Al Kinnear
On today's episode, we are talking to Brian Page and Cathy Campbell, who join us to discuss evaluating the success of Aaron's Retail Learning and Development program. We discussed taking measurement beyond spreadsheet metrics and talk about measuring the engagement of Aaron's managers and the learning process. The role of Aaron's world class coaches, and the link between culture and learning.
Al Kinnear
Let's get started. Well, I'd like to welcome listeners to the Return on Intelligence podcast, and it's my pleasure to introduce to our audience Brian Paige, learning and development director, and Cathy Campbell, senior learning and development analyst. Welcome to the podcast.
Cathy Campbell
Thanks. So great to be here.
Al Kinnear
How are you guys doing today?
Cathy Campbell
Doing great. Great.
Al Kinnear
Super. So for our listeners benefit, would we mind starting, you know, just talking about your background in learning and development? And Cathy, maybe we can start with you and talk about, you know, what makes you two so passionate about learning and development in your retail environment?
Cathy Campbell
Absolutely. My background starts back in college. I was very interested in tutoring. I did tutoring at almost decided to become a teacher after graduation, but I decided to try it out in corporate America at Aaron's, and I'm so glad I did. I started out in HR here doing onboarding and spent several years as a recruiter as well.
Cathy Campbell
But the whole time I really wanted to get into the learning and development field and really make this my career, which I was able to join our team in 2020 and have been loving the ride ever since. For very passionate about, the learning and development process, of our team members.
Al Kinnear
Okay, Brian and can can you share some of your background for our audience?
Brian Paige
Sure. Well, I started with with Aaron's nearly 20 years ago. I'll be 20 years next month. I started in the stores, so that was that was my background. And, I came in at a time where we had access to a live, in-person training program, and they seemed intent on sticking me in every live training class so they could stick me in, because I was started at a store that was a training store, and so I had a lot of exposure to that.
Brian Paige
So I immediately had an inkling kind of a slant in my my style of managing stores toward that, toward empowering others to be successful on, on their own efforts. And I found that to be, well, difficult and challenging because, it's easier to do things faster yourself. But once, I matured a little bit, I realized that that's that's not sustainable over time.
Brian Paige
And, it's a quick way to burn out. So I then kind of shifted in toward empowering my team members, and I wanted to figure out how to do that at a larger scale. And then like, outside of work, I was very involved in Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts as a as a scout leader for many, many years with my children.
Brian Paige
And, it's just always it's been a learning and then showing other people a way to learn is, is always been something I've been interested.
Al Kinnear
And that's great. And so would both of you describe like, it really seems to me that learning and development at Aaron's is, is really a keystone to the corporate strategy. What would that ring true?
Brian Paige
Yes, I think it absolutely does. of course, as an indie professional, you always want more investment and you always want more buy and you always want more support from the top down. But we're we're blessed with a senior leadership team that does believe in what it is that we're doing and believes in. That is an investment toward, you know, longevity and sustainability because you can only run so many sales.
Brian Paige
That's only going to drive business so much. You need to invest in people over long term. And that's what really drives to sustain success over time.
Al Kinnear
Yeah, that's that's so true. So true. And so if we can describe for our listeners the the Aaron's Belt program that you've developed for your, your retail operations, it's a fascinating program. And I'd love to hear a little bit about the history, program changes and, and just the iterations you've made recently, that have made it quite the success that it is.
Brian Paige
Yeah. it's had many iterations over the eight plus years I've been part of the learning and development team. It started out as really, a pretty massive investment of a program for an organization our size. We had Phil development coaches in every division of operations, and we had an incentive program based on getting people through the program.
Brian Paige
And ultimately it proved to be something that just was not sustainable, just due to the sheer cost. And it sort of incentivized sort of the wrong things and incentivized graduation and getting through something and checking a box is what it ultimately ended up being. We couldn't really we could not really argue a good ROI on that type of investment.
Brian Paige
So we switched to something that was more virtual and self-paced. you know, with an LMS being a cornerstone of that. We had some, some lofty goals and aspirations with the program to implement certain things like, demonstration of skills. But the technology didn't really exist at the time. And, to be better than a piece of paper.
Brian Paige
So unfortunately, a piece of paper is not something that's really trackable across thousands of units or locations and 10,000 team members. This is not something that we can we can pull off and implement. So, we had we did have some technology improvements over that period of time where we had the ability to at least upload a document to the LMS and we felt like, well, okay, well, maybe we can use that as a workaround to have a, a true demonstration of skills and a goal with a demonstration of skills for us was to take the focus off of the consumption of content.
