IMD has received a Gold award at the 2022 Brandon Hall Group awards for work led by Professor of Strategy and Organization Bettina Büchel in developing talent and driving change at Moroccan state-owned mining and fertilizer firm OCP.
The coveted award for excellence was bestowed for their entry ‘OCP ABS IMD Beyond an ambitious next-level talent development program’ in the Best Advance in Creating a Leadership Strategy category.
The 18-month talent program, co-created with Africa Business School, was designed to help equip OCP with the talent and skills to transform from an industrial phosphate mining giant into a customer centric agriculture company. The program, which interwove academic and action learning, was so successful that it was expanded to include all of OCP’s 23,000 employees.
“OCP’s transformation was made possible thanks to the combination of strategic work with the company’s top management alongside a talent program which emphasized learning and development and was tied to delivering strategic initiatives,” said Büchel.
IMD was also recognized with a Silver award in the Best Advance in Leadership Development category for its entry ‘DNB & IMD: Building a culture of collaboration, through action learning – at scale’.
The collaboration between IMD and Norwegian bank DNB, led by Professor of Leadership and Organizational Change Ina Toegel, involved a 10-month learning journey based around cross-functional shadowing for the company’s top 230 leaders. Broken down into four stages, the program involved a self-awareness stage, a half day of shadowing a peer from another department, and individual and group coaching sessions to debrief and share perspectives.
“Partnering with DNB was a very rewarding experience for the IMD team. The unconventional learning design made for a more challenging but ultimately much more impactful learning journey,” said Toegel.
This is the second set of awards for both customized programs after OCP was recognized with Gold and DNB with Silver at the EFMD 2022 Excellence in Practice awards in May.
The 2022 Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards were given for work in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, Sales Performance, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and Future of Work.
Entries were subject to a rigorous judging process by an international panel of independent industry experts, Brandon Hall Group senior analysts, and its executive team, and judging was based on programs’ ability to: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation, and overall measurable benefits.
Last year, IMD came away with a Gold award for its work on the leadership of Swiss wealth management firm Julius Baer, while its Organizational Learning in Action (OLA) program was recognized with a Bronze award for the best advance in education delivered through technology.
Brandon Hall Group operates the largest and longest running awards program in Human Capital Management. As an independent HCM research and analyst firm, they conduct studies in areas from learning and development and talent management to equity & inclusion and HR/workforce management. These benchmark studies help organizations by providing strategic insights for executives and practitioners responsible for growth and business results.
IMD is a pioneer in custom program design and delivery, collaborating with over 100 leading organizations to co-create developmental experiences that boost performance in measurable ways.
