Vic Venettozzi, director of global purchasing for LORD Corp. in Cary, N.C. is a big believer in streamlining business processes as a way to ensure a successful supply management program. But beyond the processes, he believes there is something even more important to success: People.

"You can have all of the best business processes there are, but if you don't have employees who are involved in professional development activities, it's all just wasted effort," Venettozzi tells Purchasing.

Venettozzi has come to understand this from his own professional experience, which included tours with Square D, Eaton and Hitachi. "Professional development has been the constant in my career," he says. "It has been the foundation of everything I've achieved."

While professional development is important to employees at every level, Venettozzi has come to believe that it is valued even more heavily by the so-called Generation Y employees coming into the workforce. "Generation Y employees tend to look for employers with a commitment to offering professional development opportunities," he states.

As a result, LORD Corp. has developed a strong set of professional development opportunities for its employees, including career development, career paths, and Leadership opportunities (see sidebar). Beyond this, the company offers two other active professional development opportunities: mentoring and cross-functional experience.

"Mentoring is particularly important in managing Generation Y employees," Venettozzi says. "We have found that, if we don't provide mentoring, we can't keep professional development activities moving forward."

Obviously, given the time constraints of individuals qualified to provide mentoring, LORD has found it important to focus most of its mentoring efforts on high-potential employees. "We have various tiers of mentoring," he explains. High-potential employees might be mentored by someone at a plant manager level, a director or senior director level, or by another executive. Most mentors at LORD work with no more than two or three people at a time, but the numbers can add up impressively. According to Venettozzi, a couple of dozen people in LORD qualify to act as mentors, and if they mentor two or three people, the company is capable of mentoring 50–75 individuals at any one time.

Mentoring does have a potential drawback. "As we build high-potential employees, we realize that there will be some who 'leave the nest,'" he says. "We accept that we will be picked off from time to time. The benefit for the company, though, is that we develop people who are excited about professional excellence."

In addition, LORD has another program designed to encourage its high-potential employees to stay with the company: cross-functional experience. The program is designed to offer new experiences to these high-potential individuals without them feeling as though they have to leave the company to find it. "When we mentor people, they can migrate left and right," he explains.

An employee might start out in sourcing, and then move to sales and marketing. In some cases, that person may stay there. In other cases, the person might return to sourcing. The company benefits in both scenarios. The reason: The person is conversant in both functions, which produces a more qualified employee. "In addition, it improves communication between and among the various functions, because people are personally familiar with the various functions," adds Venettozzi.

"One of my most aggressive agents was buying indirect services and wanted to experience what it would be like to manage information systems in our company," he says. "She is now in a two-year assignment there to find out."

Conversely, if a manager in sales and marketing tells Venettozzi that one of his or her high-potential employees has an interest in sourcing, he has no problem bringing that person over. "I know what to expect," he says. "If the person stays, great. If not, that person will take a lot of knowledge and experience from supply chain back to sales and marketing, which benefits the whole organization."

In launching mentoring programs and cross-functional transition programs, according to Venettozzi, it is important for supply chain executives to understand which functions are "one step away" from supply chain.

"Our people who came up through supply chain programs such as Penn State, Bowling Green, or Arizona may be able to move to sales and marketing, information systems, and some other functions," he states. "However, it would be a tough leap for them to move to legal, tax, or engineering."

LORD is seeing benefits of its commitment to professional development through its ability to attract and retain the best and the brightest talent. "We are also starting to see this cross-functional knowledge permeate throughout the organization," he says.