How To Create A Learning And Development Program To Grow Your Team

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Tim Reitsma: Welcome to the People Managing People Podcast. We're on a mission to build a better world of work and to help you create happy, healthy, and productive workplaces. I'm your host, Tim Reitsma! 

Is your talent development program simply a large database of videos that you hope people will watch? Or perhaps it's simply, "let's give everyone $1000 a year and see who spends it."

My guest today, Renée Safrata, has worked with thousands of companies and executives throughout North America and Europe, helping them to connect, adopt new behaviors, and become confident members of highly functioning teams. Renée is the CEO and Founder of Vivo Team—a full spectrum learning methodology that develops your leaders and teams through live online training, coaching, and people analytics.

If you're struggling with learning and talent development, perhaps getting buy-in from your leadership team, or maybe people are just not interested in watching these videos, have a listen to our conversation where you learn about a foundational methodology that can take your organization to the next level and transform your learning and development program.

Renée, welcome to the People Managing People podcast. I've been following your journey, Vivo Team's journey since I was introduced to Vivo Team early on in 2022. And I'm finally excited to have you on the show. So, thanks Renée for coming on. 

Renée Safrata: I'm excited to be here. Thanks, Tim. And thanks for all the watching you've been doing, watching and listening. 

Tim Reitsma: Well, it's been fun to watch the growth of your company, and we're gonna get into that. We're gonna be talking about learning development and the space that, that you play in. And not just about, you know, the importance of learning development, but some of the research that you've done in order to disrupt this industry, because it needs to be disrupted. 

But before we get there, don't wanna get ahead of myself. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what's top of mind for you right now?

Renée Safrata: Yeah, well, let me think. I am entering into a milestone year as 2023, so I'll have a milestone birthday that I'm excited about. And I think that what that means for me, Tim, is that I've come to a stage in my career where I feel like I can have lots of great conversations with people and not be concerned about what I say, how I say it.

I feel confident and I just feel like I'm curious. I'm confident and I'm curious and that's really enjoyable. As well, our business is just absolutely exploding, and that's a fun ride to be on right now. So we made a scientifically wild ass guest, we call them here at Vivo Team, a swag 12 years ago, and we made the right bet.

And it's just fun to think back to those days when we were oh, could it be? And it actually is, and it's just exploding. So, you know, we're a Canadian company, but we have a global footprint. We're now in 19 countries and hoping to expand into more. So that's exciting because we've got some really good action research on talent, on leaders, on individual contributors, on this new world of hybrid. You know, our conversations are not just local conversations and that's fun to be a part of. 

Tim Reitsma: It's exciting. And just before we hit record, you were saying that's something that's just really exciting you, is just watching the organization that you came up with an idea with, I think some co-founders and now it's exploding and so congrats on that.

I know, as you said you know, your wild ass guess your scientifically wild ass guesses is definitely paid off. And I'd love for you to share just a minute or two just about what is Vivo Team? How would you describe Vivo team? 

Renée Safrata: So I would actually, you described Vivo Team as a learning and development company at the beginning. I don't think of us as a learning and development company. 

Tim Reitsma: Okay. 

Renée Safrata: I think of us as learning development experts who have come to the marketplace with a full spectrum, high tech, high touch, transformational methodology. So really what we're doing is we're creating winning companies and inspiring leaders, but we're doing it because we're paying attention to this whole idea of how do we bring a method to, in front of someone that they are inspired to come back to and come back to, and come back to.

So sure, we are in the human capital, excellent sector. We sit in learning and development, but it's the technology wrap and the methodology that really pushes us into a tech enabled services offering. 

Tim Reitsma: Thanks for that and thanks for correcting me so graciously. And yeah, you're right. It's the technology piece, that methodology is not just here we're gonna plug in some standalone videos into an LMS and distribute them to the organization. It's taking a, like you said, a high touch and impactful process in order to tap into that human capital. 