Brian Paige
I know that sounds foreign, especially for learning and development professionals. We want our content to be seen. We want it to be consumed. We want every minute of it to be memorable, engaging and fun. And while that's true, it's just not necessarily how everybody learns. Different people learn different ways. I myself learn better by trying something and getting feedback, and it's really hard to do that with just a technology only type of solution.
Brian Paige
So our current iteration right now is more focused on that is empowering the learner to learn how they learn best, knowing that we can only frame up a subject and introduce a subject through a self-paced course and even a live virtual instructor led course can only go so far. You can't make somebody pay attention when you're not in the room with them.
Brian Paige
as much as you would try, there's outside distractions. And we have, you know, world class coaches that I know Kathy is going to talk to later. But even the best coaches in the world cannot force you to pay attention and not get distracted by something else going on your computer, answering emails or text messages or the phone ringing for you.
Brian Paige
And that's the challenge that we have within a retail type environment. Those are the competitions and the on people's attention span that we're having to deal with. So we really wanted to put it in. How do you learn best? You can take a course. You can not take a course. We're not interested in whether or not you take the course.
Brian Paige
We're interested in whether or not you can do what those learning objectives are teaching you to be able to do. And we we measure that through a demonstration of skills.
Al Kinnear
Got it. So you know, Kathy, when we talk about, you know, time being the constraint, you know, in the retail environment obviously for training there there's a time constraint there. Have you guys come across like the ultimate mix of say online and instructor led or blended courses. within the spell program?
Cathy Campbell
Yeah. I don't know if I'm called the ultimate mix, but we think it's pretty good. So the way it works is when you are going through the black belt path, you start off with a study guide that tells you the topics that will be covered, and then you have three or 4 or 5 self-paced classes that are actually optional.
Cathy Campbell
So we do get that. not complaint, but objection. We do get that objection, fairly frequently with being a retail environment of not having enough time to take the classes, and that's why we made them optional. And to capstone those courses with a demonstration of skill that you do one on one with your manager. So it doesn't matter at all to us if you actually take that self-paced course, you could hit the course and walk away and not learn anything, but it really matters that you can demonstrate to your manager that you know how to do the skills that were covered in the courses.
Al Kinnear
Right? And and so to me, like you're paying attention to learner background learner styles in your approach. and like, did you have some failures that, that kind of where your moment that, that, you know, pointed you in that direction or how did you, how did you come across this? I would say fairly unique approach in, in, you know, working with your learners.
Cathy Campbell
Yeah. Good question. so we did have a previous iteration of the black belt where we had a pretest that would see how much knowledge you had already take the course and then take approach, after test post-test. that would show how much you learned between the two tests. But we then found that with everything being completely self-paced, people could kind of fake their way through, end up getting all the way through the program, and not even necessarily know how to do basic parts of their jobs.
Cathy Campbell
So that's why we ended up implementing the demonstration of skill, because then that shows and verifies that you do know how to do the actual skills through the program.
Brian Paige
And initially we had a lot of the courses we in that previous iteration were live. And then we later adapted them to be self-paced. And we found the objection with the live course is there's scheduling, there's availability in the store. You have to look at the staffing, the staffing in the store. They may not always be a convenient time.
Brian Paige
You've got multiple time zones and then you got to serve, and then you've got to have just a massive amount of coaching staff to be able to fulfill all those different needs across three, four time zones. So just wasn't sustainable. We had too many people saying, you know, I can't get through this because I can't attend all the live classes.
Brian Paige
They're always on my day off. And when you teach this class. So we were at one point, we were teaching 100 plus live classes a month. where we're doing it was an insane amount of courses, and it just wasn't sustainable, wasn't meeting the customer where they needed to be met. And then we went to the other end of the spectrum and went all self-paced and found that to Kathy's point, you could get through the content and, you know, you can you can do well on multiple choice questions if you have unlimited attempts.
Cathy Campbell
Yeah.
Al Kinnear
Yeah. So you're, you know, you're really drilling down on the fact that they've consumed, you know, your content. But they weren't able to really maybe practice it with competency or confidence in the field.
Cathy Campbell
Exactly.
Brian Paige
And so fast forward to current state. We tried to focus the self-paced courses on things that that can can be well communicated in that way. Whereas now I wouldn't say tell only because we try to make them engage and we have interaction points within the courses that we design. we do simulations whenever we can, whenever we can build it, especially if it's like a software application.
Brian Paige
We can do lots of click driven type things where you actually have to actually simulate your way through an exercise. We do that, but something where role playing feedback is paramount to the learning. That's where we try to save our live courses for, so that we can save our coaches for those those types of lessons that need that kind of engagement.
