Gensler: Optimas Silver Winner for Vision

When a business experiences significant growth but the talent pool does not, that’s problematic.

Gensler, a global architecture, design and planning firm, had this problem in its consulting practice. The talent could not sustain its growth and created the 24-month-long Design Strategist Development program with the help of Gensler’s global talent studio.

The program targets young professionals and develops Gensler’s next generation of strategic thinkers through on-the-job training and targeted learning. Full-time new hires have to apply and be accepted into the program. The first program runs from June 2015 to June 2017.

Because global clients were asking for greater consistency in the services it provided, the Design Strategist Development program also sought to build a sense of community and consistency in the new generation of thinkers.

Between 2014 and 2015, the Gensler consulting practice grew by 20 percent, and a third (34 percent) of those people
were program participants.

“The program creates a foundation on which we can grow our practice in a strategic, accelerated and robust way,” said Andrew Garnar-Wortzel, a leader of Gensler’s firmwide consulting practice.

For its foresight to identify what’s lacking in the talent pool and how to eliminate that problem in the future, Gensler is the 2016 Optimas Award Silver winner for Vision.

Read about the rest of our 2016 Optimas Winners.