Renée Safrata: Yeah. A lot of, and I'm not gonna say, I wouldn't say the word a lot, let me say that there are many competitors who come to the space as tech people not founded in learning and development expertise. And so, you know, if you think about the multiple technology offerings that are self-directed, where perhaps an employee would say, I am a, as an employee, going to figure out my gaps in learning, and I'm going to pick and choose what I think I need to learn.

You know, that's great if you're a tech person and you've loaded content and you've made a great user experience, but it's not great for the consumer who's really making the judgment call of, I think this is what I need to learn. It could be completely in contrast to what the company wants you to learn.

Right? And not very strategic. And also it looks, you know, people drop off of it. But when we come to the space and we say, Hey, let's look at actually what an individual needs to go through. Step one, step two, step three, step four, to get to the end goal. And how can we really offer something to our, the organizations that we work with, which is strategic in their learning and development and in their uplifting and their career achievement of their employees, their leaders, their individual contributors.

That's where it gets exciting. We actually, we've heard feedback that Vivo Team is able to keep us on the straight and narrow strategically about our people. Because if you think about a HR role, people are so busy. I mean, especially with the pandemic and the vaccines and the this and the that and where people are working. 

That shiny objects syndrome can come into play really easily where, you know what? Somebody's trying to navigate a conflict in the sales team. Let's do something about communication. It's very easy to get distracted, is what I wanna say. I don't know if that's helpful. 

Tim Reitsma: Well, I think it is. I think it, it is easy to get distracted where you might have your objectives, your learning objectives set out for the year. But you're hearing something and then all of a sudden your whole plan is derailed. 

So it's keeping, sure, it's important to do that training, I believe, but it's important to stay on your course and understand what is truly important to the organization in order to hit your goals. And the training that is needed or the the gaps maybe that've been uncovered in assessments, whether it's through your platform or a different whatever it is, but what are your skill gaps? Where are the gaps that are gonna prevent us or potentially stall us from getting to those goals? That's so, so important. That's the foundation. 

So you talked about the research. And it was crucial for disrupting or for exploring this L&D space. Can you tell, unpack that a little bit? Just from the research perspective and what was uncovered? What did you find when you underwent this study? 

Renée Safrata: Yeah, let me take you back a wee bit. So I'm gonna take you back 12 years ago and going into 12 years ago, I was really a consultant.

I was a consultant to C-suite executives and helping them understand like a CEO, understanding how to get their strategic table, their VPs, their EVPs aligned. Saying the same thing, doing the same thing, thinking of it as a number one team, and how were they working as a number one team to deploy what they needed to deploy.

I was actually quite frustrated and I was quite frustrated by the fact that everything that I was doing was based on observational improvement. And I started thinking, ugh, you know, this has gotta be different. I've gotta be able to somehow track what I am doing here in a different way. So that set me on this whole idea of bringing the right people around the table, coaches, trainers, learning and development experts, product developers, linguists around the table to have a conversation about, is there a way that we could actually look at data as an opportunity to give companies more than just observational?

I think things are good around here sort of thing. And when it was researching, when sitting down and researching that, it took us into all of these different areas that, to make a long story short, ended up being two years of really valuable research on the learning and development world technology, the whole ability of companies to navigate succession.

For five generations sitting in the workplace when you know those traditionalists and baby boomers are staying in the workplace longer. And we have these competing and compelling, interesting people coming in as new millennials and conversations not being able to be held in alignment with just things that needed to get done.

So for two years, that team of people, we sat together and we researched everything we could and we curated it down to five key forces that, again, made up our scientifically wild ass guess. And it, I can explain those forces cuz I think it actually might be interesting to your audience of what those curated five forces were that allowed us to understand what our methodology would be to disrupt learning and development, as we say. 

Tim Reitsma: Yeah. I'm curious, the five forces. 

Renée Safrata: Yeah. 

Tim Reitsma: What came out? 

Renée Safrata: Okay. What came out? Well, first of all, the digital workplace was changing. We could see that, again, let's just cast our eye that we were deciding to look at what the workplace of 2020 would look like, and this was 12, 11 years ago, right?

