All posts in Learning Labs

Overview

headspace is the National Youth Mental Health Foundation providing early intervention support to young people aged 12-25, including: mental health, physical and sexual health, work and study support and alcohol and other drug services.  These services are provided via a national network of centres, an online counselling service eheadspace and a support service for schools.

Situation

headspace has always had a non-traditional management structure. Since inception ten years ago headspace National Office has contract managed headspace centres around the country which are operated by local lead agencies. headspace National Office has provided a number of support services including a Learning and Development function to assist centres to deliver the headspace model of care. Because of this structure, the workforce we target has included National Office staff who are direct employees, staff in headspace centres employed by their local lead agency, private providers working at centres under the Medicare and other government health schemes, and people who offer in-kind work at centres (not paid). The lack of a top-down management structure to the frontline workforce has always impacted engagement with the frontline workforce.

But under recent national reforms this issue has become more pronounced. From July this year the lead agencies are now contracted by their local Public Healthcare Network (PHN) to deliver headspace centres. headspace National Office no longer manages the contracts with centres but still accredits, co-ordinates and supports the national network of centres to deliver the headspace model. The model defines fifteen headspace service components that must be delivered. Support includes provision of resources, tools and training to build the capability of the headspace workforce to deliver the headspace model. We anticipate that at the end of our current two-year contract with the Department of Health, the department may require us to operate on a cost recovery basis, selling access to our training and resources to the centres.

Business Issue

This change makes the challenge of providing capability building to the headspace centres even more complex. It will no longer be viable to mandate training for people based on their roles. We need adapt build self-service offering that meets the identified needs of centres and influences the work of centres in-line with the headspace model. And we need this module to deliver sufficient value to centres that they may later be willing to pay for it.

Big Questions

• How do we design a self-service training and resource platform that balances meeting the identified capability needs of centres and influencing centres in-line with the headspace model of care?
• We’re now one further step removed from the delivery of headspace services. How do we measure our success when we don’t have much visibility of behaviour change and results in centres?
• How should the possible future requirement to commercialise our learning and resource platform influence the work we are doing now to establish the platform and learning products?

Notes & Ideas

Facilitator

 Ian MacLean – Manager – National Education and Trainingatheadspace

Session Overview

Facilitator’s View

Big Questions

Notes & Ideas

Facilitator

 Tim Drinkall, National Learning Manager at Simplot

Overview

ANZ is one of Australia’s leading financial institutions with operations in 36 countries across Australasia, the Pacific, UK, Europe, America and India.

Our core businesses provide Retail, Commercial & Corporate, Institutional and Wealth banking services globally, and are supported by global HR, Finance, Risk, Audit, Technology and Operations functions.

Operating across different markets segments and in so many different geographies presents numerous challenges, particularly when it comes to driving consistency in how we develop critical workforce skills. We employ a ‘hub and spoke’ learning operating model with a central group function driving the organisational learning strategy and global core and strategic capability requirements, with country and business embedded learning teams supporting business unit, local and ad-hoc learning needs.

Situation

Our ambition at ANZ is to create a learning organisation, and we know that people managers play a critical role in creating an environment within which a learning culture thrives. However, our organisational indicators show we have a ‘permafrost’ layer that is creating a barrier to achieving our ambition.

So what exactly is the ‘permafrost’ layer that we are referring to? It’s the layer of middle management that has the greatest people management involvement, and is expected to be both a people leader and a ‘doer’ simultaneously.

Our engagement survey data shows this middle management layer is the least engaged segment of our workforce. That they feel the least loved, valued, guided and supported, and experience the highest level of organisational pressure to perform and deliver – from above and below. This layer also tends to be where top-down communications appear to get blocked.

Business Issue

The learning landscape is rapidly changing. We know all our employees are time poor and looking for more bite-sized, just-in-time and flexible learning.

In the past we have incorporated specific line manager activities into our course designs to provide clarity on what support is required from them and how and when it is needed. Not unsurprisingly, these are often the activities that don’t get completed, preventing the learner from optimising their learning experience, and impacting on their ability to apply the learning.

In an environment that is increasingly fast-paced and fluid, our people managers feel more ill-prepared than ever to meet the increasing demands on how they support their people with their development needs. How do people managers find the time to develop their own capability whilst also being more nimble / flexible in the way they create an environment that supports the new ways of working and learning for their people?

Big Questions

• What role should a manager play in supporting the learning journey of their people?
• How do we engage people managers to ‘warm them up’ to playing this role?
• What skills (new/different) does a people manager require to play this role? How can they develop those skills?

Notes & Ideas

Resources

• Is Yours a Learning Organization?  by Harvard Business Review
• Learning Employees take charge by Deloitte University Press

Facilitator

Julie Owens – Senior Mgr Banking Capabilities& Irene Dietrich – Manager, Governance Essentials & ChannelsatANZ