Learning & Development
their learning and a few who are
struggling to do so. We use the
MC3 score from Best Companies
Top 100 to measure success. Our
target is for 75 percent of all our
people managers to achieve a 1*
rating or above. This is currently
sitting at 68 percent and we are
working with those that aren’t star
rated to increase their scores.
Part of being a Learning
Organisation is to create a
coaching culture, and whilst
we are excellent at requesting
formal coaching through Personal
Development Plans (PDP), there is
still a tendency for all our leaders,
from the executive team through
to front line, to give the answer
without asking “what are you
trying to achieve?” in the moment.
This is also reflected in our
engagement results, in particular,
the question, “My manager does
a lot more telling than listening”
– consistently our lowest scoring
question across all departments in
the My Manager factor.
The final challenge is enabling
leaders to adopt a growth mindset. During the recession, activity
was focused around creating
a lean organisation. Whilst
this is still a priority, we, as the
leadership team need to now think
differently, managing our teams’
resilience and making the most
of the resources available to us to
grow the business and to unlock
our creative potential!
Kate Stranks is the Group Learning
and Development Manager at
Bristan Group Limited. With a
background of nearly 15 years in the
learning and development space,
Kate’s specialties include leadership
and management development,
organisational talent review and
coaching. A qualified Insights
practitioner, Kate works closely with
her organisational board to develop
them and those in their teams.
”As our brand continually expands, we find
it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain
great chefs and so our focus has changed to
‘growing our own.”
- Petra Kulynycz
I
n terms of
our current
focus, within
the People and
Development
department,
our strategy
this year
has been to
improve retention, particularly at a
junior chef level. It’s no secret that
our industry has been suffering
over the past few years from a lack
of well trained, dedicated chefs.
As our brand continually expands,
we find it increasingly difficult
to recruit and retain great chefs
and so our focus has changed
to ‘growing our own’. This has
meant building robust training
programmes at all levels to ensure
that we can train chefs coming
in with little experience, as well
as developing those already with
us that want a career within the
group.
We’ve also invested a lot into
reward and recognition to ensure
August 2015
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