One size fits all or is it one size fits no one?

Designing for the group through a lens of inclusion for all

Yesterday we hosted a panel at the ISE Development Conference alongside early careers specialists Paul Dilley-Weston from Mott Macdonald, Helen Fawcett from National Grid and my colleague Holly Holm-Powell from Cappfinity, exploring how to put inclusion at the heart of development design, comms and delivery so as to make learning STICK for everyone.??

I explained how Cappfinity has been on a journey since launching our STICK design methodology for development over six years ago where the ‘I’ stood for Interaction, until around three years ago when we recognised that ‘inclusive practices’ was the more important central pillar and needed to be at the heart of everything we thought about in terms of engagement, stretch and transfer of learning for all.

So what were the main takeaways from a conversation around designing for the group through this lens of inclusion and belonging ‘for all’?

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·?????? Think about their cohorts as individuals rather than large cohorts of early career professionals, take the time to know them to inform your thinking and your approach – through the discussion the ideas explored included Helen from NG sending her development team to assessment centres, and using the previous years’ graduates to help organise and deliver the onboarding week for new graduates.

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·?????? Kick off the journey with a self-insight tool – Holly shared how this can ensure that there is some personalised learning from the beginning of a development journey to help the ECPs think about what they would like to gain from the journey ahead, given their unique situation, and grow their self-insight.? Holly made the point that in the past it was left up to individuals to declare if they needed support in a different way to the majority, which contrasts with now where organisations are embedding inclusion upfront, which is especially important for those who perhaps are not comfortable sharing or are undiagnosed.?

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·?????? Connect your recruitment and development approaches using a strengths-based approach - Paul from Mott Mac explained how sharing outputs from the recruitment process with the graduates in the form of a strengths-based onboarding report during their induction helps them to see that the organisation is investing in them and helping them to grow in self-insight even before they were employed.? The strengths-based approach is helpful for those who don’t come from a private education or privileged background and may feel they have more weaknesses, as it automatically encourages them to focus on the strengths they do have.

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·?????? Ask for individuals to share any unique needs – at Cappfinity, for those comfortable doing so, we invite individuals at the start of a programme to share if they have any unique needs that might affect their learning experience. Helen from NG shared how around a third of individuals completed an optional survey during preboarding to declare they would require additional support of some type and each was provided with an hour long assessment so that could be fed into the suppliers they work alongside.? Paul talked about consideration needing to be shown to ensure scheduling happens outside of key religious holidays, evening events offer alcohol free tables and the way in which they supported a graduate who had an impaired working memory.

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·?????? Innovative group learning enables a more customised individual experience– Paul described the power of Cappfinity’s Virtual Reality Coaching that takes place in small groups - where the graduates can observe each other handling different situations, enabling them to see there are multiple solutions to the same challenge followed by rich tailored feedback for each individual.? Helen talked about how her early career professionals loved taking part in Cappfinity’s ‘Real Play’ experiences: safe intimate spaces where they were able to brief an actor on running through a difficult conversation tailored for their challenges – and how surprised she was that the graduates encouraged the actors to not go easy on them!

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·?????? Align globally whilst recognising local needs - To deliver a global programme Paul talked about a global voice with a local accent and Helen described about how they aim to globally align with geographical differences in their different locations.?

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·?????? Neurodiversity reflects a broad spectrum of needs – if you have met one neurodiverse person, you have met one neurodiverse person and it seems like the focus of interest or awareness moves it was around dyslexia for some time, now it is autism and ADHD – what will be next?? Holly reflected how L&D have discovered that bitesize learning suits many neurodiverse individuals rather than day long residentials – will this trend continue as it was driven by covid rather than an appreciation of neurodiverse needs?

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Our opening exercise enabled us to reveal that despite the room being full of L&D professionals who all in some way work with early career professionals, a quick debrief showed that we had a crocheter, a grandmother, a bassoon player and the tennis club champion for Knebworth Tennis club seated in the room which was just scratching the surface….. The point being that despite the obvious areas of common interest we had a wide variety of experiences, skills and strengths and therefore can recognise that everyone is different ‘like me’ rather than different ‘from me’.? This being a starting point for thinking about designing for the group through a lense of ‘inclusion for all’.

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Looking back on our careers all the panellists felt they had seen a dramatic shift from a time when inclusion was barely mentioned in the working world or was focused on ‘others’ and silo’d groups meeting alone.? Today they could see inclusion was considered a day-to-day strategic imperative, consideration is shown for people as individuals and inclusion is embedded in the roots of organisations so it is a seamless element in the creation of a culture of belonging.

Many thanks to our panel: Holly Holm-Powell , Helen Fawcett and Paul Dilley-Weston as well as our own team who supported with this event Debbie Marshall-Lee and Hannah Leigh Huffelmann (Bovington) Rachel de Minckwitz

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