Building a future-ready workforce

August 28, 2023

Fostering a culture of training and upskilling our employees to make them future ready

Jeff Bezos was once quoted, “In business, what’s dangerous is not to evolve.” As a HR professional, I firmly believe this is not true just in the context of business delivering to ever evolving customer needs, like ours, but is equally important when talking about the workforce. Training and developing employees is very important. - for me it is on the “must-do” list. Let me cite a recent example.

At Signify, our culture of continuous learning creates an environment that allows employees to build your skills and career. We foster this culture as we believe that learning new skills to do your job well, remain competitive and be future ready as together, we are transforming the industry! Upskilling, training, and development at Signify is looked at with a view to develop internal talent to not just be relevant in the case of new technologies but also to become better team members and stronger leaders.

Earlier this year, globally we chose about hundred employees to take the “iEDGE” people leader program. This selection of employees was made as these employees are new in their capacity as a people manager and we as a company want to invest in their development so they can effectively engage and lead their teams. Our leadership development offer “iEdge” for new people managers covers the fundamentals of effective people management and is the license to operate in line with our leadership principles Lead, Develop, Inspire. For this, we have partnered with HULT EF Business School, recognised, and ranked amongst the best business schools in the world and a track record of delivering leadership development programs across the globe. The leadership programme consists of seven virtual workshops and is spread over a few months covering critical aspects such as becoming a self-aware leader to unlocking the team’s best performance to how strategy can turn into results, when the team comes together.

On that note, I feel pride in sharing that from the hundred employees chosen globally, three employees were chosen from the UKI team.

‘The programme encouraged me to self-reflect and become more self-aware of my leadership style. Also, being in a fast-evolving industry, I am now able to lead and manage change more effectively, both operationally and strategically’- Daniel Maskell, Key Account Manager.

‘Aside from the engaging sessions and many takeaways, it was insightful to see how others dealt with similar employee- related situations, and I am glad I got to learn the perspectives of a global group of new managers!’ – Nikita Mahajan, PR Manager.

‘Self-awareness is always a power tool, and iEdge gives you the opportunity to explore your behaviours and thoughts whilst giving you tools on how to look and manage situations. The interactive conversations within small teams, will also give you the opportunity to work with a variety of colleagues across different functions and continents.’ – Sarah Quinell, Service Dispatch Team Leader.