Unpacking Potential
The onboarding and annual collocations co-designed and organized by WDHB contributed to the success story of the Accelerated Career Development Program (ACDP), turning it into a forum for agenda-setting and knowledge exchange and providing the organization with a valuable network of corporate change agents.
Amcor
a global leader in packaging, initiated the Accelerated Career Development Program to inject fresh and diverse talent into its leadership pipeline. The onboarding and annual collocations co-designed and organized by WDHB contributed to the success story of the ACDP, turning it into a forum for agenda-setting and knowledge exchange and providing the organization with a valuable network of corporate change agents.
Context & Challenge
With roots dating back to Victoria’s first paper mill established in 1860, Amcor has evolved over time from an Australian papermaker to a globally leading, diversified packaging manufacturer. Today, Amcor supplies many of the world’s best-known consumer and healthcare brands with highly specialized, safe and sustainable packaging solutions. On average, every 11th product you touch is produced by Amcor.
Amcor has set up an Accelerated Career Development Program (ACDP; accelerate.amcor.com) to prepare exceptional and diverse talent for a career within Amcor. A careful and highly competitive assessment process has led to several cohorts of 10 to 15 ACDPers who spend 4 years in the program on two exciting Sales or Marketing roles.
Collaboration with WDHB
For its first ACDP-cohort in 2015, Amcor selected WDHB to be the design and delivery partner for an onboarding session in Zurich. WDHB built a diverse program developing original formats for Amcor-specific materials, integrating relevant outside-in perspectives and providing platforms for community-building and reflection among the ACDP team.
The mix of internal contents, external keynotes and company exchanges, workshops, peer-to-peer coaching as well as individual and collective reflection was a perfect match to the group’s needs. The combination of WDHB’s signature Learning Expeditions and components of its Development offerings has become a blueprint for annual collocations at Amcor’s international locations such as Chicago, Miami and Singapore.
Highlight
Since the inception of the Accelerated Career Development Program, building an empathic and mutually supportive community has been a central ambition of the collaboration between Amcor and WDHB. A number of features incorporated into the collocation programs have aimed at this goal.
Setting the Groundwork for a Vibrant Community:
- Specific focus on team building and team dynamics, transparent communications and feedback culture, mental and physical resilience as well as wellbeing.
- Touchpoints and networking opportunities with top leaders from Amcor’s global management as well as deep-dives on Amcor strategy and business practices turbocharging ACDPers’ fluency.
- Testimonial and exchanges with outside executives on themes such as cross-business collaboration, mutual support, stakeholder management and success in matrix organizations.
- Regular contributions on the topics of intercultural competency and cross-cultural collaboration along with deep immersions into various corporate cultures, environments and their practices.
- Establishment of a safe and open space for the ACDP community to collectively reflect, share challenges, discuss opportunities and offer mutual advice and support.
Impact
From onboarding to the annual meetups and the final graduation, the collocations for the ACDP cohorts have become landmark events in the career path at Amcor with consistently high stakeholder appraisals. It’s where they take a breather from the demanding environment of their everyday duties, reconnect among peers, reflect on their learnings and chart the path for months to come.
Moreover, an ingenious mix of internal and external components has allowed these sessions to become important platforms to react to changes in the environment and Amcor strategy and inject inspiration ranging from global macro-trends and industry evolutions to contemporary management and leadership practices.
Not only has this served as a conduit for important outside-in perspectives to reach into the world of Amcor, it has also empowered the ACDPers to become champions in Amcor’s own transformation, advancing their mastery on topics such as sustainability, innovation and leadership, which are all highly relevant to the business today.