Al Kinnear
Wow, that sounds just fantastic. And would you say, like, are you actively considering empathy in, in in the design of your courses? you know, at Aaron's.
Brian Paige
I would say, yeah. certainly we want to be we want to be conscious of the strains on attention span within the store. me coming from the stores, I kind of know what that's like when when you've got a ton of different things going on around you, you've got deadlines to meet, you've got customers to serve, you've got things that have to be done by certain times with multiple layers of management asking for these things that we know we're only going to have a certain percentage or a percentage of their attention span.
Brian Paige
So we have to make that count. Like if you're going to log into a class, we've got to grab your attention right from the get go to the best of our ability to make it worthwhile. We want you to want to pay attention to it. So we try to do fun things. Occasionally, we'll hide Easter eggs in classes that only if you pay attention are you going to find them, and they're usually at our own expense.
Brian Paige
So we try not to take ourselves too seriously. And, we try to make it fun.
Al Kinnear
That's great.
Cathy Campbell
Absolutely. And considering the empathy aspect as well is we take that feedback from our customer, our customer being field operations, that when we did put out a previous iteration that wasn't working, that was not adopted well, that they didn't like, we took that feedback and built what they wanted through, yeah.
Brian Paige
Our current our current version of the black belt path is, is 100% operator driven. So we formed a steering committee. We had representation from all across the business. Various levels of of leadership were involved. But we we had everybody's opinion kind of steer it towards it wasn't enough for us to make a recommendation. Yes, we can cite a bunch of cool white papers that argued this way is the best way to learn, or that way is the best way to learn.
Brian Paige
But ultimately it's only going to have success if they feel like they've got a hand on the steering wheel. And that's exactly what we positioned them to do. So they would have no choice but to adopt it because they helped design it. That we to Cathy's point, we gave them exactly what they asked for, but we steered it in a such a way that we got the efficacy that we needed.
Al Kinnear
And would you say like, do you communicate that throughout the the learning audience that that this has been designed by your peers and leaders?
Brian Paige
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely.
Al Kinnear
Yeah. That's that's great. Great, great strategy for sure. now I'd like to switch gears here a bit and just talk about, you know, measurement for a second, like we've always been. We've all been in boardrooms where you hear that buzzword metrics that matter and, and, I'm really interested in how you measure success within this program.
Al Kinnear
first, maybe through stats that, that, you know, the C-suite or finance might want to see. But most importantly, how you, you yourselves as leaders are measuring success with metrics within within the function.
Brian Paige
Yeah, I think we have kind of a unique approach. And, Cathy has been so instrumental in putting that together and realizing that because we wanted to have the focus be on the right things. previous iterations we put and of focus, like I said before, on the consumption of the training classes, how fast can you get through the belt program?
Brian Paige
did how many people could you get through the belt program? And then we try to equate that to performance results. And they were mixed. like I said, we we in previous iterations when it was based on consumption and the difference between pre and post test scores, we found that people could attain a certain level but not have a clue how to do what they were supposed to have learned by that point.
Brian Paige
So we try to we still look at we still look at anecdotal feedback. When I mean by anecdotal feedback, I really mean like just direct feedback from our from the people consuming the content. We of course take that into consideration. That's usually the thing that tells us that we need to redo a course if it's getting terrible ratings.
Brian Paige
but we also look at Net promoter overall and like a lot of companies do. But the problem with net promoter by itself, as a measurement strategy is it doesn't translate very well to C-suite when it comes to dollars. So we still have to try and tie it back to performance. So we look at a couple of different things.
Brian Paige
We look at, we we try to prove out, you know, the more people who get in a store get to a certain point that it's worth x amount of percent of lift in certain performance categories that the company values most. We're able to articulate that very, very well and very, very clearly, and we're able to separate it from tenure.
Brian Paige
So that was the that's the key thing is typically when you see an increase in performance, the path of tenure follows the same curve. And we're able to separate those two by the way that we measure things. And then probably the most important thing, the thing that Kathryn, our probably most passionate about, really our whole learning and development team is most passionate about is the engagement during the demonstration of skills, not how well the team member who's demonstrating their skills actually is when it comes to their proficiency.
Brian Paige
But how engaged is the manager? What kind of feedback are they leaving? How are they leveraging the technology platform to separate skill from will to in order to create not only create accountability, but also be able to reflect upon, you know, this is where they were at this point and this is how much they progress. If they didn't get it, that if they didn't pass that demonstration of skills on first go.
Brian Paige
So we're looking at the engagement of that manager. And the reason why that's important to us is we know that most company our companies actually interviews data is probably not that much different than most people. We for most companies our size, we found that in our the top ten of most important reasons why people leave learning was not even in the top ten.
