Dentsu Group’s commitment to our people means helping everyone develop new skills and realize their growth potential. Through performance development, feedback, access to personal growth, career opportunities, and regular career conversations, we ensure everyone in Dentsu Group is able to own their career development.

By continuing to embed performance development and through timely, open feedback and regular conversations around performance and development, we create a positive culture where everyone can reach their full potential. The leadership model at Dentsu was created to help everyone, no matter where they are on their career journey, to understand what is expected at every level. The leadership model sets out the core competencies and behaviors to all of our employees as We all Lead. We have also focused on understanding and developing our people, through talent mapping and succession planning. The need for up-to-date and accurate data continues to grow in importance. We have the foundations in place to better understand the talent pipeline, mobility and resourcing needs across Dentsu Group.

Career development across the Group

Dentsu Group’s career framework is designed to outline specific skills and capabilities to help people unlock career opportunities across the business. It is now being rolled out to the organization and employees can see where their role fits in the organization, be able to understand the skills and experience required at every level, and identify potential future career opportunities. By focusing on role profiling and building “job families,” individuals no longer have to consider a single career path based on experience. Everyone can consider a wide range of fresh opportunities based on their skills and aspirations. For the Group, the career framework enables better workforce planning, talent management, and optimization of our workforce capabilities and strengths.

Understanding employees through data and insights

The voice of our employees matters. That is why we run Check In, our global employee engagement survey. This year, through Check In, we’ ve kept our finger on the pulse of our organization, providing an opportunity for everyone to share their voice and created a platform for leaders to access key insights into their teams. The HR function has taken an integrated approach, with one core platform and a common set of questions for better insights across the whole Dentsu Group.

Prioritising our people during a pandemic

Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, Dentsu Group has focused on the health and safety of its employees; paying extra attention to engaging on a regular basis, using various communication channels. We have offered working from home arrangements, opportunities to connect through technology, learning communities and listening to our employees on what further support they needed.

The global pandemic has fundamentally changed our expectations and understanding of what “work” and “away from work” is, and how society changes more broadly through the interaction between both. In 2021, we expect the majority of our offices will re-open. We are evolving our ways of working and reaching new levels of support for our people both mentally and physically, so that they continue to thrive at work under very different circumstances. We acknowledge that returning to the office and navigating the changed workspace will amount to a lot for our people to process. With this in mind, we are working together to take measured steps which gradually move us to this new way of working, learning, and interacting as we go.

We are acting on a real opportunity to accelerate our culture with the behaviors and mindsets of radical collaboration, speed and agility, inclusivity, doing the right thing, and accountability for results and outcomes—all coming together to collectively maximize how we work in the future. This will be a key enabler of our transformation journey and an opportunity to deliver meaningful progress for our people, our clients, our business, and our society more broadly.