#WednesdayWisdom - ‘Learning strategy for high performing teams’ with Liam Hatcher
Liam Hatcher, Head Of Learning And Development at CH&CO
People and their development is my love, alongside amazing food and drink. I consider myself a Learning and Development specialist that comes with the added bonus of walking in the shoes of the people I develop.
This means when I say ‘I want our learning interventions to Inspire the industries leaders of tomorrow’ I mean it, I thrive from it and keep myself grounded by asking myself this question ‘can they grow with us’?
Tell us a bit about yourself and your organisation.
I grew up in a small village in the Southeast of Kent, with a dream of one day becoming an events manager. So, with that dream in mind and with turning 16 I embarked on college life studying Hospitality & Catering. I always considered myself lucky when I got a job as a waiter at the beautiful Leeds Castle, Kent.
Little did I know I was embarking on an amazing five years; wow did learn! When I said my farewells to the Castle, I was London bound, I was leaving my role as Hospitality and Events manager to embark on a new journey with CH&CO as the Hospitality and Events Manager at the Law Society. I was so excited. I couldn’t wait to start. One of the many reasons for my excitement is because my new General Manager had explained I would be responsible for co-ordinating the training for our teams. It was the step in the training and development door I wanted! Fast forward 5 years, a few new contract mobilisations and 18 amazing months at London Zoo I stepped into the role as Regional Trainer for CH&CO. Having just started my own learning journey, I began studying for my CIPD and HR Management qualifications! This was great, I was able to put my learning in to practice every single day.
Here I am now in 2021, the Head of Learning & Development for CH&CO. CH&CO is one of the UK’s leading food service businesses. Operating across the UK in more than 900 locations, employing more than 6000 people, we provide hospitality services to some of the UK’s most prestigious businesses. Operating in Workplaces, Events, Venues, Stadia, Education and Healthcare sectors.
When I am asked what it is I do I put it simply, I enable people and their career development! I do this by partnering our strategic leaders. Aligning our group learning objective to ensure it has the greatest impact and success for our business and people.
What learning strategies do you use in your organisation?
We approach our learning strategy with skill, knowledge and capability being central to our thinking, alongside this we consider and underpin our strategy with our behavioural competencies. We want to upskill, enthuse, bridge skills gaps and provide career growth opportunity. This keeps all that we do focussed, focussed on our desired outcomes. The core to our Learning strategy is our business strategy, it is vital that all our learning activities not only benefit our people but contributes to the successful delivery our business strategy.
Our Learning strategy considers the knowledge, skill and capability that our business needs to deliver for our people, customers and clients. It is intrinsically linked to our Performance, Talent and Future Leader planning, our approach to onboarding and inducting our new people, engaging and motivating, celebrating and awarding our people. Our learning strategy plays a key role in all areas of our business.
As we hurtle through 2021 our learning strategy has a defined objective which is to support the development and growth of our people, whether they’re an apprentice or a director, giving them room to outperform the competition and becoming well known for doing the right thing.
To deliver this strategy we approach our objective by ensuring all learning opportunities are accessible and inclusive, we have structured our approach and developed our Pillars of learning which are;
Brilliant Basics – set to succeed
Developing Skill – delivering best we can
Bespoke to You – recognising differing needs
Developing leaders – enabling leaders to grow from within
These pillars enable all our learning activities to be connected, with our skill, knowledge, and competency framework working as golden thread to bring it all together. Delivered through our apprenticeship academies, leadership development programmes, craft and skills masterclasses and our knowledge building eLearning.
This is why we say #GrowWithUs – it’s meaningful.
How do you get the most out of the teams?
Getting the most out of our teams is one of single biggest opportunities for our business, and we own that! If we can inspire them to be the best versions of themselves, they’ll feel invested and apart of something far more than a ‘job’.
We get the most out of our people by being open and transparent, promoting and provoking a culture that everyone can connect with. Standing by and delivering on what we set out do, by ensuring that coming to work isn’t a chore it’s a choice that’s made because work is enjoyable.
How we approach this is simple, we ensure our People strategy is for our people as well as business, both need to benefit from its success. It’s a win, win. Making sure it’s a win, win we provide our people with the support and guidance they need. Whether this support and guidance be our people guides, the way we communicate, or the way we engage. It needs to because it’s the right thing to do, our culture becomes the unconscious, our values and ideals are lived and breathed. This is by making sure that have the best hygienic motivators in place and motivators we wouldn’t normally consider – work can be fun!
To get the very best from our people, as Head of Learning and Development It is my responsibility to ensure that there are opportunities for career growth, opportunities to develop skill and knowledge, and to ensure that the journey of development our people embark on is fun and engaging and is as equally rewarding as it is rememberable.
What is the future of learning in your opinion?
In my opinion the future of learning in the workplace is bright!!
Now more than ever learning needs to be at the beginning, middle and end of any business planning. Learning needs to be current, I’d go as far as to say it needs be trendy and provocative.
When I am planning or developing learning, I approach it like driving a car. I wouldn’t drive a car considering only the foot or two ahead of me, I am aware of what’s going on 100 or even 200 feet ahead, anticipating the next turning, roundabout, pedestrian or traffic light. I am looking for my opportunity to progress on my journey. That’s the future of learning for me :- be ahead, far ahead, anticipate the needs of the business, look for and take advantage of every opportunity, be agile, it doesn’t always need to be traditional.
What I believe does need to be traditional and I cannot wait to start again. Is in-person development workshops, welcoming our people back to interactive in-person learning environments (not to say our online learning isn’t interactive, it is). Does this mean our learners will want to touch tangible learning material, to enhance their own engagement by having physical collateral – will this give them a sense of ‘this is mine, my journey, I own it’ – I am yet decided and am still debating this with myself. I secretly hope it’ll be the later, what’s better than the formation of your own story that was created through great learning?
Right now, I get a sense and recognise people’s desire or need to upskill and move laterally in their careers. Learning & Development teams need to be preprepared and anticipating what this means for their business and people. The future of learning means we need to be ready for this and welcoming those with transferable skills – that’s the future of learning, learning something completely new!
The future of learning in CH&CO is incredibly exciting, we’re proud to partner the UK’s best Apprenticeships partners that specialise in our industry. We are due to re-launch our brand-new learning and development opportunities. I am so Excited! Because we felt that was the future of learning, we needed to ready for the restart of our amazing industry.
