If you are an HR manager or director in Australia, and are considering implementing a professional development and/or cultural improvement program in your workplace, you’re probably concerned that the research, paperwork and countless employee interviews will require a lot of valuable time for both yourself, your team and the entire staff.

Not to mention the frustration of seeking out best practice solutions for personality surveys, team building tools, culture surveys, 360’s and training and coaching programs, only to find that each solution is based on its own unique framework and won’t provide you with nearly enough support or materials to implement effective change in the company culture.

So, What is the Solution? 

Sitting down with Human Capital Consultant and Chief Development Officer of the OrgDev Institute, John Belchamber, the solution becomes clear. For almost two years, the team at ODI have dedicated themselves to filling gaps in industry research and identifying future challenges for HR managers, organisational development managers and training managers alike.

Along with identifying a resounding need for a service provider who offers all-in-one packages that include self-assessment tools and the resources to provide follow-up support, John also highlighted that many professionals (both young and old), are still lacking the core soft skills that so many recruiters today are searching for in potential candidates.

“Some of the challenges [in the industry] are that it is very clear, in the future of employment, the people who will be in high demand will have a good level of interpersonal skills, but in many industries, they are lacking,” he said.

This is true. Data collected by LinkedIn, covering 100 major cities and surveying over 2,000 business leaders identified the top four critical people-focused skills gaps are: leadership, communication, collaboration and time management.

So, what is the ‘solution’? How can we connect the dots between making meaningful professional development and cultural improvement for staff while maintaining a proactive and self-aware workforce as an employer? How can we put the ‘H’ back in ‘HR’?

John explained it best when he said, “A lot of existing tools tell you who you are, and they measure who you are, but they don’t tell you where you want to be, and they don’t provide you with the resources to get there.”

REACH Ecosystem  

The REACH Ecosystem is a unified platform developed by ODI to provide companies with unlimited access to industry leading resources and improved outcomes for organisational training and development initiatives.

This “revolutionary” model, as John put it, is formulated using five industry-approved methods of self-development: personality and culture surveys, 360’s, coaching packages and a training library with 32 course titles available.

“Once a user has completed these assessments, they receive an automated training needs analysis that looks at those profiles and tells you what tailored training you need. They also receive a customised coaching pack and gain access to 32 professional development training courses with all the support materials they need to run those courses,” John explained.

“REACH is the only system that we know of, that can provide all these tools in one, affordable subscription package”.

REACH vs Other Platforms

Although many cultural development projects in Australia are well-intended, they are often disjointed by using multiple tools that don’t speak the same language and are usually very costly.  These projects can fall into the trap of being implemented, but never followed up, so the staff scratch their heads wondering why they had to invest time into something that produced no real improvement or change.

By combining these various cultural developmental tools, into a unified online platform, the HR management team can save a lot of time that is usually invested in product research and cross-product mapping.  So how does the REACH Ecosystem provide a unique and meaningful experience for employees?  And how does utilising the REACH subscription model provide the organisation with cost savings as well?

Unlike similar models such as DISC and HBDI, that only assess 4 personality styles, the REACH Ecosystem uses Reach Quotient, a concept developed by Professor Doug Waldo, that measures 4 personality styles against 16 skills-based measures to increase self-awareness and understanding of how an individual responds in different situations.

The beauty of REACH Quotient is that it does not limit an individual to one personality style. Sure, everyone has their own inherent personality style that influences how they behave in most circumstances, but the REACH Ecosystem provides individuals with training and coaching materials to develop self-awareness that enables them to recognise and appreciate how diverse communication styles may be beneficial in different situations.

“We not only measure an individual’s REACH Quotient, we then provide them with the development tools to improve and expand their Quotient,” John added.

From a cost perspective, ODI (and it’s partners) have implemented a subscription model that allows organisations to access all, or a portion of the REACH Ecosystem, via a monthly subscription that is a sliding scale of pricing based on the number of staff in the organisation.  Some of our clients have recognised costs savings of over 50% compared to other professional development programs previously used by the organisations.

Organisations in Australia can choose to implement the REACH Ecosystem internally, using their own trainers, coaches and HR specialists, or can elect to use ODI partners, such as PD Training, to outsource some or all of the profiling, culture and training tools available on the platform.

Conclusion

When applied in a corporate setting, the REACH framework provides employers and managers with the capacity to recognise and apply diverse influence styles for a collaborative advantage.

Professional development and employee satisfaction will never stop being an integral part in a company’s success. In fact, more than 85% of Fortune 500 companies implement 360 surveys as part of their culture.

With more and more managers embodying the ‘work smarter not harder’ mantra in their office, why do they often refuse to take their own advice?  And when did preaching company culture and professional development become more important than effectively practising it?

The REACH Ecosystem takes the guess work out of searching for best practice solutions by combining all aspects and components of leading industry tools to save you time and money, so that you can get back to focusing on your business.

Contact PD Training to learn more about how your organisation can take advantage of this amazing new platform or visit this webpage and click subscribe at the bottom of the page to sign up for a free trial.