Canadian HR Strategy

19 I n August 2012, CBC launched a project to equip all its television stations across Canada with high-defi nition cameras and equipment. From coast to coast, the in-class training around the new technology was conducted by staff instructors, according to Elizabeth Lan- caster, director of English services training in Toronto. " e staff have tremendous expertise in delivering the training," she said. "CBC is fi lled with people who are incredibly smart, very passionate about what they do, highly skilled… and are natural teachers who love to see other people succeed." Staff members make up 70 per cent of the 30 or so instructors at the 4,300-employee public broadcaster. "It's a very diff erent kind of model," said Lancaster, speaking at a recent Strategic Capability Network (SCNetwork) event in Toronto. "Our role is to sup- port (the instructors) from an instructional design and skills transfer standpoint. It's a beautiful, beauti- ful partnership." CBC also supports the trainers' development. In the past few months, staff instructors received four days of training — two focused on elearning and two focused on higher-level "train the trainer," said Lan- caster. Senior staff trainers were partnered with newer members of the training group and they worked col- laboratively on developing material. "We strongly encourage input from staff ," she said. "Staff themselves come up with ideas about how we can teach somebody." Staff instructors primarily provide technical and infrastructure training, such as new equipment train- ing, as well as journalism and programming training, including journalism skills, writing and producing. A handful of staff instructors also provide so skills and business skills training, including facilitation, internal negotiation, dealing with complex work environ- ments and feedback. Senior staff members also play a key role in train- ing at CBC. Earlier this year, CBC News launched a "conversation series" where younger staff got to talk to veteran journalists, producers and editors. " e chance to be able to tap into what someone who is tremendously successful does is really valu- able," said Lancaster. e employee intranet features a variety of videos of more senior employees off ering their expertise, she said. "CBC is a storytelling organization, so (we want) to really get a sense of their stories behind the scenes so that younger staff can learn from them." English services training at CBC is embedded in the media operations and technology group — not within HR. e media group would be a very large client of the training group so it just made sense to actually embed training within it, said Lancaster. "It quickly gave the department much more cred- ibility because it was the line serving itself in many ways, so a lot of the hurdles that HR may have faced in the past were dispersed," she said. Lancaster and many of her staff have a background in journalism, so they are able to "speak the language of the organization" which really adds credibility, she said. ey also have great relationships with the busi- ness as well as tremendous access and involvement. RBC embraces social media Steve Richardson, manager of recognition pro- grams at RBC in Toronto, came into social media "kicking and screaming," he said. "Everything we do in the employee recognition world at RBC we manage, we write, we own — we do it 100 per cent and it's on our website and it's great. Well, it's a little bit diff erent (with social media) and it took a number of years for me to agree to go into this fi eld where, all of a sudden, you lose that control." But in 2011, Richardson and his team launched RBC's social recognition platform. e internal site allows the company's 75,000 employees to enter a thank-you message to another employee that appears in a scrolling bar at the top of the page. e rest of the page includes information about the employee's team or group and is customizable. "(For example), if I work in the sales group in To- ronto, those are my people, but I can add others. If I used to work in Halifax and I want to see what's going on there, I can add them. ere's a whole bunch of functionability," said Richardson, also speaking at the SCNetwork event. Managers receive special training and coaching around the importance of employee recognition and how to off er it eff ectively. "It sounds basic, of course, to thank someone but there's lots behind it: Are you thanking people for the right thing? Are you being specifi c about what they did?" he said. A key component is peer-to-peer recognition. It is very simple and low-cost but high-impact, said Rich- ardson. "In the past, we had a manager-to-employee rec- ognition system that worked very well, but, as we got into it more and more, a lot of employees were ask- ing, 'Can we do peer to peer? Can I thank publicly my PHOTO: MARK BLINCH / REUTERS

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