Professional and Career Development
Leidos is committed to providing employees with the opportunities and resources they need to succeed.
Our people are our most valuable assets. To support them, Leidos provides a broad range of development resources and opportunities to all Leidos employees and empowers managers to assist employees in identifying career interests and accomplishing developmental goals through those opportunities. Attracting, developing and retaining the most qualified and capable workforce is vital to our success and to that of our employees.
Leidos partners directly with employees to understand their career aspirations by aligning their passions and interests to an effective skill set that serves both the organization and the community. We offer a suite of development and training resources to employees to help them acquire desired skills and experiences that improve job performance and prepare them for more advanced professional responsibilities.
In 2014, Leidos introduced a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) platform to provide all employees access to development and training, regardless of geographic location or schedule demands. MOOCs focus on a variety of topics, such as leadership development and encouraging innovation. Based on the success of this format, we added more courses in 2015 and 2016, including supervisor responsibilities, PMP® certification preparation, Innovation Awareness, and System Engineer Certification Training.
Education Alliance Program
The Leidos Education Alliance Program is a set of established relationships with universities that provide discounted degree programs in areas of study that support our business objectives. These relationships enable us to offer a variety of areas of study and delivery options (online and on-campus) that meet the unique needs of employees at all Leidos locations. The discounted tuition rates and structure vary by school and some include discounts for family members as well.
Training Alliance
We have also established relationships and alliances with training vendors that offer employees opportunities to advance their proficiency in technical and professional skills through online training or open enrollment programs at vendor locations. These vendors offer employees significant discounts for public, online and virtual offerings.
Through our partnership with SkillSoft, a leader in the e-learning space, Leidos offers more than 3,000 online courses on topics such as business, management, and information technology at no cost to employees or their organizations. Through Skillsoft's Books24x7® Referenceware® service, all employees also have access to the complete unabridged contents of thousands of the latest and best business and technology books. Professionals across all disciplines can use Referenceware for continuous learning to help solve job-critical challenges.
Mentoring
Mentoring and coaching are important to our workforce development goals. Both informal and formal mentoring programs at Leidos support the company's ability to attract and retain a diverse work force and to foster a more inclusive work environment, as well as a natural "culture of mentoring." Our most powerful mentoring tools are the Executive Mentoring Program and the Leidos Mentoring Program.
The Executive Mentoring Program aligns all of our Executive staff as mentors to one or more diverse, high-potential protégés in year-long cycles. Protégés are given rare opportunities to connect with our Executives to support higher level career development aspirations and reach new heights within the organization. The Program also acts as a conduit to identify potential successors for critical roles from our diverse, high-potential talent pool.
The Leidos Mentoring Program is a free and open mentoring tool designed to support professional development for all employees within the organization. Protégé participants are informed about interested and best-fit mentors across the global enterprise. Partnerships may continue until both mentor and protégé believe that the protégé has effectively achieved the development goals set forth at the initiation of mentorship. The Program also boasts points of contact across hundreds of metro areas around the world, supporting program participants and facilitating local networking and collaboration events.
Retaining Our Most Critical Asset
Developing and retaining a talented workforce is essential to our success. The dynamic nature of our work means that our employees may be faced with position reductions and reorganizations when a program ends, is re-competed, or otherwise modified. Leidos is keenly aware of the stress this can place on our people, and we are committed to retaining and strengthening our highly skilled professional workforce while communicating clearly and openly at all times.
Established in 2008, our Talent Resource Program partners with Talent Acquisition teams and Hiring Managers to identify potential open internal opportunities and internal talent. Talent Resource Partners provide a variety of services, including one-on-one coaching, interview training, resume building guidance, and information on other internal organizations that need similar skill sets. Various resources are available to employees, including redeployment overview sessions, six different workshops on-line and inclusion in our enterprise redeployment listing aimed at ensuring that our talent seeking opportunities are highly visible to hiring managers and recruiters. Through the efforts of Talent Resource Partners, our internal placement rate for affected employees has averaged 35 percent.