People and Leadership
To equip an organisation to adapt to future demands, it is crucial to provide employees with the right skills and mindsets. When a team from Capgemini Invent UK set out to transform the talent strategy of their client’s finance function, they focused on developing skills, improving internal mobility opportunities and opening pathways to a higher-performance future. The comprehensive, people-first approach spanned strategy design to implementation and impact tracking for a global, UK-led programme impacting 4,500 employees.
In 2021, their client’s OneFinance vision became a key component of their five-year, global digital transformation to support strategic priorities, create value and attract, develop and retain talent.
The two-year partnership with Capgemini Invent centred on a reskilling and upskilling initiative. It began with online workshops involving senior leaders across geographies to identify the skills employees needed to serve the business better and advance their careers.
In response, Capgemini Invent and the client’s finance leadership co-created the Skills Wheel, clarifying 12 critical capabilities for the function’s future. Learning Pathways, ranging from virtual courses to mentoring, made skills development accessible and appealing. Lastly, an Internal Mobility portal matched staff to diverse, growth-oriented roles aligned with their strengths.
Within a year, the hours spent learning new skills more than doubled. In 2023, a record 50 per cent of director and vice-president vacancies were filled internally. Teams embraced change, learned new skills and took ownership of their career paths. Greater transparency built trust, grassroots change networks sustained the culture shift and people became more adaptable. The commitment to nurturing talent underpinned the client finance team’s determination to become a skills-based function.
Today, the client’s finance employees have the digital and business-partnering capabilities to accelerate the organisation’s evolution while excelling in their careers. The Board has recognised the value of Capgemini Invent’s work, with other departments expressing interest in applying similar initiatives. Still in use, the programme has set the standard for talent-transformation engagements across the broader organisation, creating a win-win for the client’s people and leadership.
The comprehensive Build-Bridge-Bind framework was key to closing critical skills gaps – building skills through targeted learning, bridging capabilities through internal mobility and binding talent by communicating career paths and empowering employees to own their development.
Putting talent development at the heart of the transformation has shifted attitudes and motivations. As professionals leverage upskilling tools and increased autonomy, they transform operations for the future while realising their own potential. This equips the organisation to overcome disruption and enables employees to direct their growth in line with modern expectations.
The Skills Wheel, Learning Pathways and Internal Mobility portal have made professional skills more transferable, strengthened client-centric capabilities and improved retention and workforce satisfaction. The commitment to internal mobility and employee development is evident, with twice as many roles filled internally since the portal’s launch.
Ultimately, Capgemini Invent’s people-centric, end-to-end approach to finance transformation has delivered significant value, setting a new standard for talent strategy and leaving the client well-positioned to attract, develop and retain the skills needed to thrive in the future.
View the Capgemini Invent profile in the MCA Members Directory.