CAREER AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

Our Top Talent Development Program, in conjunction with the University of California, Berkeley, targets some of our high-potential current leaders to prepare them for more complex global leadership roles. The program comprises modules delivered on campus focusing on themes that include: “Leading High-Performance Teams”, “Leading a Global Business” and “Leading Self”.

Beyond the guidance from Berkeley faculty, structured in-person meetings with business leaders/innovators in Silicon Valley form part of this experience. Cascading learning to participants’ teams is a formal part of this program, as are team-based real-life challenges, such as how to expand and scale “Innovation” at Bureau Veritas.

This program ensures our team leaders and managers around the world possess a robust and consistent level of competency and knowledge to lead their teams. This mandatory program for all team leaders and managers focuses on how to apply the BV Values and Leadership Expectations in their everyday interactions with team members. In addition, the program also builds foundational capabilities in our thousands of team leaders and managers in the following three core areas in executing the Bureau Veritas strategy:

• driving vision and purpose 
• building engaged teams 
• growing people

“One Young World” is a global initiative that invites thousands of young leaders from organisations around the globe to listen to and interact with more than 100 counsellors who cover topics such as Ethical Leadership, Climate Change, Ocean regeneration, Health, Conflicts & Wars, Girls’ Education, Disability, Women in STEM, LGBT+, Refugees and Modern slavery.

Bureau Veritas sends a number of high-potential employees to One Young World which accelerates their personal development and learning and builds their understanding of the role they could play in shaping the world’s future. As an organisation that helps society become more sustainable, our employees who participate in this program already bring back to us new perspectives from sharing ideas with other participants, the program’s counsellors and its guest speakers that have a highly enriching impact on our business.

This program builds the inclusive leadership capabilities of all our team leaders and managers. This program is mandatory in recognition of the need for our team leaders and managers to lead their team members with inclusive behaviours and to act as role models and inclusive leaders across the organisation. The core components of the program comprise:

• inclusive behaviours to remove unconscious bias in our everyday words and actions when leading teams
• attracting, identifying, evaluating, and selecting talent fairly and inclusively
• preventing harassment and creating an open & inclusive culture
• awareness of relevant policies and how to apply them in the workplace

This program’s participants are high-potential women who, over six months, undertake group and individual assessments and group and individual learning activities on priority topics to accelerate their development. The learning activities were complemented by individual executive coaching that strengthened participants’ capabilities, based on needs identified by participants, their program coaches and their managers. 

High-potential women were selected for this program from different markets and countries who participated in a year-long experience, which included mentoring from senior leaders and group workshops on priority topics such as project development, effective communications, and influence. The design of the program has enabled it to be adapted, scaled, and deployed to more individuals across Latin America (both women and men) to build more diversity across the region. This adapted program includes a focus on creating a better understanding of a leader’s personal role as the promoter of more inclusive workplaces.

This program targets the development of individuals identified to assume larger future roles and combines several learning experiences, including 360⁰ assessments, feedback/coaching, mentoring and seminars.

The centre also develops effective collaboration capabilities through team innovation projects and ongoing support from mentors who are senior leaders across our operations in Europe and Africa. The role of the mentors is to provide feedback on participants’ overall development, as well as on the team innovation projects, several of which have resulted in new service offerings to our customers.