Empowering your people

Think of it as an investment. Staff training is vital to the well-being of any business. Invest today and benefits in productivity and improved team culture can happen almost overnight. NZBusiness highlights the gains to be made from upskilling your people.

When economic times are tough, as they certainly were during the GFC, it’s no surprise that New Zealand’s employers cut back on staff training. It’s unfortunate that when it comes to cost-cutting, training is one of the first budgets to be impacted.

But now that our so-called ‘rock-star economy’ is here, employers are prepared to open their wallets again. That’s the feedback from the training industry.

Olivia Blaylock, MD of training company David Forman, has seen the upturn in the training sector first hand – especially in the past 12 months.

“The training marketplace in New Zealand is pretty buoyant at the moment, which is great for our industry. The only challenge for those seeking training is to ensure they work with companies that genuinely help to achieve real behaviour change; not just treat training as a tick-the-box to use budget that is now available,” she says.

Richard Gee, whose company Geewiz has been active in the sales training field for many years, agrees that there’s been a lift in the market. “Most enlightened employers are now investing in their current staff to ensure they’re efficient and productive, and they’re using training as a reward for good behaviour.” 

Gee says the biggest investors in training programs are still small to medium enterprises; firms who want their people to feel valued. Training in the customer service and sales sectors has particularly shown signs of growth. 

“This is unlike Australia where the current economic downturn has crashed training, along with other costs, to make sure businesses can survive,” he says.
“It reminds you of New Zealand six to seven years ago.

Of course the Aussies, just as the New Zealand employers did, will learn that cutting back on training
is false economy.

Gee’s advice to employers on both side of the Tasman is to wake up before you lose your good, experienced people to another enlightened employer. “You’re making an investment with training the same as any other investment,” he says. “It must be supported and measured to give its ROI.”

Gee believes New Zealand needs to develop its skills base. “Training makes our economy grow faster and, most importantly, your customers see the difference.” He also believes training provides faster value for a business than investing in new equipment. “When staff perform better, your customers benefit the most.”

Olivia Blaylock agrees, particularly on measuring a return on investment. “If you have clear objectives and outcomes established and good metrics in place, any investment in training should be self-funding and more, in terms of the improved performance and business results that come about as a result.”

Another vitally important aspect, Blaylock points out, is that in this increasingly commoditised world, many are finding that the only real way to differentiate themselves in their marketplace is through their people. “Its cliché, but it’s truer now than ever. And if you’re serious, you’d better help your people to develop and hone their mindset, skills and tools to enable that to happen!”

The sales figures don’t lie

While training across all business disciplines pays dividends, it is perhaps most obvious in the area of sales – where it’s easiest to quantify results.

Blaylock has seen plenty of evidence of training impacting positively on profitability and culture; from clients undergoing significant organisational change (where her company has helped them rework or rebuild their culture) through to those who’ve seen measureable increases in sales and margins following training.

“We confidently say that clients we work with in the sales space see average sustained revenue gains of around 20 percent – with no loss of margin, and sometimes margin gains, following our training and coaching with their teams,” she says. 

“Anyone considering investing in sales training should ask their intended provider what gains in revenues their clients typically see – and ask them for specific examples,” Blaylock advises.

Richard Gee also has many examples of how sales training pays off. There’s the case of the beauty products distributor. It had a sales team of four, poor sales, poor call plans, poor budget results and poor attitude, recalls Gee. “After training the sales team and coaching the managing director there was an absolute transformation. The sales budgets were being met. The reps were calling on 200 percent more clients per week, and commenting on how they love their work now. The culture’s positive and net margins significantly improved.”

Another example is the national chemicals distributor that had a 30-year record of missed budgets. “Within three months of conducting skills training for the sales reps, measurements were in place, as were call cycles, call planning, and incentives introduced for above-budget performance.

“The company has beaten budget every month for the past eight months,” says Gee, “totally transforming the sales team, the results and customers’ satisfaction. The business is now growing at a rate of 200 percent.”

Training delivery

With business owners under increased pressure to improve efficiency and employee productivity, it’s no wonder they’re reluctant to sacrifice workers from the workplace for long periods, as they would have in pre-Internet times. The learning space has changed and online and mobile platforms are now viable options for training delivery. “These channels can be great for information transfer and reduce costs for compliance training,” says Blaylock. “That is now very important for many industries.”

She says David Forman is now using technology more in the workshop environment too. “So encouraging learners to use tools for discovery exercises – for example, brainstorming – or using smartphones to video workshop demos for playback later. It really helps with those ‘ahah’ moments.”

However, Blaylock cautions anyone who really needs to challenge the thinking of their people and, more importantly, change their behaviours, and consider whether a purely online approach is likely to achieve what they need. “The use of some form of blended approach is likely to work best. This is where a face-to-face approach enabling discussion, debate and most importantly, skills practice to build capability and confidence, can be enhanced through the pre-workshop use of online, or mobile technology; to provide benchmarking and initial theory transfer. And then post-workshop for reinforcement and possibly knowledge measurement.” 

Blaylock says they have recently undergone a significant review of their content and delivery methods. The use of simulations is now common in their delivery. “We work with our clients in the design and development stage to create very relevant scenarios that we use in face to face workshops, so the skills practice is totally specific and relevant to the challenges faced by the participants. 

“To create these simulations we have to really get inside our client’s business; understand their strategy, challenges, culture, barriers to success, etc. Sharing this information with us doesn’t happen unless we’re a trusted partner and not merely a training supplier.”

Richard Gee still sees the merit in face to face training for developing skills. “A skilled trainer can bring out peoples’ confidence to make changes.” People react off each other, he says, and face to face training does this without interruption.

