Lean In To Learn Ep. 4 - Understanding the Skills for Success Framework with guest Sue Oguchi

Join Jessica Soodeen as she discusses Understanding Skills for Success Framework: Foundations for Workplace Training in Canada on Lean In To Learn with guest Sue Oguchi.

In partnership with Workplace Education Manitoba and thank our funder the Government of Canada Skills for Success Program. 

Joignez-vous à Jessica Soodeen qui discute de comprendre le cadre des Compétences pour réussir : les fondements de la formation en milieu de travail au Canada avec son invitée Sue Oguchi.

On tiens à reconnaître Éducation en milieu de travail Manitoba et à remercier notre bailleur de fonds, le programme Compétences pour réussir du gouvernement du Canada.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Lean In to Learn, your Skills for Success podcast. I'm Jessica Soudine, spokesperson for Workplace Connections, Master Certified Relational Skills Practitioner, and advocate of skills for success at work. Lean in to Learn is a series focused on insightful approaches and forward-thinking topics related to relational skills, which many of us refer to as soft skills. I'd like to acknowledge Workplace Education Manitoba and thank our funder, the Government of Canada's Skills for Success program. I, and carefully curated subject matter experts, will introduce you to an array of tools, resources, and personal journeys that will educate and empower to solve people-related issues at work as well as build individual skills for success. So settle in and open up your hearts and minds as we lean in to learn. Welcome to Lean In to Learn, your skills for success podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Sudin, Master Level Relational Skills Practitioner, and today we will be speaking on the subject of understanding the Skills for Success Framework, Foundation for Workplace Training in Canada, with Sue Ogucchi. Sue Ogucci is an essential skills practitioner with 14 years of direct experience related to the Workplace Relational Skills Program. She has spent time facilitating practitioner training, providing direct employee training, developing essential skills, relational skills curriculum and material, and performing skills for success organizational needs analysis and job profiling. One of her many assets is the ability to engage in community, adult learning programs, employers, government, and other relevant partners in the essential skills development process. Sue has such a diverse background, which includes instructing both at college and university language training centers, as well as almost seven years in Japan. Then corporate is an ESL instructor, is that right? Absolutely, yeah. Very cool. Well, welcome, Sue. That was a mouthful. That's great. It makes me feel old. Oh gosh. It's just experienced. We are experienced women. Yes. That's what happens when you get into your 50s and such. If I went onto your LinkedIn and went onto Google and did a bunch of research, what would something be about you that I wouldn't find there?

SPEAKER_00 2:39

I think probably my little secret hidden talent is I love to take families and photograph them. And I just kind of volunteer my time to do that because I find that often moms don't put themselves in the pictures enough. And kids look back on histories and there's not enough family pictures. So I I love to do that for people.

SPEAKER_01 3:04

Oh my God, that's so heartwarming. I love this. I love this. That's funny.

unknown 3:09

Yeah.

The 49% Literacy And Numeracy Gap

SPEAKER_01 3:09

Yeah. My mom didn't like to be in pictures. So I think that's excellent. Yeah. All right. So we're going to dig into your topic, which is understanding the skills for success framework, those foundations. So for leaders who aren't maybe familiar with the whole structure of what we practition, how would you describe the skills for success framework? And why would you say it's a cornerstone for workplace training?

SPEAKER_00 3:35

So I think what I would begin by saying is that it's based on research that goes back almost 30 years now. And so it wasn't something that was just decided on. It was based on research. And why is it important for leaders to be thinking about it? Is they came up with nine skills that are the same nine skills, regardless of sector, that workers need to be successful in work. The bonus is it also increases their success in communities, which also impacts the work. But without these skills, employees are causing all sorts of issues that you aren't even perhaps aware of. So if we have one of the skills would be communication. If we have poor communication skills, that directly impacts productivity, safety, teamwork, collaboration. If we have workers who struggle with reading comprehension, often they're faking their understanding of employee handbooks or operational health and safety guides, again, which is impacting safety, productivity, and the overwhel kind of health of your workplace. And we need to really start paying attention to those skills and making sure our employees have them. And if not, they're training them.

SPEAKER_01 5:01

Yeah, that's amazing that you brought up the 30 years of research. Like this is significant, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:06

Yeah, and and if I want something that shocks people, I think, when I talk about is Canada now has had four participated in four international adult literacy surveys. And what is surprising to most of us is to learn that 49% of Canadians struggle with reading comprehension and they struggle with numeracy. And those are two pretty big skills in the workplace that if you don't have the right kind of level of skill in them, it's impacting every day that they're in your businesses.

