Lee Walters, learning and development manager

Citation

Walters, L. (2012), "Lee Walters, learning and development manager", Strategic HR Review, Vol. 11 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/shr.2012.37211aaa.005

Lee Walters, learning and development manager

Article Type: Practitioner Profile From: Strategic HR Review, Volume 11, Issue 1

HR professionals share their experience of working in HR

When Lee Walters left military life he knew that the skills acquired during the course of his 23 year naval career would stand him in good stead for his new role as learning and development manager at Balfour Beatty Engineering Services (BBES).

He comments: “The military doesn’t have a classic HR function so the individual officer is responsible for training and coaching, on the job, all those under their command. Working as operational manager in a warship combat center is a high pressure role and I was effectively training and coaching members of my team on a daily basis. At any one time I was responsible for the training and career progression of up to 100 trainees.”

The value of one-to-one communication

His time in the military has proved to Walters that coaching has the potential to be far more effective in building relationships with your team and that it can deliver greater transfer and retention of knowledge than simply sending people on courses. He is keen for BBES to embrace coaching and its benefits but recognizes that this may require a cultural change within the business.

He says: “There’s a danger in our industry that coaching is perceived as ‘fluffy’ and that its benefits are intangible. In reality, recognition, praise and direct feedback through a coaching relationship are absolutely critical to an individual’s progress and one-to-one time with a line manager can provide a massive morale boost for employees and trainees. Coaching is also the simplest form of knowledge transfer and can be highly cost effective to an organization.”

This focus on the individual is an approach that Walters applied from his first day in the role. His first few months at BBES were spent traveling the length and breadth of the country meeting a wide range of managers and employees. Over time he discovered that a large proportion of employees within the business had a high level of technical skills. But it was also clear that there was more work to be done on developing their management capability.

Taking a multi-tiered approach

Walters believed that the company’s existing management program, a one tier system, could not adequately address the need he had identified for a bespoke approach to talent management and succession planning. He undertook a total overhaul of the management program implementing a three tier system for junior managers, middle managers and senior managers culminating in three multi modular management and leadership programs.

He says of his approach: “In the military training and development is a bespoke, assessed ongoing process; it’s never assumed that just because someone makes a good line manager they will naturally make a good leader. You are constantly assessed on the job so that when you are promoted into a role both you and your superiors are 100 percent confident that you’re ready to take on everything that the role might bring. To that end all employees who are promoted must first complete a leadership and management course, which can last up to four weeks in total. The three tier program at BBES has been running for two years now and is already bearing fruit. It means that we can monitor and progress talent through the business effectively whilst at that same time providing the same training modules to all employees as and when they are required.”

Feedback from a BBES employee in a recent IIP review is proof of the success of this approach. Having completed the program, he claimed that it had made him “400 times a better manager.”

Retaining flexibility to embrace new solutions

Although a big advocate of one-to-one coaching, Walters also recognizes the role for blended learning within a wider framework. He is currently working with Balfour Beatty Group on the implementation of an e-learning solution for BBES.

He says: “As in every business, training budgets are constantly scrutinized and it’s important that we are able to show cost efficiency for all our learning and development initiatives. E-learning isn’t always the solution but it can be a really efficient way to deliver learning in areas such as sustainability and code of conduct to a widely dispersed employee population.”

Focusing on the future

Walters’ next mission is to work with stakeholders within the business to ensure complete understanding and buy-in into what coaching is and its benefits before starting a program. He also plans to develop further the talent management and succession planning within BBES. He believes that the key lies in developing an agreed definition of “potential” so that line managers can identify the attributes/behaviors associated with this.

His ultimate goal is to reach the point where managers can objectively assess when an employee has potential, thereby developing more robust succession plans within BBES.

Lee WaltersBased at Balfour Beatty Engineering Services.

About the author

Lee Walters has been Learning and Development Manager at Balfour Beatty Engineering Services since January 2009. He was previously in the British Navy for 23 years and was most recently an operational manager. Lee Walters can be contacted at: lee.walters@bbesl.com