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Insight

Published June 2009

Leaving an Imprint: Xerox Equips Talent to Innovate

 

  Elizabeth Lisican

Xerox is a household name, one often used as a verb for making copies. But behind the company's plethora of document management products, a workforce thrives, aligned around business strategy and immersed in experiential learning.

In order to promote that kind of culture to more than 51,000 employees from a variety of backgrounds, the company is leveraging employees' differences to bring to a life a multidimensional set of dynamics that influence workforce development efforts. Pat Nazemetz, vice president of HR, reflected on the different tones that make up the talent management palette at Xerox.

TM: Describe Xerox's approach to talent management.

Nazemetz: A sort of a talent supply chain would probably be the best way I can think to describe it. We identify talent needs. We recruit people to fill those needs, and that recruiting can be both inside and outside the company. We orient and acclimate people to our culture and environment, and then hopefully we enable them to do their job.

We're looking for people who are ready, willing and able to do the role we've identified for them or that they've stepped up to. That means developing them, growing them and transitioning them from one role to another.

TM: What processes or programs have you established to improve workforce performance?

Nazemetz: The most important thing is learning by doing: creating learning within the work. So experiential learning is probably what we find is most effective to get people's performance maintained or upgraded, and of course, communicating and aligning everyone around the strategy of the business: where the business is going and what the elements of success of the business are. That is something we do pretty much across the board, and that happens in a variety of ways.

It happens from top-down. It also happens every day in the business through thousands of line managers whom we call upon to motivate their teams and help to identify any performance gaps and close those gaps.

TM: How does Xerox set the stage for effective learning and development?

Nazemetz: In a series of ways. You want to create a culture of learning where people feel they're always looking to pick up new ideas, new skills and to get better at what they do by paying attention to the work, their colleagues, their work environments and work communities. We also have a series of more formal tools we deploy, and technology has been a big enabler.

We actually have a process we call Learning at Xerox. That is Web-enabled learning tools. We have thousands of courses people can avail themselves of. Processes and tools have grown over the last decade and are now pretty robust, and people are able to decide what it is they think will help them with their jobs.

They're very often in conversation with their management, pointed in a direction to either close gaps or start thinking about what's necessary for their next role and where they might want to go. If I'm a salesperson and I want to be a sales manager, 'What do I need to do next?' Ideally, I talk with my manager, understand what the requirements of the job are and get pointed in the direction of Learning at Xerox, and in some cases, actually get some more formal classroom training.

TM: What challenges impact talent management at Xerox?

Nazemetz: The economy is a big concern — the fact that growth in the business in this kind of an economy is difficult. We get distracted, which is part of learning, but sometimes we get distracted and a little bogged down.