14 min watch with captions and full transcript
In this episode, Rob shares his tips for:
If you're not brave, if you're not causing some nervousness in the organisation, then I suspect you're probably not growing.
We want people to leave KFC thinking it's wonderful, not that it's a place that kind of works them really hard, and pays them money, and doesn't do anything more than that.
Rob's interview:
DEBRA COREY: Hi there. I'm Debra Corey, and I am the co-author of the book, Build It: The Rebel Playbook for World Class Employee Engagement, and I am here today with Rob from KFC. Thank you so much for joining us-
ROB PHIPPS: Pleasure, Debra. Pleasure.
DEBRA COREY: ...today. And we've got a really, really exciting, rebellious story.
ROB PHIPPS: Ooh.
DEBRA COREY: Ooh, very rebellious story about what you've done in the area of learning, which is in the book, which is quite exciting. But we're going to have a little conversation about it. So, I'm sure pretty much everyone knows about KFC, but if you wouldn't mind, for that one or two people out there who have never had KFC, talk about it, please.
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah. So, I guess I could contextualize KFC in Australia as well. So, we are an organization that actually will celebrate 50 years in Australia next year.
DEBRA COREY: Wow.
ROB PHIPPS: We employ about 35,000 Australians, and employ them, actually, interesting, through a franchise model as much as a company model, so we have independent franchisees that are businessmen in Australia, that employ a bunch of people. That's to serve a product that we think's pretty tasty, for a treat for people.
DEBRA COREY: Sounds great, and we even had a conversation earlier, because as a vegetarian, you've got lots of options, even for me.
ROB PHIPPS: We do, if you want them.
DEBRA COREY: Definitely, I'm going to go taste them when I'm in Australia.
ROB PHIPPS: Fabulous.
DEBRA COREY: So I'll do the tour, yes. Great. So, anyway, we're going to talk about learning, yes. And you've got this fantastic program, which is #MyPlan.
ROB PHIPPS: #MyPlan, yeah.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah. Do you maybe want to talk a little bit about why did you decide to create this program?
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah, sure. It interestingly connects to, I guess an organizational change for us. Several years back, the organization globally split into three sort of divisions. We were Yum! Brands, which was KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell. We split into separate divisions, KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, all of which are wonderful brands that have different heritages.
KFC had the opportunity at that time to kind of go and soul search a little bit, and find a purpose, globally, and rather than sort of create something and trying to market that to everybody, consumers and people inside the brand, we decided to go and actually study what people thought inside the brand already, and we came up with this purpose called Always Original. As we were doing that, we didn't want to just define a consumer brand. We wanted to define a people brand as well, and understand what people loved about working at KFC. And we came up with these three concepts, that we call our people promise. One of them is to be your best self, and when we talk about being your best self, we talk about being your best self in life, not just at work, make a difference to the communities you work in, to the customers that you serve, and to the people that you work around, and have fun. And there are kind of three principles that came up, that just, in all the research that we did, and not just in Australia but around the world, was a commonality that people loved about working for us. So, as we kind of went through that journey, it helped us to think about how we might be a little bit more specific about fulfilling that promise that they're making, and when you think about that notion of being your best self, not just at work but in life, that's how we hatched the #MyPlan concept. So it's as simple as fulfilling what we feel are the positive parts of what our team members are telling us they love working at KFC.
DEBRA COREY: I think what's so unique about it, and rebellious, is that it does look at the whole self, so a lot of times, in traditional learning programs, you look at what are the technical roles, technical skills that you need to do a job, but you don't only bring the technical person to work. You bring, as you say, the whole self to work, so was it hard convincing whoever you needed to convince that you wanted to do this holistic approach?
ROB PHIPPS: I think conceptually, people got it, but practically, how do we do that? Because we're a dispersed workforce, 35,000 people, and you know, a young population of employees. So employees, on average, are about 17 and a little bit in terms of their age.
DEBRA COREY: Wow, first job for most of them.
