Nigel Cassidy (NC): How can workforce learning help develop the skills organisations need for success? I'm Nigel Cassidy and this is the CIPD podcast.
Now smart businesses have learned for themselves that it isn't very productive to keep managing their people in set, defined job roles. Tear down organisational silos, knot heads together, and you can then start filling those capability gaps with underused talent that you probably didn't even know you had on board. And you can focus hard on continuously re-skilling staff and recruits alike to meet business needs.
Now our last CIPD podcast from the Festival of Work was a great primer on the benefits of becoming a skills-based organisation. But what we're going to tackle now is how you get there, and in particular, how your learning and development must change and adapt to put upskilling centre stage.
Now all that, plus stay with us, because as a bonus this month at the end of this podcast, I'm meeting Caroline Stockman, the CIPD's new interim chief, to find out what she's all about. That's later, but first, what learning and development can do to boost skills.
Andrew Jacobs is a learning strategist and founder chief at Llarn Learning. He's worked in banking, the London Fire Brigade, retail, and local and central government. He also once worked as a butcher and a children's entertainer. Presumably the last two weren't at the same time for safety reasons, if nothing else. Hello, Andrew.
Andrew Jacobs (AJ): Hello, nice to see you.
NC: Shona Marshall founded her ASM Difference Consultancy after more than 20 years in learning talent and OD roles in the engineering, defence, and construction sectors. Her watchword being what helps people perform at their best. Hi Shona.
Shona Marshall (SM): Hi there Nigel.
NC: And completing our trio, a learning and development professional with particular expertise in delivering programmes to solve the people problems besetting senior and new managers alike. She's Managing Director at McManus HRD. It's Laurell Hector.
Laurell Hector (LH): Hi Nigel, thanks for having me.
NC: Now, just for fun, seeing as we're all talking about skills, I just wonder what obscure talent or skill do you have that definitely isn't on your CV, Shona?
SM: Oh, thanks for starting with me, Nigel. Apparently, I have an unexpected talent for coordinating weddings, which I may get into later on in the podcast. I will leave it there at the moment.
NC: Oh, okay, right, yes. Leave us wanting more. Laurell.
LH: Yeah, interesting question. So what's not on my CV, which may be a bit strange, and again, I will allude to this as we get talking about the topic today. At 14, I was asked, what did I want to do when I grew up? What do we want to do? They were sorting out work experience, which my son is on work experience this week. And at 14, my response was, I want to work in a bank, and I want to work in HR. Strange.
NC: Right, you knew what HR was at that age? That’s extraordinary.
LH: I did. I did. Big story behind that. I'll save that for later or for another time.
NC: Okay. And Andrew, butchery maybe?
AJ: Absolutely. I've got good knife skills, let's put it that way. Yeah, I can joint to chicken in a few minutes. So yeah, it's useful for cooking.
NC: Okay, well, of course, learning is how we acquire skills. Almost all organisations have learning professionals on tap. So I mean, Andrew, staying with you, I mean, you might ask, I mean, why are we even having this conversation? We have learning and development. So why aren't people getting the skills they need?
AJ: I think the question is, I think it's a question of diagnosis insofar as what we've generally always done in learning and development is a focus on producing stuff to support organisations. But the conversation is moving on now. We're actually, rather than just looking at the inputs, we're looking at the skills conversation that goes around it now.
So there's many more diverse skills that are needed now. It's not simply, you know, soft skills, which is a terrible name anyway, but it's the critical core skills that we need. And those skills are moving on at a pace, particularly in the digital space. And I think it's changed the nature of that conversation now. And the expectation on learning teams is very different.
NC: And I'm just wondering, Laurell, whether it's something to do with the fact that L&D specialists come in too late. You know, you have a specific skill shortage or a need. I guess a senior manager will probably say we need a course for that. It's a bit linear. It's a bit one off, isn't it?
LH: Yeah, definitely. And I agree with what Andrew's saying. The conversations are more sophisticated. We know more. I think when I first started, and I've been doing this job for a long time, it was very much you would have a course and everyone would go on that course, very much sheep dip. And we would hope that people get what they need. We now know hope isn't a strategy. And we have to be more prepared. We've got to get ahead of what's actually happening. But I think also from an L&D and HR point of view, we've been seen previously as a support function. And we're not just a support function, we need a seat at the table and we're an integral part of what's happening in the organisation. So with the pace, the rigour, digital, AI, we're forced, it's a great opportunity for us to get involved and really make a difference in terms of the strategy.
