22 min watch with captions and full transcript
If you give people freedom they will surprise you and go way beyond.
There’s no use rowing away from [technology], you might as well row towards it.
DEBRA COREY: Hi there. I'm Debra Corey, and I am the co-author of Built It: A Rebel Playbook For World Class Employee Engagement. And I'm here today with Lee Woolley from Stonegate Pub Company. Thank you so much for joining me today. Stepping away from the pub for a few minutes. You are Head of Learning and Organizational Development.
LEE WOOLLEY: Correct.
DEBRA COREY: So you're in our book, but I thought today I'd take the opportunity to maybe talk a little bit more about the great things that you're doing in your organization around learning. But would you maybe first start tell us a little bit about the company. I know I've been to many of you pubs.
LEE WOOLLEY: Okay. So we're a pub company. We have 700 sites.
DEBRA COREY: I haven't been to all 700. Just want to make that clear. Okay.
LEE WOOLLEY: 700 sites ranging from small pubs, boozes, all the way up to big night clubs and restaurants. Quite a range, and we employ around 13,500 or 14,000 people.
DEBRA COREY: Wow. So If you think about from a learning perspective, you've got a real diverse organization. You also have a lot of people who are just out there with customers all the time. What kind of challenges does that create?
LEE WOOLLEY: I think the biggest challenge is across 700 sites, very different types of sites, lots of nationalities, lots of experience and inexperience, and a lots of different roles. If you think about any of the hospitality industry, you've got people from the chefs in the kitchen, the front of house team, the bar teams, the management, and then head office of circa 300 people as well. So when you say challenge, the diversity of that, and being able to get your program or whatever you want delivered out across places going from Aberdeen down to Newquay is a challenge.
DEBRA COREY: Right. Why in your organization do you believe that learning is important? So why do we have someone like you who's leading the charge when it comes to learning?
LEE WOOLLEY: So we're owned by venture capitalist. We're a profit equity company and unusual for a lot of private equity, they put a lot of money into learning and develop. The reason they do is we prove time and time again the return of investment. So we get the money and we spend a lot of money on learning and development, but we've proved through those metrics what it returns for is, and by proving that over and over again each year, the company keeps pumping more in. So it's almost a self-fulfilling prophecy that we're getting the results that we're getting.
DEBRA COREY: What type of results? So for organizations because some organizations can't get the money pumped in. So I'm sure some people listening and thinking, "Oh, tell me the secret. Tell me the secret."
LEE WOOLLEY: Yeah. So I suppose one of the figures that we quote all the time is what our career progression does for each level of turnover, and then from there or reducing team turnover, and then from there what customization that has. So quite simply, we know that if we get our team members inducted properly, we half our team turnover. We know if we get them onto the team leader program, it halves that turnover again, and actually through the career pathway up to general manager, we know it halves into single figure. Now our industry is renowned, the hospitality industry has high turnover. So the industry average sits around 124%.
DEBRA COREY: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
LEE WOOLLEY: But we know if we get them through our career pathway up to getting to GM, it's down to around 8%. So if you take that and what it costs to recruit, train, and get a team member up to scratch, even the most conservative estimate sits around 600 pounds. So it's a huge then reduction so that's one measure we have. Then a second measure that we quote a lot is those people that make it through the career pathway are actually more profitable than people bring in externally. So it depends on what level we go to, but actually their profitability would be through the speed of service or through when they get their own place how profitable they are. That returns. So hence, that was what was my excuse for having a big L&D budget that I have.
DEBRA COREY: But you do some really interesting things with your learning platform. So maybe if you just start from the beginning, because I know you put in place a few years ago, why did you decide ... Before we get into what it is, which is I really love your learning platform. Why did you decide to do what you decided to do?
LEE WOOLLEY: I've always believed in the number of roles that I've had that you learning made fun is what we need to do. We work in pubs. If we can't make it fun, nobody can. We got pubs, restaurants, and alcohol. So if we can't make it fun. But also, I think if you give career pathway identity and it might take people a while to get into it and it won't suit everybody. But having an identity then it helps people attach to it and actually feel like a sense of belonging, and I think that's big as well, especially when your sites are disparately spread around the country, I think it's really important that they feel like they're going to fit in to the company.
DEBRA COREY: So let's talk about them individually. So when you talk about fun, I know when I met you at your site, there was food everywhere, and you told me that was training. Drinking and eating and things like that. So what do you do to make it fun?
