, knowledge and improve overall performance.
A coach can help with technical knowledge, asking challenging questions, probing knowledge, understanding and identifying ways to improve personal performance.
A mentor is an inspiring (usually more senior) person who can provide the guidance required to develop an employee’s career and to also help to provide an opportunity to network across CEMEX, provide advice on a wide range of issues and act as a role model.
Given the changing nature of our jobs there may be times when on-the-job training needs to be supplemented by off-the-job training.
It has been identified that the individual has skill or knowledge gaps, therefore training is required.
These training methods need to be targeted and linked to both the current job requirements and development plan.
CEMEX invest in training for our employees each year and also provide bespoke training opportunities to address the needs of our employees and our talent pipeline as part of the annual Performance Appraisal (PA) and Talent Review processes.
Development needs and development activities should be challenging and stretching and clearly linked to the individual’s career aspirations.
They should provide focus on technical and behavioural skills development.
The IDP will be key to ensuring that an individual’s development planning is underway and on target.
Investment in employee development and training is a vital step towards increasing standards of service to our customers and towards improving the effectiveness of the way in which we manage our business.
By investing in development and training, we encourage personal development and ensure that employees are prepared for any future challenge.
At CEMEX we aim to sponsor the further education and development of high potential employees when it is relevant to the department's objectives and future succession planning’s requirements, also when it is not possible to meet the individual's development needs using in-house development and training resources.
CEMEX invest over £100,000 each year on employee further education sponsorship, including MBAs, Degrees such as BScs Environmental Management, BSc Engineering, CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accounting) and CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development).
In line with the UK Training Policy and the CEMEX UK Further Education Sponsorship Policy, it is CEMEX’s strategy to drive a learning culture in all its business units, which sustains the continuous development of employees, in order to maximise performance and provide for succession and planned expansion.