NC: Okay, and we're going to be talking about how you get L&D to enable the skills to improve. But before we get there, Shona Marshall, when we were chatting beforehand, you were a tad sceptical, I think it'd be fair to say, about skills-based organisations becoming the next big thing. And you made a distinction between skills per se and capability. Can you just explain that?
SM: Yeah, I mean, I think for me, Nigel, the whole thing is that a skill is something that you can do. A capability is that ability to apply that skill effectively in a particular context to create value. So there's no point in just upskilling people for the skill's sake. And I think when we start to think about skills-based organisations, so much is about, let's create the taxonomy around this and let's look at what the infrastructure is. As Laurell says, the pace is changing so quickly now that we need to build that pace into the skills development. But then I think the key part in learning and development is how do we create an environment within organisations for people to test and experiment with those skills to build that capability to add the value. That's where the magic happens.
NC: Okay, so Andrew, can you start talking us through how learning and development can step in and do things better? Because we've got both untapped skills you don't even know your existing staff have, and then of course devising and delivering whatever's needed to continually upskill people.
AJ: Absolutely. I'm delighted you said the word capability, Shona, because to me that's exactly the issue. And capability to me is split into two parts. It splits into ability and the cap part is capacity. And I think what we do is we've always focused on the ability part, but not the capacity part. And I think the shift in organisations and what we're beginning to see and realise now is that a good learning function focuses on both parts of capability. So it's partly the ability, but also about the capacity and finding the space where people can perform differently. And I think that's the shift that we're seeing in skills-based organisations is they recognise that it's not just pumping people full of skills and I love your, your comment, Laurell, about just giving courses. We're not just doing that anymore. What we're doing is we're pausing and stepping back and understanding, well, where and how will people operate and perform in the future, rather than just the skills themselves.
NC: So Laurell, when you work with organisations, I know you get quite exercised about the skills existing staff have and the extent to which they're actually used. So how can learning and development programmes actually help to get people utilised better.
LH: I can give you a current example. I'm working with an organisation at the moment, and they've had a lot of work done by an excellent consultancy firm around their strategy because that needed to be done and they needed to be very clear on that. But they've worked out really quickly that they haven't really got the right people with the right skills in the right place at the right time. They're not there.
And my background's banking and we used to service obviously clients And I always used to say to my staff, we tend to service our newer clients better than our existing. And I see the same within industries. So in terms of looking at that organisation and working with them, I asked them to rate their confidence and competence against what they needed to do and some skills and some of the outcome linked to the strategy. And what I've realised really quickly is that there's a lot of untapped skills. People were telling me things but they're not on the CV. They're just not on their CV. And I took that information back to the leadership team and said, did you know about this link to your strategy? They had no idea. Now the newer staff, they had more of an idea, but some of the staff have been there seven, eight, nine years and they've developed those capabilities and those skills that they've gone along and no one's captured.
So one of the things that I'm putting in place for that organisation, and I've been doing this for years and I do this within my business, is a skills matrix. How do we capture that information? But I think there's one, there's a challenge to that is capturing it and maintaining it. How do you maintain it to make sure it's up to date? But without that, how do we know we're going to be fit for the future? How do we know what people possess? And it's been beautiful in terms of having conversations. I met with every member of staff in that business, but the skills that they had sort of blew me away. And we're not utilising half of that, not even 1/4 of it, not even 1/4.
SM: I think picking up on Laurell's comment there, I think as individuals, certainly in organisations, we underestimate how transferable our skills are. So there's a lot of work that the L&D functioning professionals have to help tease that out in a way and then to be able to utilise it. And I think that for me links back to, I said, my unexpected talent for coordinating weddings. You know, a couple of years ago, some friends of my parents asked if they would coordinate their daughter's wedding. You know, it was in a sheet field with a marquee, band, caterers, bar, ice cream vans, the lot. I'd never coordinated a wedding in my life before, well, apart from my own. For some reason, they trusted me. They knew how I bring people together, how my ability to think ahead is, and that I'm good at keeping lots of moving parts aligned. I knew that, so I said yes.