LEE WOOLLEY: Okay. I suppose it depends on what we are doing. So if it's an investment, so we do about 114 investments a year, major investments, millions of pounds, and if we're doing an investment, we've got 30 or 40 new team members. They need to understand what it is we do. So we will cook all the food after, they will practice at cocktails, and at first, they are really excited but very nervous. We've got 50 cocktails. So we'll have some fun with the cocktails and we'll learn about how they are built and blended. We'll have some fun with different spirit brands because they look behind the bar and see 200-300 bottles and think, "I'm never going to learn this," and all the bigger products. So actually if we're doing an investment, we get involved and learning in that, and just at any site where the team member starts, we say to the GM, "Here's the framework we want you to
use." But how you do that is have fun because whatever we put in, the site will take that to another level. I think if we then show we don't take ourselves too seriously, we're paid to have some fun, they will then amplify that or multiply that.
DEBRA COREY: I like two things that you said about it. First of all, I can just imagine getting this really thick with all the different cocktails, which I'd never remember. So the fact that you get out and do it I think is great, and the bit about giving flexibility, a lot of companies think you have to do the same thing everywhere. Why do you give everybody that level of flexibility with your learning?
LEE WOOLLEY: I think that if we want people to be genuine behind the bar, ours is very face to face. We want them to be genuine. So we use a term a lot, 'freedom within a framework'. Saying you've got to have some legal training. So here's the legal training provided for you. We find it online. We take the pain away, but this is before they step foot behind the bar, here's your legal training. You have to learn the tails, you have to learn the menu, the product, but, as you said, you're not going to learn the specs of 50 menu items and 50 cocktails and 20 draft beers from a book. So they're all online, etc. But I think once we say to the managers, "Here's the framework. You have to deliver this. Here's some tools, but what you do beyond that is up to you." I think that if you give that freedom, then people will surprise you and go way beyond. There's a trust dynamic there of saying actually you go to deliver this but however you want to do it is for you. I think that if we restrict people of only doing the minimum.
DEBRA COREY: I like that also because when we talk about job design, we talk about giving people autonomy and ownership. So you're crossing that over into the learning area too.
LEE WOOLLEY: Yeah. I think so. Yeah. I think absolutely we try to do that every level because also a team member, we might have something like 11,500 team members, hourly paid team members, but you don't know which of those will be your future managers.
DEBRA COREY: Right.
LEE WOOLLEY: So you're trying to get that culture in there really. Then we're going to talk about what we use. But we use DNA quite a bit. We say what what's Stonegate's DNA? How do we get that really early into team members so that they feel this belonging in this DNA? You can't get it right with everybody. But it gives them something to actually grab hold of.
DEBRA COREY: I think it's a really interesting point. Every new person you look at them as a future leader, and I think a lot of organizations sort of pigeon hole people. I'm going to look at you as like a cocktail waiter or I'm going to look at you as somebody else and they don't look at the big picture. So I think you can create and develop someone in a better level when you do it that way.
LEE WOOLLEY: Absolutely. Some of our best managers have come from being kitchen managers. So people that are fantastic in the kitchen, but we don't have head chefs. We have kitchen managers because they're managing that kitchen and it's getting harder and harder with all the due diligence. But some of those, they see what's happening and say, "I actually want to run a business," and when they go on to be a general manager, they have quite often they're best understanding because they know what it's like to run the engine of the business.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah. I think it makes sense. So I know I'm eager to jump into the what. Sorry. So you do a lot of face to face, but maybe talk a little bit about the platform that you put in place also to support the face to face and then we'll go back to face to face.
LEE WOOLLEY: Okay. So I think I'm going to have to talk about what we use. I'm going to use some terms. So when we were putting our career pathway together and it wasn't me, somebody came up with the idea of Albert Einstein because Einstein's famous for inventing but he was also a huge learner. He had this huge appetite for learning. So we use tongue in cheek, the idea of Albert, and we came up with something called Albert's Theory of Progression, which was totally made up. And within that, we had different levels of the training, as most companies would. We have a career pathway based on that. But what we were able to do with that identity is be able to hang things off it. So when you talking about the online part of that, we launch the internet and we asked the business to name it, and Albert Einstein second wife was called Elsa. So the internet became Elsa.
So actually what then happened naturally was the online part of our program was Elsa and the face to face was Albert.
DEBRA COREY: It's that identity that you talked about and bringing it together.
LEE WOOLLEY: Absolutely. What we used as well with the iconography with it, everything now looks like Albert and Elsa and has certain design. Actually it's had three iterations. It started with a very black background. At the moment, on a cork background. So it helps my team writing the programs, know what version we're on as well. But what you find is with everything that we do with L&D in the company and beyond that has gotten to reward and recognition, it's gone into different departments. But that Albert is now that DNA, that culture, and people know that's what Stonegate, that's our training. We've won plenty of awards for it, and that's not why we do it. It's everyone knows that's ours and you can hang everything off it.
