Talent Development
We prioritize our people's continuous development and growth. Over the last year, we made investments in enhancing our learner experience and learning technology ecosystem, including introducing Workday Learning, which helps integrate our learning, development, and performance management processes.
As we continue to roll out Workday Learning, we expect to further enhance our trainings and the broader learning journey to make sure we are providing upskilling opportunities to our people as well as certain subcontractors. To do so effectively, we are benchmarking our current learning landscape to better understand the linkages between job families for overlapping skills and training. We expect to be able to assess the impact of learning classes on employee knowledge and career progression as well as monitor participant data to assure employees' equitable access to learning and development opportunities.
We remain committed to supporting all employees as they develop and expand upon their technical, management, and leadership skills. We plan to expand our badging program, evolve our training portfolio, continue to test incentives and rewards for skill development, and scale our efforts overall to align technical career tracks with professional growth and compensation.
Technical Experience Groups
In support of our VoLT growth strategy and its reliance on a highly skilled, technical workforce, we launched Technical Experience Groups (TXGs) to help attract, engage, and retain technically focused employees. Through TXGs, employees at every stage of their careers can build technical acumen, unlock more equitable career opportunities, build connections with colleagues through technical mentoring programs, and access and create technical thought leadership and intellectual property. TXGs are open to all Booz Allen employees—from interested to expert—on a voluntary, opt-in basis. Centrally funded by Booz Allen, each TXG has executive-level luminary leaders who serve on an Executive Tech Talent Council, helping to advance our offerings and employee value proposition for our talent.
Badging Program
For most technologies we use to help our clients, there are trusted, industry-wide certifications that our people can work toward to expand their skill sets. For those that are emerging—and do not yet have trusted certifications—we introduced a Badging Program in January of 2022 to allow employees to obtain badges related to specific technical skills development and build career pathways based on their learning journeys. Initially, we rolled out badges for five technologies that do not have industry-recognized certifications.
Since starting this program, there have already been 1,000+ applications across 650 unique employees with 300 badges earned. One of the most critical shifts we have seen due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been our people's enthusiastic adoption of digital training programs. This presents a unique opportunity to scale our training and development efforts across geographical boundaries. It also helps us connect many more of our people with easier ways to continually upskill their expertise. Given the overwhelmingly positive feedback, we will expand these badges to many more technologies in the coming months addressing topics including Artificial Intelligence—Machine Learning, Software Engineering, DevOps, and Business Development.
Examples of Badges Launched in FY22
Award-Winning Engineer and DEI Advocate
Bahirah Adewunmi is a founding member of Booz Allen's Black Analytics Group.
Alongside other data scientists, engineers, and consultants of color at Booz Allen, she's organizing efforts within the firm to recruit, develop talent, and seed research at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCU).
Read more about this Black Engineer of the Year award winnerLeadership Training
We offer targeted learning opportunities such as our Effective People Leadership program for all career managers, as well as our Leadership Immersion Program, aimed at newly promoted and externally hired mid-level senior leaders. The Leadership Immersion Program consists of a year-long journey with a quarterly curriculum and year-end capstone module aimed at learning our culture, becoming comfortable with leading teams, and aligning with our VoLT strategy. In 2021, we completed our first full-year cycle of this virtual, quarterly learning experience, allowing leaders equitable access to critical development experiences.
of Booz Allen people say the firm helps them build relevant skills
of Booz Allen people say the firm supports their professional development
Tech Excellence Program Launches New Career
As part of the first-ever cohort of Booz Allen's Cloud Tech Excellence program, Surtej Sarin honed his technical coding expertise to launch his career as a cloud architect.
Working at the intersection of people and technology, Surtej now builds innovative cloud solutions for mission-critical client engagements.
Learn more about SurtejExecutive Development
Our executive development programs reinforce the commitment to our values with our senior leaders through a variety of development opportunities. For example, all newly hired executives participate in a multi-day social learning event that includes engagement activities, exploration of leadership styles, experiential learning, and more. Executive training modules address topics such as what DEI means for our firm, how to lead people through a DEI lens, and how to delegate and empower others through our "L.E.A.D. to empower others" model. To complement these trainings, Booz Allen also holds a biannual summit to engage and educate our senior leaders.