And by the end of the evening, people that I'd never met before were asking me how my wedding planning business was going and how long I'd been a wedding planner for. And The answer was, this is my first one. I just had transferable skills from everything else that I did that given the right environment, I've just been able to do that and showcase them. Imagine if we could harness elements of that in organisations to Lorell's point of the existing skills base that we have is ours for the taking.
NC: It's almost, Andrew, as if shown as implying that the nature of skills themselves are changing. I mean, if you think of the workplace, you used to learn how to do a work task from a colleague or perhaps from a course that had been laid on for you. Now AI does a lot of the grunt work of the tasks. And so what counts as a skill has changed. And I just wonder how the L&D has got to change with that?
AJ: The phrase that I've been using for, it's about eight or nine years now, is move from a shopkeeper to an engineer. What learning has always been is that we go to them for a course or class or a workshop. And what L&D should be doing is, and I love the idea of the skills audit, as Laurell said, but not looking back on what the skills the organisation thinks it needs, but looking forward and playing to where the puck is going to be and anticipating what skills will be needed in the future. And that's a very different kind of approach to supporting organisations. The idea of, you know, build a course for us because we need this actually doesn't necessarily work anymore.
I had a situation where an organisation wanted some sickness absence training for managers because managers weren't doing interviews. It wasn't the case at all. It wasn't about that. The issue was a new system had come in and managers didn't know how to understand how to use the system properly. So we put a GIF out there with six screenshots that showed people how to log in and all of a sudden the sickness went through the roof because everybody was logging it and everybody was, oh my goodness, panic, panic, panic. Head of people was over the moon because now they had the true situation of what was happening. So it's the conversation about recognising what's really happening in the organisation, and what will need to be there in the future.
Now, AI will do part of that work for you, but the nature of which skills you apply, particularly critical thinking and creative thinking, have to be enhanced and supported more. And the design of skills is going to be less about the process-y type activity and much more about the how do I use the tools, how do I work with other people, how do I develop myself?
NC: Laurell, do you think that the, the whole sort of professional side of learning and development is up to speed with the implications of all this. If we're particularly talking about delivering on skills, because a lot of people are probably quite comfortable going into an organisation and running a course. This does involve asking a lot more questions, perhaps giving a lot more feedback, talking to management, redesigning the actual material, and then making it accessible over a longer period.
LH: I think it depends. I've got several clients and I think they're different, but I think they're coming up to speed.
I think back to Shona's point with regards to organising a wedding, which is lovely, and seeing potential. Someone saw, your friend saw that in you and had that conversation and you delivered clearly a beautiful day for them. And I think that's how I see the L&D role. We have to partner, we have to go out, we have to speak, we have to co-create material so that we can actually move forward.
And I think part of our role as L&D, and it has been for a long time, but I notice more rigour and pace behind it, is about influencing and persuading sometimes people to do. Back to Andrew's point, they ask us for one thing and we go in and we dig because we are, we're curious and I'm quite nosy. I like to be nosy. I like to know what's going on. And then it's like, oh, no, it's not that. So it's not a case of, and I say to my team, you know, our job is to fact find and to challenge and to ask those questions so that we can actually give them what they need.
My strap line is shaping people for the future. And I think it's not enough now and it has been, our business is 25 years old this year, but it's not enough just to deliver what's asked. We need to be looking, if we're to add value and we're excellent as L&D professionals, we've got to look a bit further. And for some clients, for some organisations, they really understand it. And for some, it's easy to do what they've always done and they're comfortable with that. And our job in their supportive ways to help them move and help them understand that if they remain doing the same thing, they may not be fit for the future in a year's time, two years time, they'll be left behind. And we don't want that for anyone.
NC: So in a way, Shona, this is a real strategic opportunity for learning and development to help focus on these organisational skills needs.
SM: Learning and development have got such an exciting role to play in this space at the moment because it's not about simply, you know, we started this conversation about sometimes we could just be, when I was in corporate, the order taker, we are a course provider. We've moved so far away from that, L&D actually is the organisation's capability architect. We are that linchpin in the middle that can really move away from learning just happening in the classroom, but broadening out what do we actually mean by learning? And I think you're right, Laurell, it's going to require a mindset shift, I would say, probably for many L&D professionals themselves, because many have built that real deep expertise of designing excellent learning experience. It's the so what question. We've got to stop measuring the quality of the programme alone and measuring then what has happened as a result. What are people thinking differently, doing differently? How are they solving tomorrow's problems today? And that's where our value comes from an L&D perspective.
