Case study: Helping NZ CA member firms to succeed

New Zealand Chartered Accountants (NZ CA) is a membership network of 30 accounting firms around New Zealand, covering every geographical location. The advantage of partnering is that a number of firms with similar work can get together to share best practice systems, resources, create better training networks, and ultimately deliver a better level of service for their people and their clients.

Matt Rogers, Chair of NZ CA, says,

“Because of the geographical boundaries, we can be very open and transparent with each other. As such, we all grow and develop together in a very fostering and nurturing environment.”

Shifting focus to soft skills

Four years ago, NZ CA embarked on a new framework with their training programme. Matt says, “A lot of our training up to that point had been very technically based, around the technical requirements of being part of an accounting firm. We decided we wanted our training to be a lot more holistic and all-encompassing.”

NZ CA have found in their work with member accounting firms, that retaining “good solid people” is as tough as it ever has been. Media stories on a daily basis have talked about how difficult it is to retain employees, both at a macro and micro level. This means that investment in people capability is more necessary now, across a range of different industries and organisations.

In response to this challenge, NZ CA developed four streams of professional development for their members: technical skills, business skills, people skills and leadership skills. These streams have guided the training focus over the past four years in developing softer skills,  developing the person, and developing the leadership capabilities within firms. These streams include the Savvy Up Work Savvy programme and The Edge, NZ CA’s pinnacle leadership programme run in conjunction with Outward Bound. Matt says,

“What Savvy Up has enabled us to do is to get some real quick wins with an established programme, an established group of facilitators, to really make that a meaningful programme very quickly. That was the real benefit for NZ CA [of working with Savvy Up].”

Applying the Workplace Athlete concept    

The Workplace Athlete concept also resonates with NZ CA member participants, who value the quality of the presentation and the content,  and the breadth of content that is covered in the Workplace Athlete. Matt says, “No matter what the level of the individual is at the organisation, the roles and responsibilities of the individual, every single person can get something out of this course.”

Matt thinks the Work Savvy programme is so effective because it allows a lot of opportunity for people to reflect on their own goals and values, and to apply the learning in their own context and circumstances.

“That’s why we’ve had such a strong success and why we get such good feedback from all of our surveys from people who’ve gone through the Savvy Up course, and why it does resonate quite so deeply.”

The Savvy Up point of difference: deep care and a proven model

Matt says, “[The Savvy Up] programme [being] well-established, with authentic facilitators, with wonderful networks, with some of the other speakers who get introduced into that programme, means that we are basically able to leverage off something that is proven. It really does show a strong investment in people to improve the offering of working within your organisation or your industry.

“The other positive spinoff is developing people with a proven system  and a proven framework. It’s an absolute no brainer no matter what industry or size of organisation you’re looking at. The fact this is a well-trodden and well-proven path, and the authenticity delivered from a programme like this, is absolutely worth its weight in gold.”

NZ CA Work Savvy participants have rated the programme highly, with 2021 participants rating it 8.8/10 and 2022 participants rating it 9.2/10. According to Matt, “the difference with Savvy Up is all of the other elements that are delivered as part of the programme – extra support, how deeply the facilitators care and ensure that with the peer networking; the outcomes that people are after; the face to face events that bookend the course; there is a very very deep care that participants get the outcomes and solutions that they’re looking for. And that’s something I don’t think you see with a number of other training courses.

“So I think that is a huge tick in the Savvy Up box, and one that we value hugely as an organisation and a reason why we continue to use these facilitators and are very very excited about continuing to roll this programme out.”

Developing emerging leaders - what works well?

You haven’t heard much from us over the past few years as we have been working away on developing, refining and delivering our Work Savvy Programme, a five-month blended learning self-leadership development programme for new- to mid-career professionals.

We have come a long way over the past eight years and have certainly learnt a lot about what works and what doesn’t! And we’re still learning! We are very appreciative of all the fabulous friends, family and colleagues in our network who have helped us along the way. We couldn’t have achieved this without your valuable support and advice.

2022 IN BRIEF

We are very proud to say that in 2022 we delivered two successful Work Savvy full programmes for participants spread geographically across New Zealand, alongside other client workshops. In our final evaluations for the programmes, participants gave the NZ CA (New Zealand Chartered Accountants) programme a net promoter score of 9.2/10, up from 8.8/10 in 2021. Participants gave the Host International Aotearoa programme a net promoter score of 9/10 (for women from a former refugee background). This means that participants were very likely to recommend the programme to others.

What we think works well

A lot of hard work and energy has gone into developing our core programme, and we have
reflected on and would like to share what we think have been some key success factors. The
learnings might not seem like rocket science, but they are a good reminder about what does
make a difference.
In this world of information overload, it is easy to try and cover so many topics and activities
around building self-leadership skills, that the key outcomes become a blur. This is why in this
programme we use the idea of a workplace athlete to talk about success in the workplace. Like
an athlete, it involves regular training and practice, meeting goals, having good systems in place
and a strong and healthy mindset.

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Here are our key reflections from multiple years running our programmes:

In our workshops the opportunity to brainstorm ideas, answer questions and discuss learnings
with peers had a significant positive impact. Many participants have noted this aspect of the
programme as a highlight over the past few years. Knowing that others are in the same situation
as yourself helps grow individual confidence and develop solid relationships with others across
the cohort.

We created many opportunities for social learning throughout the programme. In particular, we
think the online monthly peer coaching/action learning forums definitely made a difference. Our
participants coach each other using the practical (yet fabulous) GROW tool, meaning they
created actionable learnings that they took back to their workplaces and personal lives.

