John Wade, director at Perkins Slade explains to Colin Lloyd the importance of training when recruiting new members of staff
Training starts even before you appoint an individual. In a sense you are setting the boundaries of a person before you recruit them.
What you must ensure is that the organisation offers a flexible approach to training because although you might pre-plan activities relating to a role, the activities may not comply with the individual.
I make sure that I clearly define the job role and the competencies needed to satisfy the role. I also define standards in which Perkins Slade operate by, so that both the candidate and myself are clear of what is expected from them.
Objectives
Next the process of interviewing and selecting a candidate can begin because the necessary objectives are now available. This is why training starts before we even place someone. Furthermore, we do not view training as something that can take place in the workplace. Training is learning and should be recognised as such.
Training can be broken down into: coaching, mentoring, socialisation and technical advancements. In order to assess which area an individual needs more development in, a process needs to be worked through. The clients might well wonder where the professional advice that should be given comes from, and of course the FSA have their own demands and expectations. That is the thinking behind how I develop training programmes. Training is all about job definition.
As an organisation we have to make sure we train a person so they can comfortably fulfil the role. We assess the individual's competency using an appropriate procedure. We are able to do this in a number of ways; supervision, file audits, customer complaints and speaking to other people who know the individual.
Before staff are put on programmes they are assessed on a scale based on their current ability, those at one end should be given no responsibility with those at the other end of the scale receiving full responsibility.
This enables us to benchmark where they are today and where they should be in 12 months time based on the scale. I think there is a fallacy that everyone has to be competent at everything. It is far better to have a team of people who excel in different areas than one that is good at all the same things.
We encourage people to take exams, as we recognise the benefits of having a qualified and technically competent workforce. We give three days study plus a revision day in every six-month exam period and we pay for people's membership and exams. Although this is a great policy it is not an easy option. We want to get the best out of people and so the stakes have to be high. The return on investment here for Perkins Slade is a greater qualified workforce. However, this does not mean that technical ability is what makes an excellent broker.
Coaching and mentoring
Because the business is evolving we have introduced coaching and mentoring.
It is very much an awareness raising exercise aiming to get people in the right mindset and giving them the ability to recognise that coaching actually is happening.
Mentoring should be an off-line procedure meaning the mentor is not someone's line manager. A coach will advise someone on how to carry out duties but cannot be a mentor because the individual being coached might have an issue with them. Therefore we offer an alternative, objective perspective to training.
We often hire people who know nothing about insurance but have excellent key skill sets. We then put them on a 12-month programme detailing all aspects of our business and the insurance market. This is designed for someone at the beginning of his or her career. Once completed, they know where they want to go and more importantly we know if they have got what it takes.
Recruiting
We have moved away from just hiring the person who can do the job, because if they can do the job they have nowhere else to go in the organisation. It is very much about realising you cannot train personality but you can influence perception.
In an interview you can never tell what type of individual a candidate is. You have a good idea from the CV and references but you will not fully understand the way someone works until you actually work with them. The best you can hope for is that they have some philosophical alignment with your organisation. For instance, one particular candidate I interviewed was technically brilliant but very 'me' focused.
We look for someone who demonstrates a basic liking to our way of thinking.
This helps to define their role in the organisation and how they will contribute to the makeup of the Perkins Slade culture.
Part of the training we do is the socialisation aspect. This consists of bringing the new starter in a week or two prior to their start date and introducing them to their team and showing them around the office.
More importantly we introduce them to who they will be working with on a daily basis so they have some exposure to the social confounds of the office before they begin work.
