CorporateSeptember 03, 2014

Eyes on the future

The Future Leader Summer Internship Program provides world class opportunities for future employees.

For the second year, Wolters Kluwer ran the Future Leader Summer Internship Program (FLSIP) providing world class opportunities to highly educated students, and exposing Wolters Kluwer leaders to talented graduate level students from top universities with high potential for future growth. With the Executive Sponsorship of Senior Vice President Corporate Strategy & Organizational Excellence, Andres Sadler, and Chief Talent Development Officer, Diane Holman, the goal of the program is to build an emerging leader pipeline and convert top performing interns to full time employees.

“At Wolters Kluwer, we strive to be known as a builder of global talent, and a key component of our talent management strategy is our Future Leaders Summer Intern Program (FLSIP),” said Holman. “This program has allowed us to identify and cultivate early career employees from some of the top business schools. We provide them with real corporate experience and development opportunities, forming a talent pool of the next generation of leaders that can then contribute to the company's future success.”

“The program is aimed at expanding our talent pipeline, building our employer brand and value proposition, and engaging students in meaningful and impactful projects that support our overall strategy,” added Sadler.

Aligned with our business strategy, the 2014 Future Leaders Internship Program designed ten significant projects which provided students with exposure to our innovative culture and opportunities to solve real business problems. The program kicked off with a 2-day orientation on Thursday, June 5 and ended on Friday, August 15. Ten graduate school interns spent the last 10 weeks across Wolters Kluwer’s key functions including business development and sales, strategy and analysis, operations, information technology, and marketing and product development in Chicago, New York, and Boston.

Starting with the orientation and continuing over the course of the summer, interns were exposed to key corporate and divisional leaders in Tax & Accounting, Legal & Regulatory, Health, and Financial & Compliance Services through lunch & learns and webinar presentations. The interns participated in a mid-summer “lunch summit” hosted by the program Executive Sponsors. Also in attendance were 7 former interns from 2013 that are now full-time employees. During this lunch, our current and former interns were able to share their experiences while creating a broader Future Leaders community.

“The one word that describes my experience is ‘awesome!’ I really enjoyed working in Wolters Kluwer Financial Services and with fellow interns on the group project,” said Prateek Singh, an MBA student at Brandeis University International Business School. “The environment at Wolters Kluwer is so intellectual, dynamic, friendly and scholastic and there are immense opportunities to learn, improve and add value to your projects. One of the key features of the FLSIP program that I liked was the ‘Lunch With Leaders.’ This was a fantastic opportunity to learn and understand from top management not only their expectations and perspective but rules of success. In the end, I will just say I was lucky to have this amazing summer opportunity at Wolters Kluwer.”

A key component of the program was the group project focused on identifying best practices across Wolters Kluwer for leveraging social media to address client and service delivery issues. The group project was sponsored by Neil Schmidt, Executive Vice President of Tax & Accounting Global Operations.

“The intern program is a valuable way for WK to showcase our company to some of the best MBA programs in the country,” said Schmidt. “It also provides, in a controlled way, the opportunity for WK to evaluate and recruit new talent in to the company. The interns get exposure to us, our values and our culture. We get the opportunity to evaluate their capabilities to work on projects that focus on team work and individual strengths. The intern program is a great way to identify new talent and bring them in to the organization.”

The program has also strengthened our relationship with target schools through campus visits and meaningful intern experiences. As part of the continued evolution of the program, we will also leverage graduates as campus ambassadors for Wolters Kluwer to help in recruiting for next year’s participants.

Overall, the interns expressed that their time at Wolters Kluwer was fruitful, and they really benefited from the resources and support they got during their internship.

“I greatly appreciated the effort that went into planning this year’s program", said John Mochan, a graduate student at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, concentrating in International Finance and Economic Policy. “Each project was carefully planned to provide us a chance to work on integral parts of the Wolters Kluwer’s business plan, and observe tangible results of their endeavors. Furthermore, the group project was a great addition to allow us to connect across divisions and with employees throughout the Wolters Kluwer environment.”

Let’s thank the Future Leader Internship Program participants for their hard work and creativity this year, and wish them all the best for their future.


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