Tailoring Workplace Learning – interview with Chris Tan, Winning Academy Learning and Development Manager

Transcript

Karen Kirton  00:00

Make sure we've got that. Okay. So the make it work theme for 2023 is upskilling. And in our last episode we explored upskilling in terms of the skills that are in demand right now and also to be expected to be in demand for the rest of the decade. And in today's episode, we're speaking with someone with firsthand experience in upskilling, and tailoring learning to the individual learner needs. So welcome to Chris tan, who's the winning Academy Learning and Development Manager. And the winning Academy is the learning arm of the winning group, which you may have heard of Winning Appliances, Winning Services, Appliances Online, and and do to name a few. So welcome, Chris.

Chris Tan  00:49

Thank you. Very pleasure to be here.

Karen Kirton  00:52

Thank you. So I thought to kick us off, could you explain how the winning Academy fits into the broader winning group business?

Chris Tan  01:01

Yeah, sure. Well, back in 2019, our CEO, John Herman winning, looked at a an issue that we had within the industry. And a lot of the training was very, post industrial didn't really wasn't really tailored towards the needs of our learners, which is the sales teams as well as our mobile transport teams, and so forth. So he decided to approach a few teachers, let's say, because we're all teachers at that stage. My, my senior manager is Ed Bruneck, who is the head of Tx and team experience. But he also comes from a teaching background as well. But we all both come from a marketing slash, teaching background. So we've got a bit of business acumen that goes with it. But as a result, we were sent in or developed to try and improve training and make sure that it's effective for our team so that they can be comfortable in what they're selling, and what products they know. It was all about products back then. But now it's all about how do we upskill people in many areas of the business. So we've got every we've got over 800 to 900, full time team members, and that ranges from marketing teams, to tech teams, to anything from sales teams, to customer service teams to our warehouse team. So we've got an eclectic bunch of people that we have to look after, and at the same time, but give them an opportunity to grow and develop. So what we do now is we make sure that we come up with a blended learning approach for each of these individuals. And people might ask, Oh, it takes you a while, how do you find the time to do so there, we use certain technologies to help us scale that. But at the same time, it's really important to have that face to face. But I think the main thing is we have divided ourselves now into sort of like three pillars one is about Academy learning, which is all about learning packs and learning campaigns is like a learning agency, for our suppliers, and what they deliver to us as products and how we sell those. And then the second thing there is we talk about what we call the winning Academy hub. So that's where a lot of our internal team members come and do microcredentials learning. And that's all tailored towards what their needs are, we don't pull off the shelf, per se and give them a workshop to go through where you'd like to do that internally, ourselves. And then what we do then is provide them with a plan that we talk through with them in order to get that done. And then the third one, which we're really passionate about is high performing teams. So we go out to organisations as well as the organisation that we deal with here. So we've got seven or eight business units that we have to deal with here. And we teach them and facilitate and enable them to have high performing teams. So anything from improved customer service, leadership programmes, which we run a lot of. And then at the same time, there's some sales and customer service training that goes with it. So it's a it's been a bundle of joy, let's say over the COVID, period, 2019 and 2020 and 21. But look, we've managed to do a lot within those three years. And it's just because, you know, you can do a lot with not to no little resources, if that makes sense. As a result of, you know, doing a lot with no resources, that's the expectation now, it's probably I've dug myself a hole, but we have now revenue streams that we can tap into. So that allows us to then reinvest into the business as we do. So. I think the big part of us now is we're not a cost centre, we're a revenue centre for the business. So that sort of helps us with conversations when we have every year about what business is doing and looking at people costs and all that sort of stuff. We We purposely position ourselves so that we're a revenue stream rather than a cost centre.

Lachy Gray  04:54

Excellent. Yeah, I just like to underline that I think it's, well, it's a fair have the unique perspective or the, in my experience that to see learning as revenue generating, rather than a cost centre, it's quite refreshing. And it's fantastic to hear how you're approaching it. Chris, you got a lot of, you're juggling.

