Interview with Suzanne Hitchen

Citation

Norton, J. (2010), "Interview with Suzanne Hitchen", Human Resource Management International Digest, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/hrmid.2010.04418baf.001

Interview with Suzanne Hitchen

Article Type: Interview From: Human Resource Management International Digest, Volume 18, Issue 2

Suzanne is Director, Co-Founder and Owner of Instep UK Ltd. This role sees her fulfill many roles, most notably as a key client manager for a number of clients and as a coach for other members of the Instep team. Her extensive development and training background, coupled with considerable experience of working closely with managing directors and senior teams, means that Suzanne has the ability to translate clients’ business issues into simple but effective development solutions.

Could you tell us a little bit about Instep UK, and your role within the company?

I’m one of the two founders of Instep; we set Instep up 17 years ago. We work with a high number of PLC’s and medium sized businesses, and we offer management development, train the trainer and organizational development.

At the 2009 World of Learning Conference, you discussed the different types of learning styles that people exhibit: linguistic, logical, visual, physical etc. Could you talk us through how you adapt your training programs to suit a variety of learning styles?

If you think of a training workshop, where you would have 12 people coming along, a group of 12 people would be quite different in the way that they like to learn. So, rather than have a set format for the day, we’ll have an essence of the subject, for example: coaching. We’ll cover all the key learning points that you need to get from coaching, but during the day we’ll run a very rich tapestry of different activities, so people can explore the subject. This means that it appeals to everybody in the room, rather than only one or two people getting something from it.

From a trainer’s point of view, you have to be very receptive to the group and what activities you need to be running after assessing the different learning styles of the group. Typically, if we turn up and run a seven-hour event, our trainers have probably prepared around 27 hours worth of material, which they can dip in and out of. We might get different groups working on different activities at the same time: some people are very much activists, so they will want to be doing activities and getting involved in that way, whereas other people are more reflective and would prefer a theoretical debate for example.

Organizations are increasingly concerned with return on investment from development programs. What is your response to this for the type of training that your company offers?

We’ve actually been affected positively in light of the recent economic downturn. We’re a very pragmatic organization, so the way that we set about delivering and evaluating our training is that we actually start with the end in mind. So, we would ask what outcomes a company would want to achieve from a learning and development training session. We would ask what they want people to do differently or better as a result of the training and we would also discuss what the benefits to the business would be. We always start designing learning by assessing what it is that people hope to achieve and then we work backwards from there.

Do you tend to be approached by businesses, or is there are large amount of marketing and promoting involved in your processes?

We are very fortunate in that we do get around 90 percent of our work through referral. The 2009 World of Learning conference was the first conference that we have attended in around seven years, because we do get so much repeat business. So that would really be part of our USP, in terms of what makes us different: we are very flexible and truly work in partnership with our partners. We are also very focused on what is going to be delivered as a result of our training programs: what are the outcomes that are we looking for?

How can organizations best go about evaluating the results of your training programmes?

We tend to disregard the end of course feedback sheet, which just tells you whether people have enjoyed the day. We work in partnership with the company and line managers and we go back and evaluate with the company what we feel we have achieved. There are two steps to that: what has been put into practice in the workplace, and what benefits the organization has achieved.

Would you agree that learning and development issues are not necessarily attracting the attention they deserve in organizations?

I think what is happening at the moment, (which I would say is a positive development), is that with the economy being where it is, people are really focusing on the key needs of the business. They are getting down to the core of what the company needs to do and asking lots of questions to establish more precisely what needs doing, and how internal capabilities can be built upon so that programs have longevity. So, I think that the effect of the economic downturn has been quite positive in terms of making people focus on what they are going to spend their training budget on and what is going to add real value.

Have there been any particular training programs that have gained popularity in light of the recent developments within the economy?

The amount of internal trainer development and helping people write toolkits to support that has gone up massively. Having said that, we are still doing quite a lot of good solid management development, because some companies have downsized and therefore managers have to be more effective at managing if they are trying to get the staff to cover more roles and responsibilities across the business. It is absolutely critical that the people who are there have got the skills: to motivate, to manage, to inform.

What do you think is the biggest challenge that HR professionals will be facing over the next few years?

I think that the biggest challenge for HR professionals at the moment is the battle that they have to face in investing in training for staff. They do need to be investing now, ready for the upturn, because there are often people who will stay with a business because there aren’t many job opportunities around, but as soon as there is an upturn, people might lose motivation and move on because they haven’t had the opportunities for development within the business. For example, at the moment we are seeing a lot of companies freezing their graduate development programs. That is quite short-term thinking, because there will be less graduates around in the marketplace in general in the next few years and in a couple of years we are going to suffer from not having developed people now. I think the challenge is realizing that although you may have a restricted budget, you still need to be looking at where the talent is in your organization, and how you are utilizing that talent to ensure that you hang on to it.

Interview by Juliet Norton