Brian Paige
You know, the quality of the training program wasn't that. It's usually something around the the engagement level of the manager or the relationship that they have with the manager. And we're of the opinion and we're we're proving this out that, you know, the the manager that has engaged in that team members development, the one that's truly trying to position that person to be successful and pour into them.
Brian Paige
Those are not the same managers that team members are running away from. So we are looking at retention, but we're looking at over long term, not in short term like 60 or 90 days. We're going further out than that. We want to see the long term impact of this, because we know once people hit a certain combination of both training and development, plus reps in the real world, they just take off.
Brian Paige
And that's what we're after.
Al Kinnear
So Cathy, with with over a thousand stores and and this measurement of management engagement, clearly that must be a challenge. Can you can you talk about how you guys overcome that and do that measurement.
Cathy Campbell
Absolutely. So first of all we have to make sure we are setting managers up for success to even know how to facilitate a quality demonstration of skills, which is why we host a live session with our world class coaches at least once a week. specifically on that topic of how to facilitate a quality demonstration of skills. So our coaches, they welcome all managers, who sign up for the course, spend an hour with them walking through.
Cathy Campbell
What does good feedback look like? What should you do with your team member? Get something wrong the first time, and how that good development and feedback module conversation goes. And then as far as us measuring the engagement on the back end, we do, look at the demonstrations of skills within the LMS to see what sort of comments, overall feedback, how long the managers are spending completing the demonstration of skill, because it becomes very obvious if they spent five minutes or less, ten minutes or less, that they're just going through and clicking it to get off of a report.
Cathy Campbell
But you can tell when they spend a good amount of time, when they have good specific, actionable feedback for a team member. within those comment sections, then we can tell that it is a good quality demonstration of skill.
Al Kinnear
Okay. And then in terms of frequency, is this a continuous feedback loop? Is it quarterly? What does that look like for you?
Cathy Campbell
Yes, we do look at it monthly. We look at one demonstration of skill per store per month. And we put out the monthly numbers we compare last month against this month for trending in the right direction up or down, and, decide a course of action from there.
Al Kinnear
Great. And are you sharing this information across the stores, across regions, like is there some way or dashboards where, where, you know, the peers can see each other's performance in terms of engagement?
Cathy Campbell
Yes, we do have a dashboard that we share with our multi-unit leaders weekly.
Brian Paige
But we also make it, we publish it for the stores to see themselves as well.
Al Kinnear
So great. Great. So Brian, in our discussion so far, it is clear to me that the errands focus on the manager employee relationship really is cornerstone to your success here, with this program. And so how does this impact success across the individual stores or regions? And for the individual managers themselves?
Brian Paige
Yeah. Well, I mean, our whole goal with this was to kind of turn training on its head. And what I mean by that is shift the focus away from just the consumption of training, make it more personal, directly involve the manager and empower them. As a leader. We we believe that demonstration of skills is just a very fundamental leadership competency that we need to not only develop, but also hone, and we need at all levels of our management structure, not just the front line store managers, but we need their, their, their supervisors to be on the same page in doing the same thing with them.
Brian Paige
So we have our general managers going through the same demonstration of skills with their next level up. We have the next level up going a level up with demonstration of skills. We're trying to really fundamentally integrate that because that's really the only way to measure if you get it, is does your boss say you got it? Because that's the lesson ultimately has to hold you accountable to delivering that that same result in a real life scenario.
Brian Paige
And when they see things that can be improved upon, we're trying to empower them as as that coach, not only just as a coach, but also a player coach. One of us on the field with them, one that has instant credibility because they're they're not only showing you how to do it, but they're also doing it. They're modeling the behavior that they're asking you for.
Al Kinnear
What are your thoughts on how this relation ship impacts your store cultures?
Cathy Campbell
Essentially, the demonstration of skill really builds the store culture because it starts from the top down. When the manager sets that expectation that, okay, show me that you know how to do the skills, but also it's okay to make a mistake. The demonstrations of skills are designed where if a team member doesn't know something the first time, that's a coaching opportunity.
Cathy Campbell
It's not. You're not going to get in trouble. There's no reprimanding or anything like that. It's a culture of learning and of true development. It's okay to make mistakes and learn how to do better. So I think it builds that great team developmental culture within the stores.
Brian Paige
So to kind of piggyback on that, this is not this is not a cultural shift that happens overnight. It's really in our companies, no exception. It's a bit like turning a battleship in a bathtub. It takes time. It's incremental and it takes a long time to get folks on board. it's not a it's not a culture that happens overnight.