And so we could see that the digital workplace was changing in such a way where teams were starting to shift. So the days of the hierarchical team where there was a leader, a boss, and everybody served the boss was starting to move towards a hub of more of everybody on the team is a leader. And everybody brings a viewpoint, a perspective to the table that has to be appreciated and valued to get a collaborative project done. 

And then that the future was really going to be because of the opening up the globe and digital opportunities that around the globe we would have multiple hubs. So actually now, subject matter experts could be in a 12 hour time zone away from you, but they're still collaborating on the projects. Well, we can see that in that one force, wow, hasn't the pandemic really expedited that, pushed us into multiple team members working around a central hub, let's just say. 

The other force that we recognize was that employees would have an increased expectation of work. And that really that whole influence of the younger generations and how they were being brought up with interactive feedback from their parents in their education would really put pressure and demands on their bosses, their managers, their peers in businesses to think differently, to get better upskilling, and to really think about how they could bring in, let's say get businesses out of the shoebox and bring in efficiencies and technologies to their projects and to how they collaborated. So we knew that employees' expectations was going to put pressure on companies. 

The third was this whole idea of, now the flip side of that was that companies and organizations would really need to make themselves competitive, very compelling to work for. And boy oh boy, once again, isn't this just expedited with what has happened globally for all of us with the pandemic. In that people have been in the big quit, they've left like those steady show right now that once people are, you know, right now what's happening in workplaces is a lot of these companies that got massive financing have realized that they have to let go of people. And so not only is their big quit, they're letting go of people. And now there's this competitive market and there's choice.

There's choice for what do I want my lifestyle to be like and what does the company that I am interviewing for need to do for me? And how is that company going to support my career progression? Because I've only have one life to live and I wanna do great work. I wanna do great work with great people, but I need to understand that the organization is paying attention to me, not just the job.

And then force number four, I think I mentioned already when we started talking about this, was that whole idea of who is actually making these digital learning platforms? You know, e-learning products, talent management products, continuous learning products, digital learning products were all out there. But who was behind them and who was really had the integrity of thinking of the learner? And was the learner going to be able to get what they need, change their behaviors, change their results? 

We recognize that there was a lot of dissatisfaction in our research pre-pandemic with self-directed learning management systems and that, and we chose to be in the, what we call learning in the flow of work where you could learn something, a bite-size piece in just an hour.

And then go off and apply it in the workday, get results or not, and then come back and learn something more. So that high tech approach was needed, but the high touch experience of how am I applying what I'm learning had to be in a continuous learning flow. 

And then the last force was this whole idea of social learning, and I mentioned this. You know, pre-pandemic, we started to see five generations in the workplace sitting side by side. And we started to see that companies were having difficulty with the fact that mentoring used to be top down. But actually if we reverse the mentoring because younger people were coming into the workplace with all these great ideas and all these great opportunities of utilizing technology that they could bring and change the way things were done, that actually a reverse mentoring program would be a value to the organization.

Where those younger people were saying, well, what if and why not, and let's do this. And that, of course, opened up dialogue and connection, social learning, bridging the gap between all of those generations, which I think is exciting. And by the way, I think right now we really need to tap right back into that. Because connection is being lost in hybrid. I can say more about that, but really those are, you know, those are the five forces that digital workplace, employee expectation, the characteristics of compelling workplaces, evolution of digital training and development and social learning. 

Tim Reitsma: Thanks for unpacking that for us, and I think it's an important foundation, even for somebody who's listening and saying maybe they're tasked with, okay, I need to go and build out some learning for our organization with, you know, limited budget, limited resources. But thinking through these, don't think I'm as necessarily as disruptors, but as like a place to start looking forward, like you said, 12 years ago.

You looked forward. If you're a manager, leader, HR professional, and you're creating something, don't think about what do I need now? Think about the future. I love that you said that high touch integrity, you know, where's the training coming from? I love the fact of the social learning. I've been doing a ton of reading around learning and development myself, and really, I think one thing, and I agree with you, one thing that's lost is this social learning.