SPEAKER_01 5:43

Yeah. And I can imagine as well, like there's there's all sorts of emotions that go around with the people who are working and struggling with these skills to be able to put their hands up and ask for help.

SPEAKER_00 5:53

I think if people who know me will say, I don't understand why it's a dirty little secret when 49% of our population have the same struggle. But there is, as you mentioned, there's lots of embarrassment and shame around it that you know, we need to talk about it more so that it normalizes it and we dig in and do the work so that we can improve those numbers.

Newcomers, Culture, And Relational Skills

SPEAKER_01 6:17

That's such a beautiful way to say it, you know, like why why is there shame around something that 49% of Canadians struggle with? Yeah. Like that's that's a mic drop moment. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

Well, and you know, I I never have a lack of things to say. And I always want to expand that and say, we're getting a lot of, you know, there's lots of conversation about immigration right now. And when I say that number, one of the first questions is well, is that because of the immigrants? And the research is actually not immigrant-based. It's Canadian population based, 16 to 65 year olds. And so it's not an immigrant issue, it's a Canadian-born issue as well, that those 49% are coming from.

SPEAKER_01 7:02

Wow. And that's a really important distinction because you know, part of the training that we do as well is to help new immigrants understand what are the nuances in working in Canada. Right.

SPEAKER_00 7:16

And I think that's where those relational skills really come into play because uh the immigrants, you know, yes, there's language issues that we need to consider workplace skill training, but a lot of the, you know, all my time in organizations across sectors over the last 14 years really shows that one of the biggest issues for newcomers relates to the relational skills. They culturally they're different and they don't know how to fit in. So having conversations about workplace communication and expectations and uh that part of the skills for success and the relation skills is really important for our newcomers.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yeah, and that's that's really part of building that strong team. So, how have you seen that being leveraged to building that strong team and having people adaptable in today's workplace?

SPEAKER_00 8:15

Is it bad if I say I don't see them leveraging it enough? I was at Symposium, Manufacturing Symposium last week and learned that kind of close to 50% of organizations are spending less than$250 a year on training per employee, and 21% are spending zero, like of that 50% people aren't doing training enough. And productivity is a big buzzword right now in Canada, and without training, we're really not gonna move the needle on productivity, and so those who leverage it and see the impact, because I think that one of the things that WEM is committed to is making sure that they are transparent in seeing the growth, right? So it's like, yes, we're gonna do skills training, but we're gonna then also show you where the impact is from that training. And we're not gonna walk away and you know, here's some training and we hope it helps. We take the time to make sure that it does was the intervention that was needed.

Needs Analysis Over Assumptions

SPEAKER_01 9:34

Yeah, yeah. And so that's that's a great point that you pick up because I know that even in my background in corporate life, we did a lot of leadership training or this or that. And a lot of times it was hugs and high fives for usually between a month and a half and three months. And then a lot of behaviors would go would go back. So you and I know the in ins and outs of what happens with an organizational needs assessment, and then you're doing the work, and then you're looking at these post workshop analysis, and then you know, another touch base a little while later. Can you describe that process a little bit and maybe give us an example of one that's happened that you've that you've worked with that you were able to show leaders how the needle was moved?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

Yeah, it's interesting for me. I, you know, when I was starting out in this, I would get called into a business and they would say, okay, so this is what we would need. And I learned pretty quickly that I'm not actually going to work with those employers unless they allow me to do an organizational needs analysis. Because sometimes there's a real disconnect between what the manager or lead hand or supervisor thinks the problem is and what the problem really is from the employees' perspective. And if I want buy into training, I need to then create training that meets the needs of both groups. So I'm I'm pretty committed to organizational needs analysis, need to include more than just kind of the top level of a company. We need kind of representation all the way down. Nice. Kind of an example that I would give is I worked with one organization early kind of on in this, and and I didn't do that. I trusted that the supervisor knew what the intervention that was needed was, and it was a digital skills training that he thought nobody knew how to use kind of some basic app applications that he wanted them to use. And sure. So I was like, okay, let's go ahead. We set this all up for them. And I'm in class and I'm looking around and I'm like, they know how to use these applications. So we kind of stopped things and I had a conversation. Well, there'd been a new manager who came in who downloaded a bunch of tasks without conversation. So it actually wasn't a digital skills issue, it was a communication and process issue. And so it was this quick slap in the face realization that OA is absolutely key to making sure that you create a program that gets the outcome that is hoped for by the employer. Without doing the OA, we end up with training that, like you said, it's fun, had a great time, but I'm really not applying anything that's going to make change at the company.