05:15

Definitely juggling, especially with the two young kids as well doesn't help. But look, it's it's what I'm passionate about meeting. And I know that's a cliche for some people. But there's no better place at the moment for me to then sit down in here and just get free rein as to this is an idea we have in order to improve learning. And if it sticks, it sticks if it doesn't, let's try another way of doing it. So because the the investment upfront is not much, because I think that's the crucial part for l&d Is that what you can do with the team that you've got around you and not spend too many resources, including not going to Kinko's to print off materials as an example. Sorry, Officeworks, I should say Kinkos as my American term, but if you know any dollar that you can say, but then reinvest in yourself as an l&d professional, and with team that you've got the more power to you because we're easily we can easily be perceived as not the subject matter experts in the fields that we're dealing with, which is correct. But we are definitely the subject matter experts into in terms of effective learning, building learning programmes, and making sure that there's impact.

Lachy Gray  06:23

And Chris, it's common for the learners needs, in my experience to be skimmed over or forgotten in workplace training. But why do you think that is? Well, I

06:35

think from the outset, l&d is not even in the conversation when they talk about budgets. I mean, like, it's, it's literally, the role of our his 5% for marketing is 5% for l&d, or less than that, for that matter. And all they do is just put that into the corner, because they think there's other conversations to be had. But if you think about it, it's like, people, resources, how are we going to keep people? How are we going to make sure that, you know, they get the training that they need, but also the fact that if they do leave us, what training are we gonna give them that we're not going to lose, and we're gonna lose that IP or that knowledge as soon as they leave. So it's almost like, we don't enter the conversations. But that's why I feel like if I go for any book, we get asked to see if you're interested in jobs and all that sort of stuff. But I always ask the question, what's the goal of l&d in this space, and nine times out attendance, or we just need to do training and onboarding? So that's not a goal. If you're any, if you're a smart business person, you'd have a smarter goal in there that will tell me, what's the metric? What's the timeline? And what do you actually want to get out of l&d as opposed to just going, we just need them to be trained, because there's three thoughts of training at the moment that we need to deal with as l&d people, training for compliance. And I call and the difference here is that there's learning for enhanced performance, which is two different things. I use the word learning versus training there. And then there's learning for growth for the individuals. There's three very different fields there that I don't think people categorise before they even start looking at a l&d plan. And I think once you know if, and people will argue the fact that I don't have a big enough team to deal with all three of those. I beg to differ because you actually haven't done that. What's the word? You haven't done that selection piece or categorising to begin with? So it's really hard to know what resources you need to apply for it. Because you don't know what the goal or the endgame is. And that's the biggest issue, I think why it gets skipped over a lot of the time?

Karen Kirton  08:33

Yeah, I've seen a lot of individual development plans over the years, after 20 odd years in HR. And this is a segue, I appreciated your reference to Kinkos. Because I worked for them many years ago. It's a term in forever.

08:51

No, because at uni, I was.

Karen Kirton  08:56

In the last episode, actually, you're lucky I had quite an in depth conversation around why there is this imperative to upskill in business and putting that together with the idea of you know, these learner driven development plans would be great if you could talk us through how you actually put together learning plans with your employees? And is it driven by the learner or the business or both?

09:19

Well, like I said, it depends on what are the three categories that we're talking about their training for compliance, which is I have to do this because in order to do this job, I need x y Zed, or we need to do that, that sort of stuff. It's literally we roll out as a scale process. And you know, with the help of Lachy's platform, you know, and so forth, we will roll that out and just say, by the way, this is the compliance piece that needs to get done. Let's make that effective as possible. But we also can track the impact of that as opposed to let's spend copious amounts of time bringing them in to go and do this. It's just the goal of that is very different. Now in terms of learning for enhanced performance, that's where we go and hit up the hiring manager. So it's the hiring managers role to run what we call growth plans. And I don't run that in part of my team, but the TX team, which is Team experienced the HR component of our business, they run that with the business partners with each individual hiring manager, so that they can come up with a self reflection on where they're at, as well as a reflection from the manager. And then what they try and do is marry up the two. And then what we do is we put them amongst the grid, performance grid or people plan grid. So it's all about individuals with potential and performance. And then it's team in with potential performance. And then it's group with potential performance. That's how we lay out our senior already, if that makes sense. And with that, we then come back to us as the as the learning agency in this in this realm, and we action, what has been planned by them. So they will say to us, by the way, our teams are deficient in x y Zed, so then we will come up with a plan for the team as a result of that. And part of that plan. And part of the rollout of that is to then go and work with individuals as part of that programme for the leaders to then go and identify their team, their growth, their performance, etc, etc. And then for learning for growth, that's where we asked the individuals to come and seek consultation, if it for the lack of a better term, to come and see my team, which is myself and to others, to then just understand where they want to be. And to be honest, it has, we have to have that tough conversation, because a lot of the time some of the conversations that are having with us, it doesn't fit within our goals of our business. And it doesn't fit within the goals of l&d plan. So we have to have that upfront conversation and say, by the way, this performance that you're having on your performance plan, and with your learning plan for your team, it doesn't marry up with why with what your growth plan is as an individual. So obviously, you're never going to perform at your best because it doesn't align. It's a juggle. But I think that's where you have to play a lot of strategy, first and foremost, and talk with the teams and you're different. And they're different for every business unit. So we've got over how many 1500 people including contractors, and to understand where they're all that what we do is we targeted on the hiring managers of those business units first, and then we filter down because once we know the goal of that business, we can then align everything else with that problematic about it, that's all