Brian Paige
It's one that has to be kind of developed. It doesn't happen quickly. it's one that has to it has to start with, with senior level leaders to, to buy in. And that's those are things that require a lot of engagement and a lot of belief. And you have to hear the message over and over again. So it can take years to kind of get there.
Brian Paige
And I feel like as a company, we're we're still in that transitional phase where it's starting to catch fire and we have to continue to to reinforce that and to make that culture be is widespread, as we possibly can not just have it in pockets here or there. We have to have it be consistent if we want it to have the overall result that we know it's capable of.
Brian Paige
So it takes a lot of patience and a lot of determination to to see it through and not look for a quick fix. Because this is this this methodology is not a it's not a flick of a switch to just light up the whole company. It's not going to work like that. It takes time.
Al Kinnear
Right. And but I have to say it's very admirable that at Eren's it it's obvious to me that you guys see a link between culture and learning and development and this employee manager relationship, like they're all linked. And, and it sounds to me like it's being, it's very successful. I'd like to go back a bit on on the demonstration of skills for a second here.
Al Kinnear
We we interviewed Devin Hastie of Anheuser-Busch, recently, and he spoke about the difference between confidence and competence. And would you say the the observation checklist work you do or the demonstration of skills like what? What are your thoughts with regards to, confidence and competence roles at air and, and how, you know, your demonstration of skills is really pushing this to the forefront.
Brian Paige
So the way we have it set up within the structure is we kind of have a study guide that Cathy mentioned that kind of gives a preview of everything that's going to be covered in that demonstration of skill. And we try to show people that this is kind of like a menu of things. So if you're looking at that study guide, okay, I'm, I feel confident about this, that I have this competency and don't necessarily feel the same about this one.
Brian Paige
So what tools and resources do I have to to get that that confidence in that confidence up before I trouble my manager to demonstrate my skills to them so they can then pick and choose, okay, I'm going to take this self-paced course on this thing. That might be an area of opportunity for me, or I'm going to go read this piece of literature on that, or I'm going to go practice this activity until I feel like I've gotten it with the feedback from my peers.
Brian Paige
So I think the separation of confidence and confidence, I don't know that there's a ton of separation. Me personally, I feel like when you're confident, you can be confident about things that you're not confident at. True. But when you are competent at something and you know and you've been getting that feedback through that demonstration of skills, you're getting confirmation and that gives you the confidence that you do know what it is that you're doing.
Brian Paige
But before you even get there, you're getting reps in real time that has help building you toward that. And then the demonstration of skill is just the validation that you've gotten there with that particular skill. Or maybe there's something else that you need to brush up on a little bit more in order to get past and go to the next task.
Cathy Campbell
I think that when it comes to competence, it could be that you have taken all the courses and in your head you know all of the knowledge, but that doesn't necessarily mean that you feel confident going to take your first payment because you've never done it before. So it's good that we have the roleplay set up and the demonstration of skills where you roleplay your first payment and then your manager gives you that in-person validation.
Cathy Campbell
Yes. Correct. You know how to do it, right? That's going to boost your confidence when it comes to going to take your first payment and every payment after that, you know with confidence that you're doing it correctly.
Al Kinnear
Yeah. This is this is fascinating. I really believe, you know, through our discussion that you guys mentioned turning training on its head. But, you know, this demonstration of skills is is really key to that. And I think it's a unique approach. I think some folks, that I've spoken to in the past, they certainly work on demonstration of skills, but not to the extent that you're doing it in your belt program.
Al Kinnear
And I think it's very admirable, and I bet it's very successful once you see a, a store employee who confidently demonstrates the skill sets that you're after, I can only imagine how effective and confident they are in front of an actual live customer. So, Kathy, let's talk about the belt program a bit more. is the strategy more of an onboarding strategy?
Al Kinnear
Is it a longer term focus? How do you blend that strategy. And and just let's speak to the listeners about your overall strategy of your black Belt program.
Cathy Campbell
Yeah. Good question. Our black Belt program is designed to be a hire to retire program. So everyone starts out and white belts the same, content for every position. It's just basic new hire things you need to know about the company and what it's like to work here. And then beyond that, into the higher belts. It's customized by position, so you'll get different content based on your role with the company.
Cathy Campbell
And then a little bit higher up, you kind of learn a little bit of cross training up through red belt. And then at Purple belt is where you get to prove how well you can apply the skills that you've learned to prove that you can perform well in your job. And then beyond that, we have.
Brian Paige
Yeah. So the.
Al Kinnear
The way.
