Nicole Dessain Email & Phone Number

Berlin, De

Evanston, Illinois, Us

I partner with our Fortune 500 and global tech scale-up clients (company sizes ranging from 400 - 200,000 employees) on their talent management strategies and culture transformations. I regularly direct distributed project teams and engage with executive stakeholders.Select client projects:📌Professional Services Organization: Led project team in the re-design of client’s performance management program with a focus on enhancing the employee and manager experience, resulting in a co-created roadmap for sustained program improvements and enhanced employee engagement. Client was invited to share this benchmark project at HR conferences.📌Healthcare Provider: Advised client on employee experience transformation. Designed approach for the launch of cross-functional, agile EX teams and ran three pilots resulting in a comprehensive approach and multi-year culture transformation. Client successfully applied this agile teaming approach during the pandemic. 📌Global Tech Scale-Up: Led a 20-person HR team through a four-week design thinking capability-building project focused on re-imagining career growth. Subsequently partnered with the Executive Leadership Team on the company’s hybrid work transformation, which has since received external 'best place to work' recognition.📌Global Insurance Provider: Designed a recruiting strategy to position the company for stabilization and growth. Key focus areas were enhancing process efficiency, creating role transparency, and designing balanced metrics as well as optimizing the sourcing channel mix and creating a talent pipelining approach. One year after project completion, the client had already seen key metrics improvements, especially in time-to-fill.📌Global Tech Scale-Up: Led a 6-person cross-functional client team through a re-design of the new hire experience using the “Sprint” methodology (adjusting the product-focused approach to fit a talent challenge). The project resulted in a tested prototype after five days.

Evanston, Il, Us

I serve as an instructor in Northwestern University's Master's in Learning & Organizational Change (MSLOC) “Designing for Organizational Effectiveness" (DOEC) certification program.The DOEC helps students translate theory into practice through a 12-month, living design case study. The design case results in students developing an innovative solution to an organizational effectiveness challenge.I guide students through their design case, support innovative design thinking, and coach around students' individual learning goals. Since 2018, I have also been leading and coaching a team of four fellow mentors.In the summer of 2018, I served as a Teaching Assistant for the MSLOC "Cognitive Design" course. Cognitive design is about understanding human cognition - drawing from the fields of cognitive psychology and behavioral economics - to design processes and artifacts that help achieve personal and organizational goals. Concepts and methods taught in this course are considered the scientific underpinnings of design thinking.

Schaumburg, Il, Us

As a member of the HR Leadership Team, launched and scaled a new Center of Expertise dedicated to designing and implementing strategies spanning the company's talent agenda. Managed a $2.8M budget and a distributed team of 14 (2 People Managers; 12 Talent Scouts, HRIS & Internal Communications Professionals, and Employee Engagement & Employer Branding Consultants).Key accomplishments:📌Designed business case for culture transformation and “great place to work” journey supporting CEO’s strategic priorities. Managed engagement survey process (incl. vendor selection, executive stakeholder management, reporting & analytics, communications, change management, and action planning) impacting 13,000 full and part time employees and 160 top leaders of the company.📌Built a "Talent Scout" team that provided cutting-edge in-house sourcing and talent pipelining services from entry level to Executive search for an annual hiring volume of 5,000.📌Co-led transformation of the Talent Acquisition function resulting in reduction in search firm fees, decrease of time to fill by 20 days, and exceeding staffing levels of revenue-generating roles after only six months into the new model.📌Launched sourcing and employer branding strategy (including social/mobile, college, diversity, military vet, employee referral program) resulting in a larger and more diverse talent pool.📌Designed a talent segmentation framework identifying “mission critical” workforces to support the organization’s need for sharp focus in times of business turnaround.

Dublin 2, Ie

Advised clients (incl. executive stakeholders) on talent strategies at an array of Fortune 100 companies and across various industries and workforces, positively impacting up to 200,000 employees. Developed service offerings for Recruiting Strategy, Employee Value Proposition, and Multi-Generational Talent Management, positioning Accenture as thought leader in the field. Led program/project teams (incl. people managers) and provided mentoring and coaching to team members.Sample projects:📌Global Technology Company: Designed a competency framework and gap assessment for client's sales operations team enabling the organization to assess its talent needs for global expansion and strategic workforce planning.📌European Chemical Company: Led sourcing and employer branding component of comprehensive recruitment strategy re-design enabling client to better attract and source engineering talent across Europe.📌Large Consumer Goods Retailer: Led HR transformation project including digitalization analysis, process mapping, operating model design, and change management consultation to support client’s business strategy and M&A activity.📌Leading Telecommunications Provider: Enabled client’s growth strategy by leading an HR shared service center optimization project and providing coaching to HR transformation leader.📌Leading Consumer Goods Retailer: Developed efficiency recruiting model in order for client to better respond to 75% increase in application volume. Recommendations resulted in significant reduction of search firm fees and increased process efficiency through self-service enablement.

Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, De

Led learning and development interventions for 2,000 employees in the Americas. Managed two dotted line Training Consultants and led 10 Business Center Operations Managers through virtual teaming. First to implement ISPI's performance improvement methodology as a way to more strategically partner with the business.

Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, De

Established "Career Marketing" function as a strategic business partner supporting the company’s goal to attract, motivate and develop employees.Designed and implemented best practice onboarding program "navigate!" which was featured as Corporate Leadership Council (CLC) research brief.

Stuttgart, Baden-Württemberg, De

Competitively selected for a one year rotational international leadership development program for high potentials.

Executive Education

Masters (M.A.), International Information Management