Lachy Gray  12:25

Yeah, it's a logical approach, starting with the needs and working back from there. Whereas often, what I see is, yeah, does sign up for a platform, and then well, everyone's got access to it now. So somehow, it's just going to work and achieve something.

12:42

The big thing is, there's too much noise, Lachy, there's way too much noise in this space, what we need to do is be able to provide all the strategy and all the implementation to allow them to make that impact. And I think that's the big big sort of juxtaposition that I like to do is that I'm actually looking after the individuals as learning development person, I'm not looking after the business goals. But if I look after the goals of the individuals and understand the goals of the business, I can then align that because I know that's my needle, that's where I need to move these people to towards, you know, a bit more time with your people, rather than just doing a blanket approach on things.

Lachy Gray  13:22

Then I'd like to dig into that. So I imagine creating these individual learning plans, absolutely beneficial, but it's, I'm assuming it's time consuming by design. So how do you demonstrate the business impact of this approach to learning?

13:37

Well, I think the biggest thing is like we got to show value, like if there's no measurable goals at the end of it, and you can't show value, there's no point, because at the end of the year, you're just going to be put on a pedestal. So you're going to be put on the chopping blocks, per se, and asked to explain yourself, but you've got nothing to explain, because there is no gold out front. So what's the metric that I have to move? Like, we can't be naive with this? Like, we are in l&d, yes. And we're in the job of looking after people. But there is a commercial element to this where businesses have to make money. And the reason why they're asking you to invest in these people is because they want to use their human resources to make that money. I get in the room with the hiring managers first and then understand their goals. And then we over index on the communication to make sure that they know that these are the goals of the all the individuals. And if it doesn't align, we have to put our big boy shoes on and go Well, this is not working for us. And for you to be able to help determine what costs you need to shave. And I know that sounds a bit of what's the word, the misuse of trust, so to speak, but that's from the outset what you said as the expectation with the individuals because no one wants to work where they're not going to move or they're not going to reach a goal and then feel like they've made a difference. I don't know. That's my thought processes. I'd much rather work somewhere where I'm always trying to find what that goal is and trying to achieve that goal. Because otherwise you just fall a bit stagnant.

Karen Kirton  15:11

It's one of those sort of innate human needs, isn't it for autonomy and competence, achievement. And I think that you're setting the goals, it gives the business the the expectation, those metrics, but also the individual as well, which is really important. I was just reflecting on recently, I was invited to a q&a, where we were talking about employee retention. And so you know, it's hard to discuss employee development, because particularly, at the moment, if anyone's trying to hire seems to be the same song sheet that everyone's telling me, I can't find anybody out there. So it's like, okay, well, how do we retain the people that we have? And so we're talking a lot about employee development and the importance of that when it comes to retention. But one of the questions that was posed to me was, you know, what about employees who don't want to develop? So be interested in your perspective on that, Chris?

16:04

Short answer? Why? I'd be because we're doing these one on ones, because the hiring managers are doing the one on ones. It's why don't you want to let there's obviously some issue that they've had in the past. And to be honest, a lot of people in work situations have never had a great experience with everyone. Yeah, always an add on. It's always something that I have to extra do. And it's never explained to them why they have to do it. And then it's the same thing as they've never been asked, What do you actually want to do? And I think that's the biggest point is that, in short, is that if we don't ask the question, and we don't actually figure out why they're in the business in the first place, and we don't know what their goals are. Why are we doing this?

Lachy Gray  16:48

Chris with upskilling, and the speed of change in skills, leaders are faced with the choice of growing skills in house or or recruiting for them? How do you think about this?

