Flexible learning opportunities are key to responding quickly to changing market conditions and succeeding in new market adjacencies. By understanding our employees' core skills and addressing their development needs, we strengthen their ability to work within teams and across business functions to support innovation and exceptional performance. We provide a range of formal and informal learning and development opportunities to encourage employees to pursue their career aspirations. This, in turn, helps us to retain top talent.
Learning and development
Cisco uses a variety of standard and customized courses covering management, technical, and professional development. During FY10, Cisco spent more than $90 million on employee training and development. Eighty-two percent of employees participated in at least one course, spending more than 1.5 million hours in learning and development training courses.
Annual Employee Performance Management Reviews allow employees to review their development and performance from the previous year and plan their needs for the upcoming year with managers.
Mid-Year Career Discussions, introduced companywide in FY10, provide an opportunity for managers and employees to discuss their development opportunities half way through the year. In the FY10 Pulse survey, 76 percent of employees said this discussion was effective.
Career progression
We continually review our hiring strategy to ensure that it supports our business goals. In FY10, we piloted Talent Connection, an internal tool that allows recruitment teams, managers and employees to work together to match skill sets against internal job openings. Talent Connection will help us respond quickly to internal talent demands as Cisco expands into new markets. During the 10-week pilot program, nearly 80 percent of positions were filled by internal candidates, and the time to fill a position dropped by an average of 22 days. Feedback from both candidates and managers indicated a high level of satisfaction with the new process.