Brian Paige
We, we wanted to be kind of a hire to retire kind of program, something that grows with the team members career. So in addition to the onboarding that that typically happens at the beginning of any kind of training program, getting them fired up and happy to do, joining the right company, seeing that not only in their store, but also seeing it across company culture, is represented by our coaches that, facilitate some of the live onboarding content, then getting that position specific training that she talked about, and then learning about other functions in their store that they may be asked to do, that's really kind of the destination for every team member.
Brian Paige
So once they get past all the position specific content, then it's purely voluntary. After that, they choose to embark upon those next things that get them ready for their next position. And one of those is being proficient in their role, not just being competent, but being proficient, meaning that they have to actually lead the company and performance metrics that are relevant to their position within the store.
Brian Paige
And they have to do that over an extended period of time of at least 90 days. It's not easy, because they have, several different metrics that they're looked at that are relevant to their individual role. Some roles are more challenging than others because of the sheer number of metrics that they have to hit. but we want to reward those that actually put forth the effort to not only demonstrate to their manager that they can do it, but also raise the performance of the store in their peer group around them.
Brian Paige
So once you've learned how to do it, you've shown that you can do it through the beginning stages of the belt. Now it's this is the belt where you prove it, that you can do it over a sustained period of time. So once we've identified those who can do it, well, now we want to be able to teach you how to teach others to be able to do it.
Brian Paige
So this is kind of this is where we're in our design phases right now with another steering committee building out this next level, which is purely about taking that person who has identified that they are a top performer, and how can they replicate that and get other new team members to that same level of proficiency faster and easier?
Brian Paige
so we're pouring in leadership competencies to that individual because we believe the development of others is probably the most fundamental indicator of a successful manager. And that's what we want to hone and develop first. And then the funnel kind of narrows a little bit further. Those that get through that particular stage then get directly prepared for their next role, whatever that might be in the stage that comes next.
Brian Paige
And that's where we continue to build on the precedent that we made with leadership competencies, but also in depending upon what position they are aiming for, we introduce some tactical lessons that are going to be specific to that role, that they're trying to be prepared for competencies that they need to know, like, do I need to know how to read a PNL?
Brian Paige
do I need to learn how to manage others from a multi-unit leader position, or do I need to be able to do it within a set of four walls, those types of things? So we focus in on a lot of the tactical things that are unique to our business, as well as the leadership fundamentals that are key and true, regardless of how have any type of people later they need to have these skills.
Brian Paige
So we focus on both.
Al Kinnear
And so when we when we're focusing on on these skill sets, what kind of blend of virtual versus instructor led training, maybe if we speak about the the early belts versus the late belts, is there a different blend there? And how do you approach the instructor led training piece of your business?
Brian Paige
Yeah. So like I said, we try to focus the the live virtual instructor led classes where it has the most impact. So we have, both live in-person training where we actually bring people into the building and we train them in a centralized location. And that's more reserved toward worksite workshop type scenarios, where we're really trying to install leadership competencies and be able to validate it in order to send them off on the next thing that they need to learn.
Brian Paige
but for the, you know, for the bulk of our learners, their exposure to our coaches is going to be through a virtual live instructor led class. Like I said, we try to anything we can communicate successfully through a self-paced class or build out a simulation around it in a self-paced class. We do that where it's fundamental that they have repetition and feedback.
Brian Paige
That's where we try to save our coaches attention, to focus on those key areas you can't, like, really do a good role play on a self-paced class. For sales, you need to you need to have some live some live reps. And that's where our coaches come in.
Cathy Campbell
Absolutely, absolutely. And to build upon what Brian just said, we really have the best of the best world class coaches here at Aaron's. They get our team members excited about the work that they have to do in a store, and working in a retail store is exciting, but like really excited about it. They get those reps and they give quality feedback, and it also gives the team members opportunities in the chat box to chat amongst themselves a little bit and see what.
Cathy Campbell
Shout out from Chicago, Texas all over the country and US and Canada have that collaborative learning almost, that our coaches can facilitate.
Al Kinnear
And sort of stay on the coaches theme. can you talk about what makes your, coaches so successful? You call them world class coaches and talk to me about their backgrounds, their ten years, their experiences. How have you been so lucky to get such great coaches on your team?
Brian Paige
Well, first of all, the coaches, kind of. They made themselves very evident that they were the right people. Like, they were unavoidable. They were this shining light. They were they were definitely the shiny object that just like, I need that person, I need that person. and, you know, one of our, our most tenured coaches, coaches got here long before I did and is still here and is one of the probably one of the most engaging people you could ever meet, but also very, very empathetic.
Brian Paige
Our coaches have the ability to connect with their audience more so than, I would say, 99% of all people. That's just what they do. That is their talent, that is their passion. And that is what they do best. So we try and we try and position them to do exactly what they do best, and they just nail it down that I can't say enough great things about them, because I wish I could be as good a facilitator as they are.