17:00

Deep sphere is our strength profiling platform that we have Katherine at Dr. category to grown, he's our chief science officer. And she has been instrumental in developing a Strengths profiling system for our business. So we do that from the outset, we send that to the candidates when we first start. And that's a really good opportunity for us to then know, what their strengths are in terms of their emotional slash personality, slash, how they what drives them. And then what we can do then is then when we have their one on one conversations, we really revisit those, and then allow them to design with us what that learning programme looks like for us. So it's a very simple concept. I think we overdo it, because we don't actually know the individual. So by knowing the individual, we're always going to be a step ahead. When we come to this and the time consuming aspect of trying to figure out what's the best option for these individuals isn't there?

Karen Kirton  17:59

So in our last episode, we were also talking about soft skills or hearing skills and how they're quite critical for potential and current leaders. And you were talking before about your leadership programmes. So I'd love to know more about how you go about those programmes. And do they have different stages and levels and how you do those programmes? Yeah, so

18:19

our leadership programme comes under the banner of our people framework. And what happens is with our business units that we have, we've got anything from truck drivers, to DC supervisors, to salespeople, to take teams to anything, you name it. So what we need to do there is try and come up with a framework where we say we look after the individual. And then if you're a high performing individual, you're at the peak of that, let's say that part of the grid, then the next part of the grid, which is the middle part of the grid is the team aspects. So your business unit that you're working in, and the teams that you actually work in, how does that actually look like for you? And are you a top performer in that space as well? So can you make other people look better? And then what we do as a result of that, is we then go and say to the individuals, is that? Okay? Now you're a top of the game as a leader, as a business unit leader in your business? Can you do that amongst the group? So can you have traction and make influence across the whole group across the whole six to seven, eight businesses that we have? And then as a result, we then have categorised our leadership programmes into three things. The first one being emerging leaders. So how do we turn high performing people into people being an impactful leader and someone of influence the second one being winning group leaders, so those who can drive the ambition of the business and making sure that you know, the goals and the attainment and progress and innovation is continually being reinforced in the business and then we have our senior leadership role? traits and things like that, and experiences, which were yet to roll out because of COVID. But at the same time, we're looking forward to some of those immersion experiences in the next couple of half a year or a year or so. So, in essence, there is progress and progression through our leadership programmes. And then likewise, we also run these as part of high performing teams. And we go externally to external businesses to run these as well, as well as attaching the big player DSP and running deep sphere with our teams as well, as well as external people.

Karen Kirton  20:30

I think that's awesome. Because, particularly in my experience with retail is there's so much going on in terms of training and development with with products or services. So to be able to offer, those additional leadership skills must be a great thing for your employees as well, in terms of retention and engagement.

20:51

Yeah, it is. And I think one of the things is like, you're gonna lose certain people along the way, because A, they get poached because of this, the fact that, you know, they go to another, go to another business or see, leadership's just not for them. So it's an actual great opportunity without having to, what's the word, degrade the value of the programme or the standards of the programme, by just saying, this is the standard that we expect, and we need and expect you to be there. And if you're not, that's okay. It just means that we you need to have another crack at this at another time. But go back and think about what your goals are, because you guys might not be aligned with leadership, it might be aligned with being a subject matter expert or a high performer in that field. But as an individual, rather than as a team, where there still is room for that. It's just that in this case, the leadership component won't be something that you would look at that point in time for your, for your growth. So yeah, I think we're big believers in, you know, holding people accountable for this, including the hiring managers, because they're the ones that nominate these people for the leadership programmes to begin with.

Lachy Gray  22:00

And, Chris, what skills if you identified as most important for the organisation the next two to three years?

22:07

Well, this might sound cliche, but we have four values in our business. The first one is care. Second one is well, meaning we well everything that we do. Third one is problem solving. And then the fourth one is owning it. Now, they don't fit traditionally, into the skills of, you know, the OECD skills that were going forward. But they're the four things that I look forward to and look for in people, you know, in anything that I do, not only in this, but in sport, you know, all the coaching that we're doing with kids sport, and what we have done in the past, it's the ability to make sure that you care for the others and make them better. Second one being problem solving. So there's no problem out there that you there's no solution for. And then the second, the third one being well, meaning just going above and beyond, like, there's no, there's no point just doing this, pardon the phrase half assed, you've actually got to do this properly. And then at the same time, if you do it properly, make sure the people at the end receiving whatever you're you're imparting or receiving the service that you're giving them is like no one else provides me with this yet. I mean, and I think that's the point of difference for a lot of people. And then the last one is just own it, meaning if you do something wrong, just own it, and try better. Try a different way. It's just we want people to understand that being accountable for your decisions and understanding that a sometimes they don't work all the time. That's the beauty of learning. And that's the beauty of being someone progress.