It's something where, okay, I learned something, but I look around and I'm sitting in my basement or my bedroom or my home office and I have nobody to talk to about this. 

But I need to ask a question about some or, Hey, I need to navigate a situation, but there's nobody to talk to. So creating those learning environments is so, so important.

Renée Safrata: It's so important and it's so important to also embed a measurement. You know, there's about five things going on in my head right now that I'd love to take us off of the five forces and have this conversation about, you know, the whole idea of the strategic table, the business case around people and people development. And one of the things that we've heard from our prospects or our customers is, Hey, Vivo Team, I sit at the strategic table. I'm the only one that doesn't have data. 

I may have employee engagement scores or the Gallup 7 or the Gallup 12 or something like that, but I really don't have data around the activities that I am trying to convince the CFO, the CEO and my colleagues at the strategic table. I don't have the data to demonstrate that what I am pitching is going to make great change to the way as a business we can succeed.

And so what we also recognize was that we needed to put that data into not only C-Suite executives hands and our buyers, but we needed that data to be just as compelling for our learners. That they had something that they could say, oh, I changed these behaviors, and that has upped the dial, or changed the dial on how my team is productive, collaborating, performing, essentially.

So we decided to really make sure that we had not only were we diagnosing the problem, but when we were solving the problem, those were integrated. And I think that's one thing too, is that, you know, if you are sitting at the strategic table and you're sort of scratching your head on how do I make this a business case. 

Really, to work on talent development, and to reflect basically about what does this organization need to grow, what does that look like for these people? It's a lot less check the box. We did a piece, you know, we brought a consultant in or, what we're seeing right now actually is a lot of companies are investing in coaching because, I mean, there's been this pin throughout the pandemic of this mental fitness has declined. So let's bring in some coaches.

But now what's starting to happen at this stage is people are going, yeah, we brought in a bunch of coaches, but we have no measure of what is doing for us, right? What is the coaching investment doing for us? So again, it's about integrating analytics. It's about integrating that strategic thinking, that business gate case.

So that really, those people sitting in talent learning and development inside of companies can be heard at the strategic table at a level that they have never been heard before. And I think that's really important. Yeah, I'll stop there. 

Tim Reitsma: Yeah, I think it's so important. I've been there, I've been at the table and said, okay, here's what we need to do. And I've had CFOs and CEOs say, well, we already give everybody a thousand dollars a year. But the uptake of that is it's only 20% of people share, you know, submit their receipts. So people aren't, don't wanna learn. 

Renée Safrata: I love that.

Tim Reitsma: People aren't invested in that. 

Renée Safrata: And so, you know where the problem is there, Tim? It's that we put a thousand dollars on the expense line. So then learning and development just looks like an expense, instead of an investment.

An investment into our people. There should be a value equation. We track our return on investment of our programs. We've tracked them yearly and we track them over a period of time. And we can confidently say that for every dollar invested in our products, our customers on average get that dollar back plus 21 cents more on average. So you can imagine that people are getting that, you know, back more and back a little bit less sometimes. 

But the beauty of, again, that buyer in our companies and our client companies being able to stand forth and say to a CFO, I recognize that what I'm doing has a direct and significant impact on the bottom line. Because if our teams and leaders are more aligned, then they're going to get more projects done with fewer people and have fun doing it cuz they're aligned, they're not in conflict. And therein lies the reason that we don't have to hire more people next year. Well, CFOs love that, right? 

Tim Reitsma: Absolutely. The first thing that comes to mind is, what do you mean we don't have to increase our headcount by X percent? So, well, you might still need to, but if we actually take a systematic approach, we look at it as an investment versus just an expense. I love that. I was having a conversation with somebody earlier this morning or earlier today, around this concept of workforce planning, and somebody said, well, is workforce planning still a thing?

And I said, well, if you just think of it as, okay, here's what I think I need for next year from just a people perspective. My opinion, that's a wrong way of looking at it. It's, you gotta look at it holistically. Just like you were saying, you, we've gotta look at, well, what are the goals of the organization?

