Kinross
Innovative Practice/Initiative: Generation Gold - Attract, develop, and retain talent from specialized fields of study
Organisation Profile
Kinross is a gold mining company with approximately 7200 employees at operations in: South America, West Africa, Northeastern Russia, and the United States. It is a Canadian company headquartered in Toronto, Canada. The organization has undergone dramatic growth over the past 2.5 years, more than doubling in size. As we expand our operations, our need for attracting, developing, and retaining talent - particularly in specialized fields such as Mining Engineering and Geology - has become a key aspect of our business strategy. Through attrition, we also anticipate high numbers of employees who will be retiring over the next 5-10 years, underscoring the need for us to develop young talent who will potentially become leaders in the organization.
The Organisation's Initiative
Kinross implemented the "Generation Gold" program in 2007 as one of its strategies to address the need to attract, develop, and retain talent from specialized fields of study. The program is aimed at high calibre University graduates, largely from the Earth Sciences faculties. Recruitment for the program is done primarily on-campus at universities in the countries where Kinross has operations. The requirements for acceptance into the Generation Gold program include strong academic standing, visible and demonstrated commitment to community involvement, demonstrated leadership ability, and preferably a second language.
Following two rounds of interviews, the list of candidates is shortened to 8-10 "finalists" who are brought to Toronto for a panel interview. The panel typically consists of senior management and members of the global recruitment team. The interview itself is approximately 1 hour during which time the students do a short presentation on their background, profiling their academic, work, and other achievements. This is followed by the actual panel interview. Interview questions are designed to gain a good understanding of the student's technical knowledge and experience, and also to determine the level to which they demonstrate competencies relating to the Kinross Leadership Practices, including Communication, Teamwork, Prioritization, and Influencing, as well as their overall knowledge of the company itself. Students are also required to submit a short essay outlining what they feel to be their key accomplishments and how they feel they could contribute to and gain from the Generation Gold program. Once the interviews are complete, panel members review, rate, and rank order the candidates and a final selection is made. The company accepts five students into the program each year.
The objective of the Generation Gold program is to provide top talent with the opportunity to further develop their skills and knowledge and learn about all aspects of Kinross' operations. This is achieved through four rotations, each 12-months long, two of which at international locations to ensure a true breadth of organizational exposure and understanding. During their assignment, the participants work under the direction of a reporting manager and have direct accountability for goals and objectives, against which they are evaluated in the same way as all other employees. Upon completing the four years of the program, participants assume a regular, full-time position, generally back in their home country.
The program is overseen by a steering committee of senior executives, including the COO and the SVP of HR and Corporate Services, along with two senior operations leaders. This committee meets quarterly to review the status of each of the employees and is involved in identifying assignment opportunities that meet both the needs of the company and that align with the participants' particular career interests/development needs.
While they are in the program, participants have the benefit of a mentor as well as supplemental training to support their development in areas including language, technical, and supervisory training. View materials:
Evidence of Impacts
Given the program was implemented in 2007 and is four years in duration, the first group of Generation Gold participants will graduate in 2011, so longer term metrics are not yet available. The retention rate of those in the program continues to be strong, however, with only two withdrawals from the program so far- both voluntary - and neither due to issues or concerns with the program itself. Kinross continues to field hundreds of applications to the program, and we leverage "word-of-mouth" as program participants relate their experience back to student colleagues still completing their academic studies (current program participants are invited to assist in the on-campus recruitment drives).
Since the program's inception, we have seen a notable increase in the number of business leads from all of our locations who now contact Corporate HR to inquire about the possibility of hosting a Generation Gold employee given the growing reputation among this group of being able to step into an assignment, take on real accountabilities, and add value to their host team/department. Here is an example from one of our senior geologists commenting on the Generation Gold employee he is currently hosting at our project site in Ecuador:
"You can pitch just about anything at her and she will tackle it and figure out a way. Very positive attitude which is infectious to the department. This is a huge win for Kinross. Five stars for Generation Gold".
A similar comment from a different site leader about another Generation Gold employee who recently completed an assignment at one of our US sites: "[employee] has done a bang up job for us on every assignment we've given him."
Performance evaluation indicators for those in the Generation Gold program show that all are able to achieve a "successful" rating, and out of 19 in the program, four achieved an "exceeds expectations" in the 2010 performance review process.
Further, 95% of the time the participant's host manager asks to extend the assignment period and indicates interest in providing a regular, full-time position once the participant completes the program.
Additional comments/information
While we feel the Generation Gold program has proven successful thus far, we will be looking to apply the metrics identified for longer-term evaluation of the program and its ROI. These metrics include post-program retention, performance levels, promotion rate, etc. Once they complete the program, participants will then be captured through the organization's global Talent Management and Succession planning process to enable us to track outcomes. We look forward to being able to supply additional detail as it becomes available.