We had a near 100% participation rate for online workshops in the NZ CA programme which
was similar to 2021. We are particularly proud of this as our focus has been to create a learning
experience which is inspiring and at the same time practical, safe and relevant to the context of
our participants. A comment from one of our participants tells us we are on the right track:

“I could have used a whole year of this programme. It was great to always be learning something new and useful” ”

Key take-away: Build lots of opportunity for peer/social learning into your programme.

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In our early days we focused a lot on developing and delivering online content, as we already
had a pool of talented facilitators to draw on in addition to our existing expertise running
workshops. We are proud to say that we now have a library of 15 micro-learning modules which
our participants tell us are engaging and practical. These supplement the learning in workshops
with extra tools and information.

The modules focus on the fundamentals of self-leadership and self-management including
topics such as: How to deal with challenges; Feedback essentials; Managing your time;
and Working with your manager and others. We work with fabulous partner facilitators who
are experts in their respective fields, to deliver engaging and useful online workshops. We
reckon taking a programme approach (a blend of live workshops, peer coaching sessions and
bite-sized micro-learning modules over four or five months) helps learners stay engaged and the
learning to stick.

In 2022 we saw the opportunity in a less COVID-restricted environment to change the format of
our introductory workshop from online to face-to-face (in addition to the concluding face-to-face
workshop). We think that adding the introductory face-to-face workshop also had a significant
positive impact on the programme outcomes. It helped create deeper relationships across the
cohort prior to the online workshops, which in turn increased the engagement and learning take-
up as people felt more comfortable contributing to group discussions. As reinforced by a
participant:

“Loved having the face-to-face workshop at the start, that set the tone for the rest
of the workshops.””

Although the face-to-face workshops are an additional cost, we think it’s worth the investment to
start the programme off well.

Key take-away: A good mix of face-to-face, online workshops and e-learning is most effective.

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Participants across all our cohorts noted how helpful it was to learn about their individual
strengths. Although this might seem obvious, don’t under-estimate the power of incorporating a
focus on strengths into your programme.

Our 2022 participants were all women in both cohorts – a first for us! We noted that “building
confidence” was a work-on area for many. A strengths tool (thanks Kate Thompson!) was a
great way to build self-awareness and self-belief. Some of our participants have been raised or
come from workplace cultures that tend to focus more on weaknesses than strengths, draining
both their confidence and energy. We noticed in our programmes that a focus on strengths
creates hope and possibilities.

Participant comments reinforce this:

“This programme has been invaluable for me personally. It has helped to shape the way I see myself, how I relate to colleagues and clients and made me a better employee and colleague along the way.””

In addition, the strengths focus allows participants to apply their strengths to many possible
practical uses, e.g.: understanding and collaborating with others; improving personal resilience;
preparing for performance conversations; planning professional and career development;
achieving goals etc. Our participants, who typically come from technical professional
backgrounds, found this very useful.

Key takeaway: Recognising strengths and using them wisely can help improve self-confidence and broadens participants’ thinking about how to increase job satisfaction, i.e. doing what you enjoy.

These are just some of the key learnings we have identified.

If you want to know more or are interested in how to develop emerging leaders in your organisation or industry, come and have a chat with us.

Introducing Make a Job Get a Job

We’ve had a lot of conversations with young people and their parents over the last year about what to do when you’ve been to uni, finished your degree, but now you hate the subject and feel completely lost. Should you go back to school? Suck it up and try and make a career? Drop out entirely and get a low-skilled job?

Or, what if you’ve left school and now have no idea what to do? There’s very little support out there for young people who have left school and don’t have a clear career path - and a lot of expectation and pressure.

We’ve also been coaching people in this situation. So we decided to create our second programme: Make a Job Get a Job. It does exactly what it says on the tin - a three-month programme to help you work out what you’re great at, and whether to pursue an employee, entrepreneurial or small business/practice pathway. And then, some steps to get there.

Workplace Expectations is now Office Savvy!

Image: taken by Christina during a recent Virtual Reality experience. But it's a good visual representation. 

It might seem that we've been very quiet lately, but we've been beavering away on a number of projects including:

• An 'uninternship' model and a 'new consulting' model to support students at Victoria University (both still in progress)

• Investigating some new programmes we'd like to develop as part of the suite of offerings (watch this space!)

• Working with some other awesome people to further develop ourselves as an organisation. 

And in the midst of it all, as a result of the work we've been doing with Karen and Simon, we decided that Workplace Expectations for Young Professionals was a little too long and actually our product is called Office Savvy! 

We're excited about the new name and think it better reflects the outcome of the programme and what our young professionals tell us. Our platform partner Jumpshift also changed their name, and their branding - to the bright yellow Adeption. Name changes all round.  

Savvy Up at the EdTech Conference

Today we presented Savvy Up during the 5-minute pitch session at the Education Technology (EdTech) conference in Albany - here you can see us doing our presentation! We really enjoyed it and got some good feedback. 

We discussed the challenges facing young people and employers today - the gap between the youth experience and what employers want (they don't have those features yet). This has also been exacerbated by generational factors - so it's much harder for young people to get that crucial first job experience which teaches them basic workplace skills such as being on time to work.

A great quote from one of today's speakers (I can't remember who, sorry!): "Soft skills are hard skills." In our experience, this is true.  

Tertiary educators: You can help by introducing workplace skills earlier on in the qualification. We'll work with you to train your students and get them ready for the workplace. 

Employers: You can help by creating a paid internship or entry-level job for a young person. We'll make it easy for you to hire them by doing the heavy lifting of training them in the basic skills, through the Workplace Expectations programme. 

Everyone: You can help by hiring a young person in your neighbourhood for small tasks to help them get some first job experience.   

We'll talk about this more in detail at a later date. 

Thanks to Abhisek Kala for the photo, and to everyone who gave us feedback or helped us prepare our pitch. We're really grateful.