Where are the gaps in our talent? Where are the gaps in our skills? Who is an emerging leader that we might need to upscale? Where's there's conflict in our organization? Mapping all of that out. Combined with where do we need to make this investment in our talent is just a winning strategy. It will help organizations from, in my opinion, and I, this is my only, my opinion right now is like, oh, we just need to hire, you know, another a hundred people. And then realize six months later, oh, we didn't need 90 of them. We gotta let them go. If we just sometimes hurry up and slow down, take a minute to plan this out, build that proper strategy. 

It's a win-win. What are your thoughts on my on-the-fly opinion?

Renée Safrata: Yeah. No, I think I, I'll have an on-the-fly opinion as well. I'll join you in that. That I think that whole idea of there has been such change in the la like maximize change for all of us across the globe in the last couple years.

That it's time to gonna take a pause, stops resting people in seats because you don't know what else to do with them. And then they're in seats and they're like, I dunno how to do this job. But to actually just take a pause and a pause could be a one day pause or a three day pause to do your own scientifically wild ass guess.

Where is this organization gonna be in two years, three years? Do we need to like, I mean right now we're in this, all these organizations are having these threat that we're in a recession and their own customer fragility. Well, how are we gonna pull out of that and who is it going to be that we need on board to pull us out of that?

And where are we gonna be in three years? Now, where's the business case for what I need to bring into play year one, year two, year three? You mentioned that piece about the, you know, okay, everybody's got a thousand dollars in their pocket for training and only 10% are doing it. I mean, just putting the decision on the employee.

The decision needs to be as a business case from the organization, a collective that we need you to participate and we need you to engage to becoming better in your role. And we need you, Mr. Leader, Ms. Leader, to hold others accountable to their own development. And then we have sort of a winning formula. It then becomes, what's the value of investing in our people?

Less about what's the cost of a thousand dollars in somebody's pocket. You know, you put a thousand dollars into somebody's pocket and then they walk out the door. You've just take their salary now and multiply it times three. That's your thousand dollars has just gone into that cost. 

Tim Reitsma: Absolutely. I mean the cost of, yeah, somebody walking out costs way more than doing some investment. But there's a couple things in there, Renée, that are coming up for me and one of them is cuz it really comes down to also leaders and managers having honest conversations, right? Businesses flow and flucks, you know, it's organizations, you know, in my opinion, need to sit down and go, okay, where are we going?

What are we gonna do? What positions are we gonna need? And crafting that up and then saying, okay, well, we're pivoting, we're shifting. We think you're an expert here in this area, but we need training in this other area. You know, we're gonna help support you. Versus here's a catalog of 8,000 courses, you need to do copywriting. Go pick one. 

It's like, okay that's still wide open and not necessarily helping an individual in an organization push forward. So I think it, from what I'm reading of kind of between the lines is, there's a big on us on organizations to think of this as an investment rather than just a passive expense of like, Hey, Renée, here's a thousand dollars. Go figure out where you need to develop cuz maybe you're gonna go develop in a completely different area than what I want you to develop in. And now we're gonna have a mismatch of experience on the team. 

Renée Safrata: Yeah. And I think it's not black and white. I don't think it's, you know, either or. I think it's a little of this and a little of that. So in other words, if I want people in my warehouse to really understand the safety procedures of how to put up a ladder when they have to climb up to the fourth shelf, that's something that can be self-directed. It can be something that I learned with a video and I do it. It's a hard skill. 

But the moment I have to tell three new hires that they are in breach of safety, that's a high touch conversation. That's a tough conversation that I need to have. And that requires transformational learning, where I transform how I have behaved in the past, where I've just thrown out a message and hope that it worked. But there's a risk in that versus, as you said, having deeper conversations like, do you really understand? Now let me watch you three days in a row so that I have the trust that you understand. 

And now, by the way, let me give you kudos that you do understand. Now let's move on to the next piece so that people can understand that we are blending those high touch conversations with those high tech tools, you know, those methodologies essentially, right?