Brian Paige
I mean, I really do. They're they're that good. They're that engaging. They get people fired up, right, to run through a wall. By the time they're done with a live class. This is I don't know where else you go to get something like that. It's it's, it's something that's very, very unique. And you can't teach it. You either you either have charisma or you don't.
Brian Paige
You have the ability to empathetically connect with your audience or you don't. You can inspire that. But these guys are just they're just incredible.
Cathy Campbell
Yeah. And to to speak to their backgrounds. We're so lucky we have these coaches from within Aaron's. We didn't go out looking for coaches. We didn't hire coaches from other places. These were people who know the Aaron's business, who have experience in other areas of business, whether it's service centers, recruiting, hum. Solution centers. They have that experience of dealing with our customers, of dealing with other team members.
Cathy Campbell
And that knowledge background brings so much than hiring a coach from outside or using third party coaches. Having them within and having that deep knowledge of Aaron's really build upon what they that base level of charisma that they already bring to the table.
Brian Paige
Yeah, this is to credibility because they can go they can go and talk on the team members language. They can talk in experience, they can't talk and they don't have to talk in theory, like a third party coach might have to from the outside. That's not done the job. So our coaches have done the work. I've done the work, Cathy's done the work.
Brian Paige
Everybody in our team has done that. So and I think that's probably a unique part of our success in that regard is just having that credibility because we've, we've we've been there and done that with them and they know it.
Al Kinnear
Well, it really sounds like you've got a group of rock star coaches, but does that create any challenges for you? in terms of are there opportunities where you might need to bring in third party coaches, or are you guys self-sustaining with with your own internal group?
Brian Paige
No, I think it's I think it's difficult to say when the right time is. I think the biggest thing is, is if you've been if if our team has been on a subject for a long period of time and it's just not sinking in, sometimes familiarity with the the person delivering the message isn't enough. Like you can. Yes, I've heard this before.
Brian Paige
I've heard this before from you. Sometimes it adds credibility or validation to what we're to the message we're trying to deliver. If an expert from outside also comes in and says the exact same thing, but maybe in a different way, or maybe with a different set of credentials to back up their credibility, that makes a light bulb shift.
Brian Paige
And I guess that's different for individuals. I think some people are going to connect with our coaches right out of the gates. If we see some resistance to it, we have to. We try to first of all, self examined. What's our approach? Why is it not working? could we benefit from somebody else, an outside expert coming in to deliver the same message and then us back them up and support them?
Brian Paige
Does it require more more buy in vocally from senior leaders? Like saying, hey, this is this is the direction we're going. This is why. Because sometimes we find ourselves being, communicators more so than coaches at times, and we're not necessarily always the right person to deliver the message first. The precedent sometimes has to start from above, and then we kind of we reinforce and, rally around that.
Brian Paige
So we, we look at all those different things. So it's, it's there's not like one right, one size fits all solution. It it just varies on what, what it is we're trying to do.
Al Kinnear
Yeah. For me I, I honestly, I would refer to that as injecting fresh air to the conversation and, and in my role at absorb, I, I did a lot of sales enablement training and often we'd bring in outside coaches and you could just see the light bulbs going off. So, it just felt healthy to, to mix, in my word, fresh air.
Al Kinnear
it's like being that 14 year football coach, right? The message sometimes gets a little boring to your staff. And and you can inject some life by just bringing in some insight. Outsiders, to the inside group and, and, as I mentioned, that fresh air thing, it works. So I was just curious on. Doesn't sound like you're having to do that right now with, the team that you have.
Al Kinnear
So, that's just fantastic. So, Brian, I want to talk about your steering committee again. I'm just really curious that Aaron's how you communicate the success of your learning and development, how you're gathering feedback and driving the next iterations of change.
Brian Paige
Well, I think it's when things aren't working. We're most likely to get report recommendations on what to do differently. So we try to really kind of get ahead of that. And it's this one of those things where if you put together a large group of people in a room to try and decide on something, it's going to take longer time.
Brian Paige
It's just it just is. You move a little bit slower, but the results are usually more long lasting. when you have a diverse group of ideas and thoughts around a particular area. So that's, that's kind of our strategy. We want.
Al Kinnear
We want to bring.
Brian Paige
In every operating division within our organization to the table to have representation in that steering committee. But as far as how we recruit the individuals from there, we we depending upon what the topic is, we'll have a different steering committee for whatever project we're working on. If it warrants it. because we want the people that are most passionate about the subject to be involved, because then we're not going to have to pull ideas out of them.
