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Providing career support to members and students

23 Oct 2008

ACCA students and members are supported at American Express, a leading global travel, financial and network services company, with a robust training and development policy. This ensures that, as well as supporting ACCA students through to membership, development opportunities for career advancement are within reach of all employees.

'Learning and development at American Express is clearly aligned with the organisation's goals and strategic vision,' explains Lisa Clegg, learning and development manager for finance, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa). 'We support around 600 people in the finance team and at present we have 11 ACCA students and 31 members.

'ACCA students and members in the finance department are supported from the day they begin their studies through to membership by a robust training and development programme,' says Clegg - a policy that helped American Express recently gain Platinum ACCA Approved Employer status.

'All American Express employees are supported by a continual development process,' explains Clegg. 'Learning and development is linked to an online planning tool, encouraging and empowering employees to identify strengths and opportunities for development. This relates to opportunities across a number of leadership, business and technical competences specific to their current role, and any future roles to which they may aspire. For ACCA students, it translates directly into a focus on any areas of the practical experience requirements that they still need to fulfil.

'All employees are encouraged to aim for a 70:20:10 ratio to gain experience,' says Clegg. 'In other words, we try to ensure that our ACCA students receive 70% of their learning on the job and through practical experience, 20% from being coached or mentored, and just 10% from theoretical learning such as attending a course or reading a book.

'All activities are logged in the online development planning tool. This includes secondments, project work, attendance at information sharing sessions, as well as the coaching sessions and seminars we facilitate on a regular basis.'

'The overarching policy at American Express is to support people through their careers,' says Clegg. 'This includes supporting students on their path to ACCA membership - and their overall career development at American Express.

'We strongly believe that to become a robust finance professional you need to have a combination of good experience and an understanding of the business. Some people want to focus on a particular area of finance, enhancing their depth of experience within a specific business unit, while others prefer to progress their career across the organisation, gaining breadth of experience.

'To support both options we have developed a Finance Functional Framework whereby individuals are able to identify the roles that they aspire to and can see the key competences that a particular job entails. They can then work out, with the support of their leader, how to achieve those competences in the medium to long term. This can then be transferred into their development plan.

'One benefit for American Express is our good staff retention record; employees feel empowered as they are given the means to plan their careers and can see the rewards of their development planning. They can look at the opportunities available to them and see where they could be in the future.'

This is an abridged version of an article by Victoria Morgan, deputy editor of student accountant, published in the October 2008 edition.