ROB PHIPPS: First job, definitely a vulnerable person, in terms of growing up, and discovering themselves in life, and all those sorts of things, so conceptually, everyone kind of bought the idea of the people promise. They also sort of thought, "Oh, yes, that sounds nice, but gee whizz, that's going to be hard to do. How are we going to do that?" So, I guess what we did is sort of went about trying to prove out that we could actually do it, and thankfully, we have been able to, and we're in year three
now, of actually bringing the program to life across the organization, and we think we're going to continue ahead quite broadly with it. We want to just make it a regular part of every single team member's employment experience.
DEBRA COREY: So maybe talk a little bit about what does it look like.
ROB PHIPPS: Yep. So the program itself is a reasonably simplistic online module. If you imagine, in the HR community, most people have this concept of an individual development plan, that they sit with their boss once a year and they talk about what they want to be, and all those sorts of things. The concept is based on that, except it's to do with ... The rebellious part, I guess, is that it's not about, "What do you want to do at work?" It's, "What do you want to do in life?"
So we sit down. They go through a module. The managers actually go through modules as well, to help support them, and the individual would kind of fill it out, based on what they think is some of the things they want to do. It might be a short-term goal setting exercise, like save up for a holiday, or I always joke and say buy a stereo, not that anyone buys stereos anymore, but something like that. That's what I would have done when I was that age, or they might be, "Hey, I want to go and become a teacher."
DEBRA COREY: Right.
ROB PHIPPS: So, how can KFC's sort of skills, and the things they learn at KFC, how can that contribute to the goals, or the career thoughts that they might have, depending on where they are? Then they sit down and actually have a face-to-face conversation with their manager. There also are sections on it for them to go and talk to their careers counsellor at work, and also to go and talk to their parents, given the workforce that we have. We want to make it a broad conversation, because it's about life. It's not about KFC. So, simplistically, that's how it works.
DEBRA COREY: And you are right, it sounds very basic, but I doubt there's many companies that do that. I think some companies might have reservations because of their managers. I can imagine at the beginning, some of your managers were resistant, saying, "I'm not a life coach. How do I know how to support people?" So I was glad to hear that you said that you support them before they go and support their employees. How did you go about that? What did you do?
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah, so we trained them. And we also assured them that their job wasn't to become a career counsellor or a life coach. Their job was to provide an objective point of view for the people on their team, which with all the research we did, we found that that's what they were doing anyway, because when you're in the working shoulder-to-shoulder, in that type of environment, you're trying to help people get along in life. This just gave... It really gave some formality and gave them some structure so they could feel more confident to have those conversations.
So we spent a lot of time just taking them through the program, making sure that they were ready and that they understood where we were coming from, making sure they knew where to go with resources. So we actually partnered with Careers Counsellor Association of Australia, and got their advice, in terms of what they thought. They were very encouraging about what we were doing, and kind of built a big coalition and have managed to pull something off that's been pretty special, I think.
DEBRA COREY: I think that's quite creative, also. Sometimes, we think within the parameters of what we have at our organization, but there's so many resources out there that we can draw upon. They must have been very excited to start working with you, especially a company like KFC.
ROB PHIPPS: They were, yeah, and if you think about, you know, youth employment, and skills, and all those sorts of things, you'd hope that this initiative can not just be something very positive for KFC. It can actually be much more positive for kind of society as well. I guess I'm dreaming a little bit, even further into the future, but who knows?
DEBRA COREY: It could do, yeah.
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah.
DEBRA COREY: I mean, hopefully people watching this could think it's a great idea and start doing a little bit of themselves.
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah, part of the fears that some of our managers have to overcome is, "If I help somebody be a better trainer, they're going to leave and go somewhere else," and I think that might be a genuine concern for some organizations, depending on what type of organization they have, but with us, because we have so many people working for us, the numbers almost demand that people will leave, and we want people to leave KFC thinking it's wonderful, not that it's a place that kind of works them really hard, and pays them money, and doesn't do anything more than that.
DEBRA COREY: Well, also, if you think about your employees, they're also your consumers.
ROB PHIPPS: Yep.
DEBRA COREY: So you want them to be brand advocates as well-
ROB PHIPPS: We do.
DEBRA COREY: ...even when they leave the company.
ROB PHIPPS: Absolutely.
DEBRA COREY: So, sure they're telling all their friends about it.
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah.
ROB PHIPPS: It's interesting. We've got some great feedback from parents.
DEBRA COREY: I was going to ask you about parents. What do the parents think of the program?