So what we did was when we launched Elsa, the internet, we also launched Albert's app, which was an app where you could do the training online but mobile. So originally we had it on a desktop, and you know yourself how fast the digital world is moving. So we developed an app so they could do it either at home or before a shift, and do the learning.
DEBRA COREY: Well, most of your people aren't in front of computers anyway so it's brilliant that you do it with a mobile.
LEE WOOLLEY: And it also there will always be face to face training. You'll always need cocktail training. You'll always need how to pour drinks, how to use a tail. But there are so many things that we can do online, and, to be honest, we're employing 60% of our employees are millennials so they gorge information that way. They use it on YouTube, etc. So there's no point to row back from that.
DEBRA COREY: Right.
LEE WOOLLEY: Might as well row towards it.
DEBRA COREY: Mm-hmm (affirmative). I like the balance because some people think that you can do everything through technology, and I think definitely technology's an enabler. But to your point, much better making a cocktail face to face.
LEE WOOLLEY: Absolutely. But then that blended piece, nothing wrong with watching a video how to make a mojito. I'd watch that first, then I'll go introduce them. Use that in our kitchen specs as well. You'll watch a video of how to do a hunters chicken, and then you'll cook the hunters chicken. I think there's that blend piece. It doesn't have to be the enemy. In days gone by, when we used to do a lot of face to face training, people used to make PowerPoint the enemy. PowerPoint's a great tool. It's how you use it. So it's not the technology that's the enemy.
DEBRA COREY: Right.
LEE WOOLLEY: But you're right, we do do a lot of face to face training still, but what we're trying to do increasingly is blend digital into that training. So where we've got face to face training, we'll follow it with a virtual classroom or a private Facebook group to chat about what they've learned or they can send videos in to prove their learning rather than having to fill books out and huge times out. So we're trying to get that balance.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah, and I think that's a really important tip about blending it because I think it works to balance the training, but also everybody learns in different ways. So I don't know if you've seen that it's helped you touch more people with different learning styles.
LEE WOOLLEY: Yeah. We talk about learning styles quite a bit. We talk about the traditional Honey and Mumford learning styles and we would also would convert visual, kinesthetic, and auditory. But what we try and do then is then say okay if that's the teaching, how do we get that into our programs? So how do we make sure that we've got that blend?
It's interesting, as we go up the seniority of the career pathway, what we've noticed is we've got less and less digital, and that's something we've got to work on. Because as those millennials work through, they're the ones that were traditionally the liked the lot of face to face. They're expecting to see digital all the way up to the top end. So that's something we need to work on as well. So that's a watch out for us. But also, they bring some of the ideas. They go in the workshop and they'll say, "Hey, this'll be really good in a video," or, "This'll be really good as an e-learning
module. This would be really good as a virtual classroom." So they bring that in there as well.
DEBRA COREY: I like how you're keeping your program fresh. You're looking at the expectations of your employees and also the business and having it evolve. So it's good that it's continuing to get better and better.
LEE WOOLLEY: Yeah. I think that so I mentioned Albert's Theory of Progression, and it goes from now a business team leader to a deputy manager to those people close to getting the first site and then on to general manager, and actually a general manager then carries on for those that want to be an area manager. Each level we have an identity for it.
So I mentioned Albert Einstein. We have the team leader's levels called Albert's award, and that's all about learning how to be a team leader. So it's got some basic line management in there, some motivation and delegation, how to learn to be that team leader. Then we move on to the deputy program, and it's a bit more technical about how to do things in a site.
Then when they get to the accelerator program, it's very different because that's about your personal values and drive and what are you going to be when you own your own business. Bear in mind, some of these young people are running businesses, taking one, two, and even three million pounds a year. So these are individual sites, but for some companies that would be their annual turnover. So getting them to actually not just think about the technical side but their whole ethos of why they're doing it and how they want to lead and what they want to be famous for. We do a lot of work in that and it's very ... That program is very quirky and very different to anything certainly I've taught before in 20 years in being in L&D.
DEBRA COREY: I think it's really important because so much of our time we spend on operations but that's not really what makes the business successful. Somebody comes in and they want things well run, but it's what you talked about quirky. What's going to make your pub unique.
LEE WOOLLEY: I think so. You can learn a lot of technicals with a manager insight, that's great. They can learn that. What they don't seem to learn in site, what we need to, again, think about is what's driving themselves? How can you go and make a name for yourself? It's interesting, your book you talk about being the rebel. We like that little bit of twinkle in the eye rebel. We like them to go and try something different.
The recent World Cup's been amazing for us, but some of what some of the managers are doing and these new managers that we've brought into the business, we wouldn't have thought of doing these things. It's freed them up to go, "I'm going to have a go at this. I'm going to try this." Now
on the back of that, some of the sports that they're going after because they've seen a trade for it. Going after things like American wrestling and kabaddi, one of our sites is famous for going and watch kabaddi in there. Allowing them to have, again, that freedom within a framework.
