What things are staff needing to learn when they start with you, and on an ongoing basis?
We employ for cultural fit, first. But our people, and people interested in working with us, need to have technical aptitude. We have a dedicated capability coach in our team so it's easy for us to be able support and coach people in areas they need to grow their strength in. We know that everyone in our business will eventually outgrow us - they won't work with us forever - so our coaching is targeted around helping people get to where they want to go. And often this growth in skills and capabilities end up in new service opportunities for us, too.
Can you talk about a particular initiative the company has introduced to train staff?
Our preference is to work towards a long-term plan for our people. Each year we ask each member of our team to pick a thing they will be an expert in, give us a plan or a roadmap to how they might achieve that, and then we can work with them to see what our investment will be to help make it happen. That investment might involve allocating them time, a mentor, some study, a secondment or a course - usually a whole range of things. The essence, for us, was to get away from the closed goals that most organisations set for their people. There's a huge disconnect on the difference between goals and training and it's not always about attending a course: 'Go on a course' is an action, not a goal.