Rob Phipps: Well, I haven't spoken to all of them yet.
DEBRA COREY: Okay, not yet.
ROB PHIPPS: But yeah, some of the stuff I've heard is, you know, "It's wonderful to be able to sit down with my child at dinner and talk about these things," which sometimes ... I'm a parent of an 18 year old boy, and it's quite difficult to actually having those conversations. They get a bit defensive, and they feel quite vulnerable, I think, so I think being able to do that at work takes away some of that defensiveness, and yeah, we've had very positive feedback to date, around just engaging the family. The brand, I guess, and the skills they're learning at work, was something that's positive for the family.
DEBRA COREY: And fundamentally, I mean where you began with the brand promise, I just love how it all encapsulates the brand promise, both from the external side and the internal side, so it all just has this nice linkage.
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah. Yeah, it does, and ... So for us, that's been important, and that, to me as an HR practitioner, it's finding the filter as to why you do stuff. It's just such an important and critical step. Then once you have that, the stuff that hangs off it becomes, I think anyway, a little bit easier to determine, and you hold yourself a little bit truer, because before that, we probably would have just said, "Ah, let's do a little sort of IDP, and work out how we can make all these kids shift supervisors," which is impractical, and it's probably not quite right, and it's not what they're telling us they love about working for us, either, so you would have been probably fishing in the wrong pool.
DEBRA COREY: Right, and you had told me before, some really interesting success stories from the program, about finding things out about people that you didn't even know through these programs.
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah, definitely. So through conversations ... I mean, we don't have data on our people, but you find people that are doing particular degrees, in food science, for instance, that are passionate about food technology and things like that. We're a big food company, so we've been able to help people out in that space. You can get to, sometimes, some tough issues to talk to young people about as well, around confidence, around not necessarily feeling good about doing things, and through some of those conversations, you can help them just try little bits differently each day, and help them build their confidence as well, which is incredibly rewarding.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah, much more proactive approach to life, and also even just career development.
ROB PHIPPS: It is, yeah, and it really discourages them from sort of, I guess coming to work and pretending.
DEBRA COREY: That's a good point.
ROB PHIPPS: You know, it really encourages them just to be themselves, to let us know what they want, to be open about that, and then how do we find a way to help them with it, rather than almost try and push them in a very single line where everyone looks a bit the same.
DEBRA COREY: So, in ending, what would be a couple of tips? So if somebody's heard what you said, they think this is amazing, anything that you've learned along the way or any tips you could share?
Rob Phipps: Yeah. I think start with purpose. I'm absolutely passionate about that concept, having sort of gone through this journey over quite a few years now. Sort of start with something that's very purpose driven. Start with something that's growth driven. I think too often, we're trying to control. We're trying to have a really fixed way of looking at things. Try and think of ways that can connect growth with purpose, and then be super determined in the way that you go about what you do, because if you';re not brave, if you're not causing some nervousness in the organization, then I suspect you're probably not growing.
DEBRA COREY: I think that's really interesting, because in the book, when we were writing the book, I was kidding with my co-author, saying that if at the end of the chapter, as an HR person, I wasn't nervous, or I shouldn't say it, nauseous, that we weren't being rebellious enough. So it's nice to hear that you have that same concept in doing what you're doing.
ROB PHIPPS: Yeah, I think so. I mean, no ambition comes easily, does it? So, I think as long as you've got the... And organizations are big, and there are lots of people. It doesn't have to hang on your own shoulders, but if you share it around, and you're ambitious, and ... A bit of nerves is a good thing, I think.
DEBRA COREY: And, it's connected to the first two things, so it's linked to strategy, so you're not just being rebellious to be rebellious. You're doing it to be strategically successful. Definitely.
ROB PHIPPS: Absolutely. Yeah.
DEBRA COREY: I think that's a great way to end. I think that's a brilliant play, and it's very innovative and very inspirational, and I hope people really learned from that, and I guess in ending, I would just say to go out there and be a rebel in your own way. Find a way to make it your own and do something rebellious.
ROB PHIPPS: Awesome.
DEBRA COREY: Yes, awesome. Great. Thank you very much.
ROB PHIPPS: Thanks, Debra. Cheers.
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