How To Train Your Workforce

Every organisation wants more high performers – those people who aren’t just good at their job, but go the extra mile, have the innovative thoughts, and perform at the very top of their ability. However, we often spend most of our time fixing under performance – a process which is time and energy consuming, not to mention very reactive. So how can organisations reframe coaching from fixing problems to enabling high performance? Natalie Ashdown⁠⁠⁠ helps ⁠⁠David King⁠⁠ unpack this topic.

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Finding new employees externally is important for bringing in new skills and thoughts to your organisation, but is there a risk that organisations rely too heavily on recruitment to solve their problems. The other alternative is to promote from within – the internal hire. Yet internal hiring requires planning too. In this episode David King and chats to guest Sam Russell to help organisations reflect on the internal vs external hire decision and perhaps refocus their attention a little more on capability development.

Change is a constant factor for any successful organisation. Right now, it's likely your organisation has several transformation projects underway to improve products, systems or services. Yet despite this consistency, surveys suggest that the majority of transformation projects fail. A big part of the problem are your people – whatever tools or platform you are changing requires additional change from your people. Yet people can be resistant to change! So in this episode, David King and guest Bianca Starcevich dive into how HR and L&D teams can use workforce training to improve transformation projects.

Why don’t learners just come to training with an open mind, fully engaged and ready to put new ideas into action? It’s a frustration which underpins a lot of failed training. All too often, learners don’t know why they are attending training or have their own expectations or outcomes which may not align with those of their manager or organisation. Put simply—the learner has not bought into the training, or have misaligned buy-in from other stakeholders. If learner buy-in is missing, then your training is almost doomed to fail. Never fear though, in this episode Amy Webster helps host David King unpack strategies to help drive learner buy-in.

Survey’s suggest that the average professional spends 30-50% of their week in meetings. It’s a huge investment of time, so you would think organisations would want to ensure it’s a good investment of time. Yet meetings are often the bane of our week—too many, too long, too inefficient. Its worse when we consider that meetings are a key tool in workforce training too, identifying issues, sharing knowledge and empowering change. And the rise of virtual meetings with the COVID 19 pandemic hasn’t necessarily helped either—it's just created more ways to have more meetings. It doesn’t have to be this way though, as we found out in today’s discussion with Dr. Sean Rintel on the art of the modern meeting.

Most organisations think about customer service—the physical actions of fulfilling customer needs—but not all think equally about customer experience—the emotional journey of customers encountering those actions. Yet the way we feel about our experiences with a brand or organisation is the defining factor in our relationship towards that brand or organisation. And every organisation has customers—internal or external. So in this episode, David and Learning and engagement design expert guest, Marion Lawie unpack the concept of customer experience and look at practical tips any organisation can use to create training for their workforce which enhances that experience, while offering help and support for the employees providing it. 

Everyone wants to be promoted to manager. At least, it sometimes feels like that. High performers in your organisation often reach a point where they want to become a manager, or their organisation wants to promote them to manager. Yet what makes you good at one thing—your expert tasks—may not make you good at another thing—managing a team. This transition process for first time managers is often overlooked or poorly implemented. In this episode, David sits down with Kate Arnold, Head of People at Madison Group Enterprises, to unpack this topic. 

How important is the effectiveness of your organisation's training? Pretty important is probably what you're thinking, yet many organisations think one thing and do another. They roll out workforce training with the good intentions of creating learning to improve outcomes, yet so much training is ultimately ineffective. Attending training does not automatically lead to change. Information is not transformation. Yet there are ways to rethink the effectiveness of training, particularly in a world filled with overwhelming information. In this episode, David sits down with Geoff Rip, Founder & Principal Designer at Training That Works, to unpack training effectiveness. Geoff has also written an article on this topic you can find here.

Leaders. Every organisation has them. Every organisation relies on them to craft strategy, set direction and support business culture. Yet leaders often sit outside training plans, despite the their own need for improved interpersonal skills, staying abreast of industry developments or learning new business strategies. There’s also something to be said for leaders to be seen leading the way in a culture of improvement and growth. It’s too bad then, that leaders are often excluded from training plans. In this episode, David sits down with James Hanson, Global Organisational Development Manager at Cardno (now Stantec) to unpack the best ways to tackle this problem.

Employee retention matters. Employee turnover is costly—recruitment fees, initial training time, onboarding costs plus delays to projects and impacts on general employee morale. Even more—when employees leave, their knowledge goes with them. All those skills, tricks, processes, proven methods from your employees represents tangible and valuable assets. But organisations of any size can hold onto their employees and their valuable knowledge. In this episode, David sits down with Lauren Scholtz, L&D manager at intelliHR to unpack the best ways to tackle employee retention and tacit knowledge.