What we built, and what changed

We were contacted by a national body responsible for the development of small businesses in South Africa. They wanted diversity and inclusivity training. After a brief discussion, we identified the specific challenges they were facing in the organisation and customised the training to meet their needs.

With diversity training, it becomes imperative that there is buy-in from the entire organisation, across all management and employee levels. This buy-in includes the willingness to adjust or update policies, to advertise the policies, and to give employees access to grievance and redress opportunities in a safe and controlled manner.

At Staff Training, we also take the view that you respect the home of the host. With this simple message in mind, we encouraged a very interactive learning intervention where individuals were able to voice their “take” on issues such as culture, gender, age and, amongst others, religion. In all instances, we then encouraged the learners to discuss and internalise their own list of acceptable behaviours within the workplace.

Without exception, the conclusions always aligned to the OHSA law that places the onus on an organisation to supply a safe working environment and protect employees from physical and psychological harm. All that was left was for HR to carry through and ensure that their notice boards, communication and on-boarding processes helped to reinforce the behaviours that the teams had already agreed on.

This remains one of our favourite projects ever. We were contacted by one of South Africa’s oldest and largest metal recycling companies. They wanted to upskill their team leaders and supervisors as they were preparing to strengthen their leadership pipeline.

The challenges from a training viewpoint were that some of the identified incumbents did not have any finalised formal schooling, but they were supremely capable in the work they were performing. The HR reservations centred on both the process and the administrative capability of the incumbents making the move into supervisory positions, which needed a lot more communication, report writing and analysis than the roles they were currently fulfilling. The incumbents were still fully operational while the programme was under way, and they would also have to face the challenge of potentially hostile teams, as some of the identified candidates were younger and/or had shorter service at the company than other older and longer-serving employees.

The curriculum we put together for them included customising modules from communication skills, time management, supervisory skills training, critical thinking and problem solving, and basic project management. These were followed up with the 3 Day Leadership with Enneagram as the final workshop.

Starting slowly and building the trust and confidence of these traditional blue-collar workers was our first port of call. Thereafter we started working with what they knew best, the daily tasks and how these influence the other teams; from there we moved into communication and conflict handling, the setting of boundaries and, mostly, accountability. As the programme ran its course, we were able to introduce the more difficult and technical “asks” such as report writing and management feedback presentations.

The programme was highly successful: over a period of five years, 366 certificates were issued to this group of learners.

One of our longest-standing relationships is now entering its tenth year. What started as a once-off workshop to improve client care and telesales ability has turned into an in-depth project of working with an organisation through directorship changes and exponential growth.

From customer care and communication-focused workshops, this project has morphed into leadership coaching and mentoring, and a weekly on-site, on-demand presence for a highly competent and driven sales team.