Opportunity How We Invest in Our People

August 24, 2015

Opportunity – How we invest in our people During our upcoming retreat, we will focus our discussions around Opportunity, one of our core values. There are many ways for us to live this value to our fullest potential. Understanding our individual strengths is an initial step in determining how to invest in our own development and how to contribute to Kresge in a fulfilling and productive way. We are providing each employee the option to complete a valuable and widely used assessment to assist each person in discovering her or his unique strengths.

With this letter, you are receiving the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book to help you determine your individual strengths and analyze the results via the online StrengthsFinder assessment. In the future, you will have the opportunity to match your strengths to your role and discuss opportunities to use your strengths.

Each copy of the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book contains a unique access code to take the online assessment. Gallup research has identified 34 dominant "themes" of talent with thousands of possible combinations. The assessment results will show your top five themes and provide additional information relevant to those themes.

As part of our upcoming retreat on Thursday, September 24th, the Droste Group will facilitate a process that allows us to share our assessment results in an intimate small-group setting.

To prepare for this staff retreat discussion, please complete the following steps: 1) Read the first introductory chapters (pages 1-31) of the enclosed book. 2) Use the unique access code in your book to access the assessment, which will take you approximately 30 minutes to complete. 3) View your results upon completion of the assessment in the “Talent Discovery and Development” report, and choose “PDF version.” Save the report to your computer, and print it for your own review and analysis. 4) Send the PDF version of your results via email to Sonny Martin in Human Resources ([email protected]) by Friday, September 11th. 5) Read about your top five strengths in the StrengthsFinder 2.0 book to better understand your results. 6) Be prepared to share your top five strengths and some insights about what you learned with others at your table during the afternoon of the retreat. Reprinted copies of your assessment reports will be available at the retreat for you to reference.

Please note that if you do not take the assessment and/or send your results to Sonny, you will miss out on the rich conversations that will take place as we share our findings at the retreat. Non-participation will also prevent us from creating an accurate (anonymous) summary of the diversity of talents we have at Kresge, which we want to celebrate at the retreat.

Everyone in the organization will be taking the assessment at the same time, in the same format, so we can experience the process together. Following the retreat, all Managers will participate in a meeting designed to provide them with ideas and resources to begin incorporating StrengthsFinder into the work of their teams to enhance individual and team fulfillment and success.

If you would like more information about the StrengthsFinder assessment or about how it is different than the DiSC assessment, which we have used previously, please visit the retreat microsite for additional resources. Crystal Sewell