Talent Development
Grace uses multiple approaches to encourage and reinforce the ongoing professional development of its people’s talents. Our high-performance culture is fueled by the engagement and inclusion and diversity of our workforce’s array of experiences as well as their innate curiosity and desire to be lifelong learners.
Grace encourages the creation of robust development plans and a healthy coaching relationship between employees and their managers. All are encouraged to consider ways to improve technical, business, and leadership capabilities for both their current role and any potential roles they may aspire to. Employees are expected to take responsibility for their growth and development plan, seek support when needed, take advantage of tools and resources, and continually reassess their needs and plans. Managers are accountable for supporting these efforts and role modeling leadership behaviors.
At all locations and in all positions, Grace invests in our employees to develop opportunities and capabilities.
Often the most valuable and lasting growth occurs not in the classroom, but in real work experiences. Employees are encouraged to apply a 70-20-10 rule of thumb—70 percent of learning from work/job experience; 20 percent coaching, feedback, and peer mentoring; and 10 percent formal training—when planning their development and to work with their manager to identify real-world opportunities. For the 10 percent of traditional development, there is a wide array of business, professional, and leadership training available in the company's online learning center and through facilitated courses.
Grace supports continuing education, including tuition reimbursement for eligible employees.
Performance Management
Performance Management is what enables us to strengthen our high-performance culture of mutual accountability, constructive dialogue, and ongoing professional development. Our Performance Management processes help us support each other in our shared goals of the company and individual success.
Our standard is for all Grace employees to receive formal performance reviews within our global Performance Management systems.
At Grace, Performance Management means focusing on threeways:
- Ongoing feedback and coaching: forging relationships between employees and managers that are built on collaborative problem solving and improvement;
- Effective Performance Reviews: consistent and reliable performance assessment differentiated across the team and based on each individual’s unique contribution;
- Professional Development: a strong commitment to meaningful professional development.
A Grace manager's responsibility in Performance Management includes helping employees become self-aware; helping employees develop their career interests and competencies; aligning Performance Management with business strategies and plans; engaging with employees in dialogue about their performance throughout the year; sharing knowledge to help employees develop; and providing frequent feedback and coaching.
To maintain the strength of our global team, we invest in our people and culture and successfully manage employee performance. In the spirit of continuous improvement, we strive to raise the bar on our individual performance, so we continue to meet the rising expectations of our customers and continuously outperform our competition. Meeting these expectations rewards us as a company and as individuals.
Grace Leadership Behaviors
Grace expects every employee to exhibit our Leadership Behaviors and embed this expectation in our hiring, performance management, and succession planning processes:
DELIVER RESULTS
- Consistently meets goals and strives to exceed them using the
performance management process - Understands business goals and seeks to align actions across businesses and functions to deliver results
- Embraces integrated business management to make collective success a priority
- Defines and improves the key processes involved in producing results
- Promotes effective and timely decision-making linked to the overall company objectives
- Focuses on balancing sales, earnings, and cash
- Takes accountability to create and implement solutions that balance short term goals while preserving a strong strategic position
- Has a positive attitude and drives oneself and others to meet objectives and timelines
THINK CRITICALLY
- Clearly defines the problem and uses disciplined fact-based analysis and
methods to develop solutions - Looks beyond the obvious and doesn’t stop at the first answer
- Probes all fruitful sources for answers
- Can see hidden problems and develops actionable plans to mitigate obstacles
- Is seen as a balanced thought leader despite the conflicting demands of a situation
- Understands the key end-to-end processes and systems and their impact on business results
ENGAGE AND INCLUDE
- Provides challenging and meaningful work with opportunities to develop a broad range of experiences
- Sets clear expectations so everyone understands their role
- Empowers and supports individuals to maximize their contribution to our high-performance culture
- Attracts, engages, develops, and retains excellent talent
- Fosters trust and teamwork
- Understands the Grace Value Model and vision and encourages others to achieve them
- Links work to higher organizational goals and principles
- In a timely manner, recognizes excellence that has a positive impact
- Understands and leverages the value that a diverse organization contributes to well-informed solutions
COMMUNICATE
- Identifies all key stakeholders and ensures engagement and inclusion
- Provides information to others so the best decisions can be made with the information available
- Presents complex information simply and effectively to persuade and inspire action
- Creates a safe and structured environment for candid dialogue and encourages and listens to feedback
- Communicates difficult or challenging information effectively
BE AUTHENTIC
- Values how outcomes are achieved as much as the results
- Is self-aware and unafraid to show vulnerability and humility to build trust and inspire others
- Has extraordinary integrity, including a profound sense of purpose, meaning, and a willingness to live by their core values
- Cares about the safety and well-being of self and fellow employees
- Is committed to one another and to our vision
- Has the courage to be open-minded and receptive to change
- Is dedicated to life-long learning and a professional growth mindset
- Creates a positive impact beyond oneself
Engagement and Inclusion at Grace
At Grace, Great Talent is defined by the high levels of engagement, robust capabilities, and the aspiration of Grace employees to continually add value. Added up across all employees worldwide, these qualities are essential for supporting our intense focus on delivering value to our customers and investors, and for making Grace a great place to work for everyone. These qualities also are key criteria when we plan talent moves within the company, make employee development decisions, and select new employees to join our company. Each employee's personal demonstration of these qualities is as unique as they are, based on their life experiences, perspectives, and career goals.
Actively welcoming and valuing every voice and perspective is an important part of making Grace a great place to work and strengthens our competitive advantage. We value people for who they are and what they uniquely contribute, ensuring that everyone is engaged and included, actively sought out, heard, and respected. We measure this through a periodic Grace Engagement & Inclusion Survey and various pulse surveys, to ensure we are staying true to our intent. These surveys are a way for every voice to be counted, with the results cascading through the organization to the smallest team in which members can still retain their anonymity. The manager and team then collaborate to understand the feedback and produce targeted action plans.