SPEAKER_01 12:42

Yeah. And I think leaders and stuff are always looking for that training that feels relevant, but also that can be immediately useful for adult learners. Yeah. Because adult learners is very different.

From Hype To On-The-Job Application

SPEAKER_00 12:53

Yeah. Which is another important part of kind of what the training that happened through WEM, the Skills for Success Relations Relational Skills Training, is that if we want employers to continue to buy training or pay for training for their important, I mean, I believe it's important, you believe it's important, but we also need employers to know that it's important. Yeah, they have to see success. And so training needs to be built so that it's not just here, I'm gonna talk about a subject, but I'm gonna have you do some things that tomorrow when you go back to work, you can apply. So making sure that the training is applicable to what they need to do tomorrow at work is I think one of the things that makes us all look better in the end.

SPEAKER_01 13:50

Yeah, it's a big lever for being successful and to be able to show that. So when we think about, I'm just gonna build on what what you had said earlier, because this is really that framework, right? So that follow-up, you know, when I left corporate, it was because I wanted to do something that had some sort of follow-up so that that that regression back to old behaviors weren't happening. And and just for the audience as well, WEM WE M, that is Workplace Education Manitoba, just in case I didn't define that acronym prior. So when we're thinking about the, okay, now we've done the skills analysis, maybe we've done one or two trainings, and we're gonna go back similar to agile software development, we're gonna go back and and do another pulse check and we're gonna keep doing this. So, you know, in the relational skills trainings, the Kirkpatrick model is used. So we're looking at, you know, a K3, K4 out of a one to K1, K2, K3, K4. So the last two are really looking at that behavioral results. So, what sort of things have you seen that have in that follow-up stage that have been so revealing to leaders and would really be attractive so that they can understand the the impact?

Measuring Impact With Kirkpatrick

SOPs, Quality, And Safety Alignment

SPEAKER_00 15:06

So I'm gonna kind of go on a tangent for a minute. So, following this process, kind of that workplace education Manitoba also buys into, I was part of a national research project where we worked with manufacturers and we went in, we did the organizational needs analysis, we used documents and scenarios that were directly applicable to the workplace we were training in, and we were able to raise skill level, it would take a lot of time, but 30 points on a 500-point skill. And and what scale and what that does, if we can raise people skill levels, that has a direct result on money and bottom line. So I think that that's that's the important piece of this is we all want companies to be successful. And the success comes when they're able to keep more money in their pocket because they're not, you know, wasting time due to communication or do-overs, or there was a mistake because I couldn't read the standard operating procedure correctly. So to me, it all comes back to there's financial gain to be made, and that's that's what employers need to know is this there's too many small and medium-sized businesses in Canada that are not able to sustain or or keep going as businesses, and they're constantly in this stress because of how am I gonna pay the next payroll? And and people need to understand that these skills, the skills for success framework, actually relate directly to some of those pinch points in terms of finances that organizations have. So that was a really rambling way to don't call this rambling.

SPEAKER_01 17:14

It's a very specific example that's very relatable. I spent many years in in manufacturing engineering as well. I have an engineering background. So this is really important to understand to leaders because that can trickle down into your manufacturing line when you have the operational work standards like the standard operational work procedures and have you, when you have those those communications in a way that everyone's getting them right away, that there's no rework, that you're looking for waste, that you're looking for mistake proofing. A lot of people think of this maybe is in terms of, oh, well, all of this is technical, and what do the soft skills have to do with it? Or what are the relational skills and these essential skills have to do with it? But they're right in there. That's exactly where the issue lies. Yeah. Well, as opposed to this math problem.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

In as recently as last year, I was in an organization and there were three different trainers, and we had we were lucky enough to be doing kind of a 10-week workplace training program. We brought in the SOP related to one of the processes that they kept, it kept just kind of being an issue, this one process. And so we're going through the SOP, and the 10 employees in the room were like, that's not how we do it. But then it got even deeper with a third of the room did it differently than the other two-thirds, because the trainers were all training the process differently. And so suddenly we've got quality issues. We've got, it's like, well, if we just pulled out a standard operating procedure that was written in clear language and that everybody followed, we're saving money, we're making money, we're we're not wasting. And and and I always take it back to safety as well. Safety issues just break my heart because it's often about communication and how the documents are written.