AJ: The perfect example for me is the fire service. So firefighters rarely put fires out now. What they do is they spend more time stopping fires happening. And this is exactly the issue we've had, which is we're brilliant at producing stuff and going back to Laurell's point and exactly as you say, Shona, about producing courses. But if that's not what's needed anymore, then we have to change. And we have to recognise that we have to be doing something very different now.
And that's the shift, the mindset shift, I think, actually, exactly as you say, Shona, absolutely. We have to think about, well, what might we need to be doing in the future? Because the world won't need firefighters in the same way. They need firefighters to be doing something different. They don't need learning and development in the same way they did. The context has changed. And so the content has to shift as well.
NC: Okay, and Laurell, you were talking when we were chatting beforehand about the importance of pathways, clarity on clear opportunities for career progression for individuals through the organisation, with milestones and so on the way. I totally get that. How is that an L&D thing?
LH: It's an L&D thing because they come to us or typically and they'll say, Laurell, can you train my managers and I'll leave it to you. And for me, it's around, okay, you can leave it to me, but what do you need within the business? Where are the gaps? Back to Andrew's point, you know, is it absent managers? Is it performance management? Is it not being able to give feedback? What is that? But I don't think it's good enough to put everyone through the same thing.
So what I've developed over the years is pathways. So if I think about one organisation at the moment, they’re education sector, they've done a big restructure, they're on 7 sites, There's about 900 staff and a couple of 100 on management within that. And I've done pathways around aspiring managers because I think there's something about planning for the future and succession planning. I've then done middle managers, I've done director level and I've done LT. So where you are in the organisation, you'll be able to see a pathway.
And within that, you've got a set of core skills and competencies that we need everyone to know. But to the side of that, we've got self-directed learning as well. So what is it specifically they need to be doing with regards to their role, because it is very role specific. However, we need to look at skills.
And I link this back and the pathways came to mind because of, and it's true, 14, what do you want to do? You want to work in a bank? I want to work in HR. I knew about that role and I knew I liked people. And it's almost as if I haven't got a crystal ball, I wish. But I think there's something we need to think about for the future. We need to be thinking as L&D professionals around what could happen, what does a business need to look like within a year's time? And that's why I've developed those pathways.
Now, will they stay the same? I don't think they will because I've developed them for other organisations. And even though they run these programmes, in some cases, three or four years in a row, we still need to go back and back to Shona and Andrew's point very much. Things are changing. So what I delivered for the middle managers last year may not be fit for purpose this year. And it has to be practical. So yes, there's theory in all of that. But what are they going to do? I absolutely agree with what's been said.
There's something about what you're learning. How are you using that to inform your practice? What's the output? What could you do differently? Slicker, quicker, better that you couldn't do before, so you're adding value and everything has to be aligned. And I see a tighter link to objectives and performance management and accountability because people are wanting a lot more. Organisations, senior team are wanting things to be delivered. And again, I agree, brilliant opportunity for us. Our job will never be boring and I don't think we'll ever not be needed.
NC: Well that's really helpful and maybe we can also get Shona and Andrew to share things that they've done with organisations that others might like to try.
SM: I think from my perspective, Laurell mentioned it earlier on, the right people in the right place at the right time with the right skills for the right reason. And that's been very much the premise of a global talent programme that I certainly I've been working with one client on around how do we upskill managers to create their ecosystem as L&D being the architect and the creator and the instigator of that system. How do managers keep that system alive in terms of, what we've said is learning doesn't happen just in the classroom. We've known that for a lot of years. Where are those opportunities for stretch assignments to develop those skills? Where are the opportunities for coaching, for on-the-job experiences, for all of those things? And then where are the conversations happening so that we can get that internal mobility of talent as well as the external recruitment coming in order to be able to, if you like, the phrase, know, grow, and flow your skills throughout the organisation.