DEBRA COREY: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
LEE WOOLLEY: Then if I can allowed, we have this philosophy that I mentioned it called bar to board room, and our CEO and chairman believes this. So we don't just stop when they get to general manager. We then have a suite of what we call master classes where if they skills gaps they have or things they want to dwell upon, they can go on to the master classes. Some are face to face and some are online. So they can do those master classes, and then we have a final program on that career pathway for those who want to be area manager. What's really interesting there is we're seeing our first people have come through the whole career pathway are now saying, "Yes, I've been a manager in a couple sites. I've enjoyed that, but I want to go on." And that's certainly a difference with the younger millennials. They aren't happy with that's where I've got to. It's what's next.
DEBRA COREY: They're always looking ahead, definitely, and these more senior ones, is it more personalized as far as what they need specifically to get to the next level?
LEE WOOLLEY: It becomes like that. The program isn't personalized. The program to be an area manager is very modular, and there's extra things they can do. But what they get on there is an individual online PDP.
DEBRA COREY: Right.
LEE WOOLLEY: So they form that PDP and where their skill gaps are, what they need to work on, and they all work on. They get a mental to work on that. And it's really interesting training the mentals because, again, the mental, we need to make sure that the mental personality isn't just because they're a good operator but they can associate with these hungry people coming through that maybe have different ambitions or motivators than they had 10 years ago.
DEBRA COREY: Mm-hmm (affirmative). So you're bringing other people into the business. I think what I really like is that learning is not just you and your team. It sounds like you get ideas from people, you bring other people in as mentors. It's a company-wide initiative.
LEE WOOLLEY: I think collaborative learning, and collaborative learning can be huge. So in each of our programs, we just introduced something in the last few months called Albert's portfolio where the learners upload their work. So they don't have to come back and have it checked. They upload the work. One of my team will go and check that work or the manager will check that work. But what they can also do in there is collaborate. So they can say, "Okay. I had a problem with this business plan exercise. We have to create a business plan. How everyone else got on with this?" And they can share their learnings on there. It's no longer let's hide behind the work. So I think collaborative learning is a biggie and people don't realize they're on their own because some of it is tough. You only get to an area manager. It's a tough thing. There's a lot you got to learn. So I think that fear that you're not isolated is a biggie.
And all of our programs, they look fun. I remember reading something from DeMontfort University 10-15 years ago that said how a program looks is as important as the content. I mean, that is a real sobering thought. So we use a lot of digital design and have fun with it. So it's got that nod to Albert, but it's fun and our e-learning is fun. If I took the e-learning to the board, I think they'd have a heart attack because they're not my audience. That's another big tip for everybody is think about who your audience is, not who your board are because they are two very different things.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah. I'll make sure I share some links to some of the great graphics because you're right, they're absolutely brilliant. So I could talk to you forever on this. There is more of it in the play and I will do some links to some of the great things that you do. Could I maybe ask you to end, you started giving a couple of tips, but if somebody gets all excited the way I am about this program and thinks, "I want to go back and do something in my own way" what kind of two-three tips could you give them?
LEE WOOLLEY: I think that the one I ended on is important. Think about who your audience is.
DEBRA COREY: Which seems obvious, but it's not always done.
LEE WOOLLEY: But it's not.
DEBRA COREY: No, it isn't.
LEE WOOLLEY: I think I make a joke quite often and I don't want to offend anybody. But a lot of programs are bronze, silver, gold. It's not what our employees want. So I think that think about who your audience is and getting them involved.
Any program we develop now, each weekend we have a focus group of all the different people, and one of the things we've learned through pain is don't always get your great people in that group. Get some people who have been identified as meh because they will tell you. It's kind of like the Disney mentality of let's get some people who will pull it to be pieces.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah. I like people like that involved. Yes.
LEE WOOLLEY: So I think about your audience are, get them involved, and then I think there's an element of think about your design, think about how can you make it non-corporate. Even if you think you work in a company that's really corporate, how do you make it fun and get personality in there? People work for people, and that's no different when they're learning then.
DEBRA COREY: Yeah. I mean, I would challenge anybody, even if you're a corporate business, why does learning have to be corporate? There's no reason. There's no legal ramifications of it or anything.
LEE WOOLLEY: Preaching to convert.
DEBRA COREY: Yes. Yes. I know. I listen to you. I listen to you. Perfect. Well, this is Lee is definitely a rebel in what you've done and the whole idea with Albert and Elsa I think is absolutely brilliant. So I hope you've enjoyed it, and I just want to end by saying to go out there and be a rebel. Thank you very much.