Hidden Complexity Of “Simple” Jobs

SPEAKER_01 19:21

Right. And and that's amazing, like making that connection between those standard operational procedures, the work, the health, and that connection is all about the communication. And it's very interesting that you say that, you know, half of the room or two-thirds of the room were doing it different than the other thirds of the room. And I think this is where some of the juicier stuff is after you identify, like you get through some OAs, when you really start digging into those problems, you uncover those gaps that are unknown.

SPEAKER_00 19:52

Absolutely. And, you know, I I always walk the floor. I want to see what they're doing. I want to see there's also a lot of misperceptions, and and that's why you know I talk about those original literacy surveys and and the 30 years that have brought us to this point. Lots of people assume jobs are easy when they're not. And if I were, you know, to talk about hospitality for a minute, right? People think, oh, anybody can be a room cleaner. But when you actually analyze the tasks and the complexity of the tasks required and the reading and the safety and the chemicals and and even the technology that room cleaners now are using, it it's not an easy, it's not a job anybody can do unless everybody has training, right? It's like without yes, show up and go do it. No, there's there's complexity to it.

Small Businesses And Process Basics

SPEAKER_01 20:57

And that health and safety is so, so important. And I think as as a practitioner, you yourself, you know, if if it doesn't always come down to the people often, it comes down to training, it comes down to process, it comes down to maybe lack of process, and and I think processes and communications can really tear down those us and them silos between cross-functional teams as well.

SPEAKER_00 21:23

Yeah, and I think that Canada as a whole, we're built on, I can't remember the stack completely, but I believe 90% of Canadian businesses fit into the small and medium. And actually, then a large number of them, we are are small, like of that 90%, even more of that group fit into the small, 10 people or less. And so a lot of organizations don't have the capacity or they don't know up front that just setting up processes, writing good SOPs, taking time with what are our communication practices, what practices, what's important to us in terms of communication, having those conversations around skills up front, set those businesses up for greater success. But because so many companies are so small that they fall to the wayside. It's kind of the last thing on the list to do when my experience would say we need to put those at the front.

Frontline Involvement And Retention

SPEAKER_01 22:29

At the top, yeah. And I think you have such an awesome view on the leveraging of being able to do that. And really with those smaller companies, I mean, what a what an opportunity when you don't have a massive amount of people to be able to do some cross-functional training or do some explicit empathy and compassion training to understand what everyone's you know really going through. So I appreciate all of this information. You've really given some concrete examples that both practitioners and leaders can bring to task, I think.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

Can I add one little comment? Please employees actually love to be invited into the process of setting up operating procedures because it takes a lot of pressure off of them. And so sometimes we think that, oh, they have to be top down. I have to tell you how to do it. But often the people in the front lines know it better, and so giving them the agency to say, you know, it would be really helpful for me if you could just like jot down what the sequence is here. They also those are the things that surprisingly also get a lot of retention. People want to stay at places where they're involved in growing the company.

SPEAKER_01 23:51

Yep. And when you started off talking about bottom line, and I was asking about liverage, I mean, turnover is expensive. Yeah. There's no two ways about it, right? What is it?

SPEAKER_00 24:00

5,000 per new hire is the cost of it.

How To Connect With Sue

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Oh more. Yeah. At least, at least, because now you're doing like 40 hours of training, of onboarding, this, that, you know, the headhunting, depending on what level. Yeah. So this was really excellent, Sue. Oh my God, our time like flew by. So no, it's good, it's fabulous. So if someone wants to get a hold of you and work with you, if you want to share your business name, how could they get a hold of you? Where is the places that you play in social media?

SPEAKER_00 24:31

So probably the only place I play is LinkedIn. And, you know, I would add that I have worked nationally. I have worked from everywhere from Newfoundland to Vancouver Island. So really see that this is kind of a national, national issue, national agenda. And, you know, if it makes sense that I'm somebody you want to have a conversation with, I would love to have that conversation because I'm really, really passionate about making sure that people are engaged and safe in the workplace.

SPEAKER_01 25:08

Ah, and I love that that that place of safety is so important. So Sue's name is her last name is spelled O-G-U-C-H-I. And that's how you can find her on LinkedIn. Thank you so much. Thank you to Workplace Education and um and all of this was it's just been fabulous. Thank you. Thank you for the opportunity.