“For induction or company vision training, online has its place,” believes Gee. “But it is full of distractions and lack of attention by participants, and can be stopped and restarted without continuity.

“[Online] does not yet work for skills training or personalised staff training. However, it does help managers or leaders who need mentoring online.”

Local or licensed?

Business training and team training is a specialist field that demands quick results. Employers want long-term gains to materialise as fast as possible. Tom Emmerson of THE Marketing Company reminds us that it’s the evolutionary drive for businesses to develop faster than their competition that has produced two main forms of training content and methods.

“One is for training development companies to license material from well-known firms and figures. These often feature famous names, such as Covey, and are often developed for a specific field of business.

“The other is for methods to be developed in-country. These tend to reflect idiosyncrasies in business relationships, or cultural influences that impact the commercial environment.”

Emmerson says both have their benefits and drawbacks. “The licensed approach is tested internationally daily. Applicable to almost all businesses and industries these are tools designed to assess and analyse, or are teachings which are applicable to a myriad of management styles and team dynamics.”

This approach can cut through a lot of the superficial layers and get to the core issues in a business, he says. “Many training firms in New Zealand use US-derived assessment tools to then recommend development programmes that can fix underlying issues. Other firms offer courses directly licensed from the teachings of a well-known business leader, or their books. 

“When considering their application to export markets or international trade the licensed approach teaches businesses how to do business in a similar way to companies in countries where those courses are derived.”

The drawback to this approach is that in markets where a unique commercial environment exists these can be superficial in understanding market uniqueness, says Emmerson. “Almost all are developed in nations such as the UK and US, where business is developed, structured and process-driven.

“Nationally developed training is constantly benchmarked against international methods, so must be at least as relevant from a content perspective. These methods can feature internationally-derived teachings but generally have a more local perspective added. They can focus on more relationship-based selling to meet the needs of companies operating in countries like New Zealand, Australia, Canada and Japan. 

“In an export or international context these nationally developed courses can teach a business how to use unique local traits to do business abroad,” says Emmerson.

When considering which route to follow when developing your team and your way of doing business, he says consider how you want to do business and who you want to do business with.

“If most of your trade is international then ensure the training company you use has international experience, courses that suit those markets, as well as an understanding of how to adapt your business to fit. 

“If you mostly focus on specific national markets then take the time to find a training company with expertise in that market.”

Executive education

At the University of Auckland Business School, executive education director Ivan Moss has a cartoon in his wall depicting a conversation between two business managers. The first asks: “What if we train our employees and they leave?” The other replies: “What if we don’t train them and they stay?”

Attitudes towards staff training differ widely with some employers believing they can hire a staff member already “complete” with no need to develop them further,
says Moss.

Fortunately there are business owners and managers who know that investing in training for themselves and their employees boosts performance and profitability.

“Investing in your people can pay off instantly – the day they return to work,” he says. “For participants in longer development programmes the benefit is often visible even before they complete the whole programme.”

Some organisations work to a rule of investing three percent of an employee’s salary on training and development which can help towards increasing staff retention and engagement.

A key focus for the University’s Executive Education team is maximising the return on learning and helping people embed the knowledge and skills back in the workplace.

“We give people access to the best ideas, research and evidence-based knowledge of what works, and practical knowledge on how to move an organisation through change. We want them to come out with action points and a solid plan of how they are going to achieve them.”

Executive Education offers short courses for individuals, in-house short courses for teams, customised programmes for organisations, and executive programmes for mid-career professionals.

Bruce Gallie, ‎COO for New Zealand at Colliers International, took a two-day short course called Lean Thinking, to learn how Lean principles could be applied in a professional services environment.

“What I learnt has opened my eyes, in particular to the prevalence of waste in many processes and the need to constantly innovate our approach to servicing our clients. I would recommend this course to anyone who wants to drive transformational change and improvement.”

In-house or customised programmes are designed with input from participants and senior executives so they are relevant and address key business problems.

Fletcher Building’s senior leadership team worked with Executive Education to design an intensive eight-month programme to help senior employees make timely and bold strategic decisions. It involved intensive coaching and mentoring, as well as a four-day event resembling The Amazing Race where teams were set difficult commercial challenges that mimic the pace and urgency of Fletcher Building’s business environment.

Kate Daly, Fletcher Building’s chief executive of Corporate Services, said the programme had already delivered impressive returns.

The Executive Education programmes attracting increasing interest are those designed for mid-career professionals who want knowledge and skills to reach the next level of their careers. “We’re seeing a lot of people working in mid-sized organisations who, by their mid-30s, find themselves in career isolation,” Moss explains. “They find themselves in a role where they have no-one to learn off, so many people are trading on what they’ve learnt in the past ten years. It’s not their fault, and it’s not their employer’s fault, but they need to do something about it.”

Tara Macmillan, group supply chain manager at Northpower was looking to gain access to other supply chain professionals and global experts to challenge her views, explore alternative methods and expand her toolkit.

She joined the Strategic Supply Chain Management Programme, which is delivered in five three-day blocks over seven months.

“It challenges your thinking, encourages you to have more strategy-based discussions and, most importantly, helps you to enable your company to maintain or create a competitive advantage.”

Going forward

The general consensus in the training marketplace is that there are exciting times ahead.

“Learning and development is now a key staff recruitment and retention strategy. So the more we can develop people, the more competitive our organisations become and the more we’re able to compete strongly in the global marketplace,” says David Forman’s Olivia Blaylock. 

With our economy now seen as a star performer now’s the time to attract back some of our brightest Kiwi talent, she says, as well as ensuring a vibrant and stimulating environment for those already here. 

“But we won’t do that if we don’t provide the opportunities for people to grow and develop – both personally and professionally.”