And I think that then lends itself beautifully for us having more of a strategic seat at the table around the whole strategic workforce planning around the six Bs as well. They've got to be integrated in some ways. So everybody's got a part to play in becoming a skills-based organisation. It's not just an HR or an L&D challenge, it's a business challenge.
AJ: I think there's two levels to this. The first one is the operational transactional activity. So an example of that is I've just done a big piece of work with a large pharma company and just helping them understand how to use AI in procurement. The whole piece around that wasn't about, I'm going to tell you how to use AI. It was who are the people in the organisation who have the skill, who's using it, how are they using it, and how do we build the connections between the people who can use it and want to use it with the people maybe who haven't got the same confidence and maybe haven't got the same skill set and ability to be able to do that. So there's a different kind of approach at an operational level.
I think there's also an issue at a strategic level as well, which is fundamentally going, is our role to be training people? Because training is an element of learning. It's not the sole part of learning. So, to me, it's much wider than just saying it's a skills piece we need to support people. It's being able to step back and exactly that point, as you just said, Shona, looking at strategic workforce planning, looking at the whole talent pathway from street to seat, onboarding through the development of the person and then through the organisation and now potentially and helping the organisation recognise where learning sits within that space and not being just, like I said before, a shopkeeper at the end, just providing courses. That's a fundamentally different role for the learning function to be taking, which is actually looking at the skills that exist now, going back to Lowell's point with the skills analysis from before and planning for what will need to be in the future.
I'm really happy that the CIPD have picked up on this and just launching a piece of work imminently for members, looking at how to support this within the workplace. And I think that shift will be really interesting to see how organisations pick up on it, but more importantly, how practitioners recognise what they can do differently and need to do differently.
NC: Well, we're coming to the end of our time. I just want to finally ask each of you, what is a really good relationship between human resources, between the people professionals and the learning and development, the design people, what is a good relationship that will achieve better results with skills?
SM: For me, it comes a well-known quote from Stephen Covey, listen first to understand and then to be understood. I think that powerful questions create powerful answers. And I think that's where L&D sits. It sits in that intersection of the people, the work, and the strategy. And we are the translators rather than the providers. That's where it's really going to make that step change as we continue to evolve.
AJ: I'm going to use lots of C words now. Stop competing. So we tend to be competing with the performance of the organisation or competing with the people strategy. So stop competing, start coordinating, getting out of the way, which is really important. Start cooperating. Actually trying to understand what's needed within the organisation and helping people achieve their objectives. And fundamentally, from a learning perspective, stop trying to align with the business strategy and actually become integrated with the business strategy. So the performance of learning is measured by the performance of the business rather than being measured by metrics of bums on seats and happy sheets and so on. I think becoming more integrated within performance of the business will be taken more seriously.
SM: I think there's another C in there. I think for me, the other C is about connection, that human connection on a personal level with the other human beings in your organisation, and then that business connection of what is the business there to serve and do, and how can we enable that even better from an L&D perspective.
LH: So yes, I think for me, there's something about the partnership piece and working closely with the business, pretty much what has been said, understanding needs and being able to set up strategies and processes that support the business to deliver the output that's actually needed. As I said, this partnership consultancy thing is what's really important to me and what I see working.
NC: Some great thoughts there from all three of you. So let's thank Laurell Hector, Shona Marshall and Andrew Jacobs.
Now, before we go, a bonus for you on this month's podcast. As promised, I'm delighted to welcome Caroline Stockmann, the interim CEO of the CIPD. Known to so many, not only in-house as a board member and treasurer, the role she's temporarily standing down from, but from her 30 years’ experience as a board director in international finance operations governance and leadership roles, lots of trustee and community involvement too. Yet beyond the CV, who is Caroline Stockmann? Well, let's find out.
Hello.
Caroline Stockmann (CS): Hello
NC: So, I mean, what is it that you try to do? What do you bring to the party, would you say?
CS: What do I bring to the party? Interesting question. I have a passion for the CIPD. I was really delighted when I was initially invited for an interview to become a board member. There's a golden thread through my career, I think, and it's about professionalism. It's about ethics. I've worked in businesses around the world and where they've been most successful, we've had really good HR support. The people profession has been really important. So I think I bring that passion to the role.
