Integration is only the beginning: the Prysmian Group Academy

Over 200 new business ideas from the incubator, employee turnover almost halved among participants and a level of engagement 7% higher than the corporate average: these are just a few of the outcomes from the Prysmian Group Academy from 2012 till today.

The fruit of this multi-year partnership between Prysmian and SDA Bocconi is tangible at many levels

The creation of a program at the Group Academy targeting recent university graduates, for instance, has enabled Prysmian to attract an ever-growing number of talented young people from all over the world. From 3,000 applications the first year of the program, the number has spiraled up to 28,000 in its sixth year, a powerful driver for Prysmian’s employer branding at an international level.

As we mentioned, both the performance and the retention rate of employees involved in Academy programs have appreciably improved. What’s more, Academy participants have acquired a keener sense of the strategic objectives of the Group and deeper trust in company executives.

The Academy Group has also proven to be a real incubator for new ideas. In the first six years, the Academy churned out 182 White Papers on 86 different strategic questions addressing myriad issues, from customer centricity to the strategic agenda of the Group. To provide a concrete entrepreneurial outlet for these stimuli, Prysmian created a dedicated spinoff/accelerator in 2017: the Corporate Hangar.

The partnership between Prysmian and SDA Bocconi came to be at a time that was a turning point in the history of the Milanese company. The year was 2011, and Prysmian had decided to acquire Draka, a Dutch cable producer with a product portfolio and an international presence that was highly complementary to Prysmian’s. The Group that arose from this merger showed enormous potential, but it immediately had to contend with a profound divergence in the organizational cultures and managerial styles of the two original companies.

The deepest impact was felt on human resource management. Not only did the Group need to integrate diverse practices, but to address new hurdles employees had to overcome as well, pertaining to issues like international mobility, career development and training. So at this point it was imperative to get all the key resources on board the new global organization, regardless of geography or seniority.

To find a way to successfully deal with integration, in 2011 Prysmian turned to SDA Bocconi. Based on a series of interviews with the company’s top managers, an international case study was drafted outlining the issues the Group dealt with; this would later lay the groundwork for the Academy. In addition, a framework was developed to identify the most pressing problems. The focus: the need to achieve a multinationality advantage within the Group. In other words, the Group’s subsidiaries had to generate overall performance that exceeded the sum of the performances of the single subsidiaries, taken on an individual basis.

Prysmian’s strategic challenges and organizational needs formed the basis for the first training initiative: the Post Graduate Program. After the first six months of collaboration, the partnership morphed into a more structured project, and the Prysmian Group Academy was born. The Academy’s spheres of action are primarily two: to cultivate internal talent, conveying an integrated and comprehensive vision of the Group’s strategy; and to foster the creation of an internal network with the aim of disseminating ideas and technical skills.

From 2012 to 2015, the first wave of training programs was held; these were then revamped and extended to form a second wave from 2015 to 2018. As of 2017, the Academy offered a total of 32 courses to 710 program participants. The selection process centered on high-potential candidates with prospects for growth within the organization who were open to international mobility. Some programs also culminated with a White Paper to encourage corporate entrepreneurship.

Over time, the focus of the Academy’s activities has shifted, reflecting the Group’s new needs. Initially, the primary objective was to foster integration and collaboration among employees from Prysmian and Draka. To this end, courses were set up near company headquarters in Milan, encouraging face-to-face contact among participants. Later, attention turned to the creation of a global network connecting the different company offices, with activities organized at a regional level too (in ASEAN, the US, South America, Northern Europe, etc.).

The first few years of Prysmian Group Academy activity coincided with a time of exceptional results for the Group: from the beginning of 2013 to the end of 2017, the value of Prysmian shares shot up from 15 to 28 euro. This was the period of the Group’s most intense growth. Moving forward, the Academy can play a central role in continuing to support this growth process in light of the needs of the company, which are constantly evolving. In fact, in 2019 Prysmian scored a major new acquisition with General Cable, a US company and direct competitor. Here too, as in the past, there is a marked complementariety, both on a territorial and cultural level. And so, here come new challenges for management and for the Academy.

• To support integration at a global level between Prysmian and General Cable.
• To promote specific training initiatives to contend with challenges arising at a local level.
• To champion a more inclusive culture, fostering all forms of diversity at all organizational levels with ad hoc initiatives.
• To partner with management to develop growth strategies for the Group.