There's no wrong, there's no right. It's kind of like how many companies right now, I talk to companies every day all day long, and some companies are, we're in hybrid. Some are, no, we're one day a week people are working from home. Others are like, no, we're fully here, like it's across the map. It's all different.

And that's okay. A little bit of this and a little bit of that to get the job done. What's it look like? Right? And always think too, you know, how many times were knowledge workers traveling? We were always kind of in a, weren't we? Like, like not everybody was always working from the office. There were multiple offices around the globe, but we thought it, we put, we bucketed that differently. You're traveling. 

Tim Reitsma: Yep. 

Renée Safrata: You're working elsewhere. That's it. 

Tim Reitsma: Yeah, it's just working elsewhere. No, I love that. I can't believe we've coming up on 30 minutes already, Renée, and this, I've got so many more questions and I think we'll maybe have to pick it up in the future.

I think, you know, for those who are listening, who are thinking about L&D, learning and development, talent development I hope they're inspired to think of it as a little, little differently than just you know, an expense. What's one thing someone can do today to maybe shift the needle? Maybe they're building out an, a talent development plan or learning development plan, a budget proposal, nervous to be sitting at the table with the CFO saying, well, this is too expensive. Where do we start?

Renée Safrata: Yeah, you asked me for one. I maybe Tim, give you three. So it's really me sitting down and thinking, what's the business case? It's me sitting down and thinking, do I have a voice at the strategic table? If I don't have a voice, what can I do to really champion, influence a different way around our people, our talent?

And then the third thing is give it a try and keep giving it a try. So change the way we think about our people around here and change the way that we measure, you know, that investment. That's what I would say. 

Tim Reitsma: No, I love that. It's pretty straightforward in, in my opinion. And but yet it's so difficult when, you know, often organizations are driven by, you know, we gotta look at the bottom line, you know, what's the profit?

And in, if you head to peoplemanagingpeople.com to our interview series, Renée talks about if we think about people in that equation as well. And and that I think is so, so crucial making that business case of that developing our talent and not just, you know, throwing some money down as an expense, but changing that to an investment.

I love that simple mind shift will, I hope, inspire people who are listening to bring up the conversation with their leadership teams or their leaders or their HR teams, and so.

Renée Safrata: You know, some of our best customers have been the customers who sit at the strategic table and they're in the end stage of their career and they wanna leave the place differently than they found it.

And they have found their voice. They've found their way because they've done everything and they've been dissatisfied with things. And so even if you're a young person at the table, why can't you be that person and leave the place better than you found it? That's what I would say. That's my message. 

Tim Reitsma: I love that. Yeah. You don't have to wait 1, 2, 6, 20 years to safe to find your voice. It's like, I'm here day one, here's my voice and this is what I'm championing. And that even ties right back to the beginning of our conversation is that, you know, employees are seeking more. They're not just seeking a place to collect a paycheck.

They're seeking a place to integrate with life and their career aspirations. 

So Renée, thanks so much for coming on. I really appreciate you sharing your methodology behind Vivo Team and just really inspiring me and hopefully inspiring our listeners. If somebody wants to get ahold of you, what's the best way to track you down?

Renée Safrata: I think the best way is hello@vivoteam.com. That's the best way and I really invite conversations. This is what I do all day long. I think that if we can all globally make a change for inspiring leaders and teams out there, it's the world's gonna be a better place and we're gonna let eat less potato chips and spend more time with our families.

Tim Reitsma: I love it. Maybe I could eat potato chips and spend more time. I have a hard time separating those two but I totally understand what you mean. 

And so for those who are listening, we'll put the links to Vivo Team on our site as well. And as always, if you have any feedback or comments about this episode, send me an email tim@peoplemanagingpeople.com.

I always love to connect with listeners and you can also find me on LinkedIn. Just search Tim Reitsma on LinkedIn and I'd love to connect with you there. 

With that, I hope you have an amazing day. Thanks everyone!