Engaging your Talent - A Case Study

16 February 2012 19:00 for 19:30 start
North London Branch

Subject area: 
Venue: Middlesex University Business School, The Burroughs, Hendon, London NW4 4BT
Speaker(s): Deborah Baker joined Sky in December 2007 as Director for People. Prior to joining Sky, she was Senior Vice President, Human Resources Worldwide at Burberry plc, responsible for all HR issues across the group. She spent the early part of her career in roles at companies including Ford Motor Company, Schlumberger and Grand Metropolitan and went on to work in the retail, distribution and wholesale sectors, focusing particularly on turnaround situations.
Event details:

Sky People Director Deborah Baker will share the organisation's approach to successful staff engagement.

Baker's view is that employers should not be divisive with their talent and L&D strategies if they want to engage staff. Sky’s talent engagement approach stems from the view that all employees were skilled enough to be recruited and are therefore worthy of attention.  The business divides employees into a series of talent pools rather than focusing on a “single cadre” of talent.

“Line managers should uncover, nurture and develop their team’s talent,” she said in a recent People Management article “and our job in HR is to help that.”

Deborah Baker will describe how Sky uses an HR toolkit  to engage talent which contains both ‘hardware’ – such as appraisals, L&D, leadership programmes, feedback mechanisms and career management - and ‘software’, including the creation of exciting opportunities and a fun work atmosphere.

She will also talk about the organisation's approach to career management and how a flexible approach to succession planning is helping the business to retain key talent.

For more information:
  • Contact phone number 01923 265199