GE has always been a talent leader, embracing its people as its competitive advantage across its various business units and functions. For the Corporate Digital Technology team, its people strategy - which puts employees at the forefront of its operations - is centered around three pillars: grow, engage, and value.
Like many other Fortune 500 companies, its large, nationally-distributed workforce made employee connections and engagement challenging, even more so in the shift to hybrid work.
So when the GE Digital Technology team’s annual employee culture survey started to show there was an opportunity to improve some key areas within employee engagement — like an employee’s ability to grow and feel connected to the company — leaders, like Karissa Bussard, Global Senior HR Partner, Digital Technology at GE knew they had to act.
After reviewing data from the culture survey, focus groups, and exit interviews, Bussard and a team of GE Digital Technology leaders hypothesized that people within their function needed to be better connected to the company and each other to create a winning culture.
As a result, the GE Digital Technology team landed on mentorship as a key strategy to underpin culture and create boundaryless employee connections. Mentorship was always a key people tactic at GE, but the team wanted to scale and automate the offering, and needed a solution that was easy to use in a hybrid environment.
That led Bussard and her team to launch their first phase of their mentorship program using 10KC’s technology platform for U.S.-based employees who identify as women or minorities. While the program was focused on employee engagement, the Digital Technology Team Leaders also wanted to address their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) priorities by including these employee groups first, which paid off in the feedback they received.
Within weeks of launching the mentorship program, employees were asking Bussard when she would offer it to everyone. The program saw an incredible 80% adoption rate among eligible participants and a 79% engagement rate.
The Digital Technology mentorship program leveraged 10KC’s technology, features and curriculum to:
After launching the program using 10KC, Bussard and the leadership team started to see early positive results: “Our attrition rate decreased, our culture survey scores went up and the overall NPS regarding the 10KC platform was positive” she said. People felt more connected, and the results were reflected in their latest annual culture survey:
In addition to the business outcomes and positive comments Bussard received, participants also had to say this about the GE Digital Technology team’s mentorship initiative:
“I am excited to see where this mentorship program takes us. I felt quite comfortable conversing with Sarah and feel that she would be able to impart wisdom when it comes to talent development and longevity.”
“Perfect match! Both of us are from UCLA and Ryan already has experienced the path that I want to try to achieve which is filling a leadership position. Looking forward to future meetings and discussions.”
Bussard and her team will be moving into phase two by expanding the program to thousands of employees across the US for not only mentorship, but to also connect different business units via 10KC’s Introductions feature. Their goal is to create boundaryless connections within the company at scale and to ensure that they are holistically supporting their people’s development and creating a connected culture.
10KC is the leading enterprise software platform for mentoring, networking and talent development experiences. If your organization wants to start reaching their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion goals then our solution is for you.
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