I have previously been a CEO of a membership body. So although different, there are a lot of similar challenges, shall we say. I suppose my skill set, if you look at my profile, StrengthsFinder would say my key strength is strategy. And Myers Briggs would say I'm a salesperson, particularly about things I'm passionate about, and a carer. So a bit of a mixture of things that I can bring to the party.
And hopefully, because I know the organisation, I can really create a smooth transition for Neil coming in as the substantive CEO end of September.
NC: You've sort of covered some of this, but I was going to ask you what perhaps you're most proud of in your career to date.
CS: There are lots of things I'm proud of and I suppose it all revolves around the people.
One thing I'm really proud of though was when I was chief executive of the Association of Corporate Treasurers and we were in difficult times during COVID when a third of our income was wiped out because we were quite reliant on events. And we were working to keep the organisation sustainable, to keep people in jobs. And at a certain point, I decided to take a salary cut. And 100% of the team followed me in doing the same. And I was really proud of the team that we pulled together and the organisation did survive. And it continued to be successful post-COVID.
And I think just When you see people who are really passionate about something, really believe in it and work with you, that's something to be quite proud of. So I'm really proud of the achievements of so many people I've worked with or mentored or coached over the years. That's where you get real satisfaction, I think, seeing the power of others who are often better than you at things.
NC: Yes. And interestingly, your backgrounds firmly in operational leadership, I was intrigued to see, rather than directly in the people profession. So I wonder what it was that drew you to human resources and the CIPD?
CS: I think when you're in a business, in an organisation, in another function, if you don't really understand and work with the people experts, then you're missing a trick, really. Everything is about people.
When I worked for Unilever, for example, I was the only person outside of HR who did their professional coaching course, became a coach. I've also trained as a mentor and have been a mentor many times. People, it's so important, whether you're thinking about organisational design, whether you're thinking of transformation and change management, everything revolves around people in order to be successful. Inclusion, the statistics around diverse boards, diverse teams and how they excel in terms of results, as long as they kind of appreciate each other's diversity.
All those things are not the, how should I put it, the black and white sort of approach that somebody might have from a finance background such as myself, that the numbers tell you everything. The numbers tell you part of the story. The people tell you the rest of the story. And it's through people you're going to experience change. You're going to be successful at the end of the day.
NC: And in terms of being on top of what's important at the moment, I know you were able to join us at the CIPD Festival of Work in June. And I wonder, reflecting on that, what you took away as some of the most pressing issues facing the profession.
CS: It was a great conference and really interesting the range of areas that were covered. And there were practical matters such as the Employment Rights Act that was pretty topical. It was great to hear Chloe, our president, interviewing Neil about his thoughts from the profession and giving a little bit of a sense of him as a person.
But I think that the key, I'm not sure if you describe it as a pressing matter, is just the changing environment around us. Change is so fast. And I think that focus on the profession and the intersection of data behaviours and AI in transforming how we work, I think that's really a key for everyone at the moment. We're all wondering how is it going to work? And I think there was a lot of input, a lot of content there that I hope really helped people. And the feedback suggests that it did.
NC: These are very much issues that we've touched on in our podcasts over the last few months. So it's interesting you've picked up on those. It's been brilliant to chat to you. We're coming to the end of our time. I'd mentioned some of your involvement in non-profits as a trustee. I did spy among references to youth work, choir, enthusiasms of yours. DJ? Should we expect to see you on the decks at a future CIPD Christmas party.
CS: I can do. I started when I worked with youth some years back and it was vinyl in those days. It's no longer vinyl, but I do think DJing, not just putting on a playlist, DJing, there is an art to it. It's about how you create a particular atmosphere.
It's quite funny, I was at a party and somebody asked me to help out a bit and then they decided they were going to play Sweet Caroline. But then it turned up in Dutch and they were saying, can't do this. And I said, well, I speak Dutch. So I ended up singing Sweet Caroline in Dutch. And then I took over because, you know, you need a flow, you need a kind of arc when you're DJing. You don't want to hop from one thing to another. So I got quite excited then and did a bit of DJing on the spot.
NC: Wonderful. Well, we were talking about things that aren't on people's CVs, and I'm sure that is a brilliant example. Thank you, Caroline, for finding the time to pop in. We hope to hear more from you, perhaps on a future CIPD podcast. But until next month, from me, Nigel Cassidy and the podcast team, it's goodbye.
CS: Thank you, Nigel.