Karen Kirton  23:43

I love that it's so refreshing to hear someone talk about the values of the organisation in an actual, practical operationalized way.

23:54

It's plastered all over our wall. So and I we we don't have too many rules around this place in too many policies. But we always say if you guide your decision making between those four actual skill sets, you won't go too far wrong.

Karen Kirton  24:10

Yeah, no, I think that's great, because I see far too many organisations that have it plastered on the walls. But if you ask any random person, sometimes including the leadership team, what the values are, they don't know.

24:24

We have totally changed that meaning. We used to have nine, nine sort of values that everyone had to remember. But we just basically said, Let's just develop four ways of being which we all just live by. That's to answer your question. Lachy. I'm not sure if I answered it correctly. But, you know, there's too many too many conversations about what soft skills are hard skills, all that sort of stuff. But if you've just got four to five real key pillars that you want to work towards, that's your kind of go to fire on there, and then there's no confusion on anyone else's behalf. Mm.

Lachy Gray  25:00

I like it. That's fair, it's healthy. It's really refreshing.

Karen Kirton  25:03

I think that it's been a really great conversation and insight today into a larger business that obviously values learning and development. And does it a little bit differently to a traditional corporate as well. And I really appreciated your insights today. And I think you're thinking about takeaways or actions, for people listening. For me, the line that you said about, it's just about getting a bit more time with your people. Because I think you know, that's so important to go into that learning and development mindset with, this is not the deconflict kind of stuff, or you need to go and fill out that development plan. But actually just taking that little bit of time with that person. Already, like, you know, having those measurable goals and being able to show the value, I think that's really important. And the other one that I wrote down was accountability, because unfortunately, that gets lost many times in businesses. And I like that you have that accountability mindset in terms of not just the employees that are going to the programmes, but also the managers who are nominating them to go. I think that's fantastic. Yeah, I

Lachy Gray  26:13

think one word I heard you use a few times. So Chris, is alignment really, really resonates with me. They're asking why, starting with y, for the organisation for the learner as well, like, it's a it's a collaboration, it's not a directive, defining the success metrics that everybody cares about, and they can actually measure progress against I do agree, being like, knowing what progress looks like, is really important for the for our motivation. So I think that's fantastic. And I do like the accountability side, too, because it's easy to set goals, and then never look at them again. So to have accountability for the learner, but also that their manager that they're in it together. And they're going to work towards things things and grow collectively, really stood out to me.

27:07

No worries, well, look, as I said, it's just a sort of a sheepish plug for me. But the idea is that the academy, we're here to do this for businesses as well. So we do this for our teams. But we also have the experience now and the know how, and obviously the awards that go with it as well as as the winning group to show people that, you know, we're happy to spread the word, but we're, and we're happy to come into organisations and help them do that as well.

Karen Kirton  27:33

Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Chris. It's been an absolute pleasure today, and links to articles, and anything else that we've discussed will be over on our websites amplify hr.com to AU and yellow.com to AU, just follow the links to the podcast section. And if you'd like to get in touch with Chris, you can do that. At academy@winning.com.au. And if you've received value from this episode, we'd love it if you could leave a rating or review over at Apple podcasts.

Lachy Gray  28:02

Coming up in the next episode, we're going to talk about growing skills in house.

Karen Kirton  28:07

Yeah, and due to the upcoming public and school holidays, we're having a short break. So that episode will actually be released on the 21st of April, so you can click the subscribe button to be notified of when that's available. Any final thoughts Lachy?

Lachy Gray  28:21

Well, I'm gonna start thinking about our learning and three that those three categories training for compliance for enhanced learning for enhanced performance and learning for growth can't go wrong.

Karen Kirton  28:31

Absolutely. And any final thoughts from you, Chris?

28:34

No, look, as I said, this is a fun place to be and in terms of the l&d space, so I'm looking forward to more more and more people getting in this space. But we've just got to build ourselves a big enough platform to be heard, and I'm sure we will be so look forward to working with many of you in the future.

Karen Kirton  28:52

Awesome. Thank you for joining us. I will see you next time on the makeup work podcast.