Career Resources Built for Employees, by Employees
Building global best career development resources for employees is vital to GM’s plan to close
the engagement gap. One of GM’s first responses to addressing career development for global
employees was the creation of a global career development team within the larger Global Talent
& Development group. Tasked with creating career development programs and resources
for early, mid and late career employees, the new career development team reviewed the recent
anonymous, open-ended feedback from the 2012 Workplace of Choice survey. The team discovered
that GM global employees most desired more connection with leaders on career and tools
for effective career conversations and development planning. Employee feedback also called for
more career resources accessible from a central location as well as visible career paths to help
employees design their careers. As a result, the career development team leveraged (and continues
to leverage) existing career materials developed by business units and global regions, and
developed common tools so that career resources were truly built for employees, by employees.
The most notable and popular career resources today include the Career Development and Advancement
Group and My GM Bucket List. Created by a GM engineer passionate about career
development, the Career Development and Advancement Group is a social collaboration forum
within GM’s internal social collaboration network GM OverDrive. This forum is so popular
that it has the most members of all GM OverDrive groups. My GM Bucket List is a one page
resource that employees use to list 25 things they want to accomplish while at GM. This is a
very popular tool that the team repurposed from a GM employee’s personally developed career