The "Grow Your Own" Approach to Team Development

Isn't it depressing when the organisation you work for recruits externally for key senior posts? The best people in jobs a level down get the message that you need to go elsewhere to move up and this expectation filters down the organisation. The organisations that do this often minimise expense on staff development - that's why they don't have lots of good internal candidates. Lots of energy is given to the appointment of the "right person". Sometimes (depending on the level) headhunters are used at vast expense and with doubtful value. Recruitment of staff on lower grades receives little attention and is entirely delegated to the least experienced managers.

Take heart, there's another way! The team I lead has massively increased training and brings in a bunch of amazing trainees every year (mostly graduates.) We invest heavily in the whole team, but particularly in our trainees. We're very picky with our trainees too. We advertise widely and run whole day assessment centres followed by further interviews. Lots of managers get involved. It's expensive. However the amazing thing is that we spend less on recruitment than we did a few years ago when we mostly hired experienced staff. The majority of senior posts are filled internally. This gives people a real sense that they have a career path and many work hard to develop themselves and show that they can do more. It also means that our best people are more likely to hang around. We don't worry too much bringing in those hard to find skills - we grow our own experts. The only downside is that when a senior post is filled internally, that usually creates another vacancy and so on. This makes lots of work for our nice HR people.

The outcome of this is a happy team with excellent staff retention, constantly refreshed by intakes of keen and energetic trainees (who are also very good value.) The money also seems to work out well!

This strategy prepares the organisation well for a downturn. A mild crunch means that when folk leave naturally you can simply lose the headcount. Some stuff ultimately doesn't get done, but you are much less likely to be paralysed by the loss of key people that in many organisations could only be replaced externally. In worse times you have the benefit of a strong and motivated team to meet the challenges.