Brian Paige
they're going to have a ton of strong opinions on those subjects. And that's what we're looking for. And we're looking for ones that maybe not that don't necessarily align with our recommendation, because we know if that is, if that's one person feels that way, the chances are we're going to have more objections that are similar. If we are a deploy something without taking that into consideration.
Brian Paige
And many times it changes our mind when we give them an opportunity and we give them the platform to speak about it, and it really proves more beneficial. And it's it's just it's is more successful when you going to roll something out. If all those things have been considered thoughtfully and, the design is built around that so that it can be adopted much more easily.
Al Kinnear
And so with the steering committees, is it kind of a standing term or are they as needed? And how do you recruit folks, you know, from the different business units, how much leadership is involved? I'm just curious about how you kind of recruit those those steering committees.
Brian Paige
Well, it depends largely on the audience, that the that the content is going to be aimed at, where the program is going to be aimed at. But we try to get several different levels of leadership involved, from the store manager to the multi unit leader, and sometimes even our original vice presidents are invited to participate in those.
Brian Paige
So we largely do this as needed. when we have some of this critical to our program that needs to be developed, or if we need to review something that's critical. So that's that's pretty much our strategy. we do have feedback and we open ourselves up to feedback and engagement with our leadership team, just constantly we're constantly making ourselves open to that.
Brian Paige
So we don't need to initially have that on the day to day, because we really kind of cultivate that, that culture of if it's not working, you need to tell us so we can fix it. And we're we've demonstrated that, like very, very practically that we listen and that's become something that's understood. And they know that if they reach out to myself, to any member of our team, Kathy, anybody that they're going to not only see a result from that, but they're going to be heard and they're going to they're going to have their situation taken care of.
Brian Paige
So, we don't need it for necessarily for the day to day. But whenever we do something that's critical, we do form those up. And, like I said, we we look for a diversity of thought when we do that and we look for several different layers of leadership to be involved with that as well. So we have pretty much all the different perspectives that are going to be participating in whatever it is that we're building in that room, helping us build it.
Al Kinnear
Yeah. So really full spectrum that. Yeah. Fantastic. Well, I really want to thank thank you both for for joining us today. you know, from our discussion, you guys are so passionate about your learning and development. You created this well-rounded, energetic and sophisticated program. But I'd like to kind of circle back to the beginning and just ask you, both of you, if you have any advice for our listeners in terms of evaluating success in their own programs.
Cathy Campbell
Yeah. Good question. I think when it comes to evaluating success, first you have to have engagement to even have anything to evaluate. So hearing from your customer, from your end user, what do they want from a learning program and implementing that. Also, I would advise having different types of learning options available because everyone learns differently. They could be more studious and follow a study guide, or they could be more hands on and need the hands on reps.
Cathy Campbell
They could benefit more from a live instructor giving them feedback in the moment. So having those various options of learning styles and types to get through the program is definitely recommended. And then as far as measuring that, you have to hear back for them after they have taken the training. What is the Net Promoter score on the training?
Brian Paige
So I think to kind of piggyback on that, it's about being well-rounded in your approach in addition to a net promoter. And then the anecdotal feedback that comes from the participants as they complete training. All that is super important. We have to be able to communicate that, and we have to be able to communicate it as far as it needs to go.
Brian Paige
In as many eyes, they can see when something positive happens. I think we also have to be open to negative, negative feedback too. So that helps us inform when we need to make changes and improvement and be open to that. Because if it's not working, pushing Carter isn't going to make it work any better. And that's I think what we've taken from our measurement strategy is that we've had iterations that didn't work, and we've had to go back to the drawing board.
Brian Paige
We've had been opening open to do that and being willing to be humble, to go back and do that. But we also have to be able to strongly articulate when something is working to different types of audiences. Some people in our leadership team are going to respond most to the Net Promoter score. We're like, what are the people saying?
Brian Paige
That's great. And then, you know, our CFO may have a different conversation. Like we need to be able to articulate his impact in terms of the actual business. And we've been very, very fortunate in having that broad spectrum of our approach and kind of trying to cover as many of those bases as we can. And I think the one that resonates the strongest with me is, you know, one of the we look at several different performance key indicators across our businesses.
Brian Paige
We're a little unique in that we're not only a retailer, but we're also a first party debt collector. And those two things are very much intertwined in our business. And you can't really be successful in one without without impacting the other. And what we've seen is with with our data, when we get more people through the program with quality and this is how we separate, just consumption or progress within the training program from quality progress.
Brian Paige
That's the demonstration of skills piece. That's the missing link for us is being able to articulate and being able to separate progress from tenure. So we're able to do that. And when we see that, we can say, you know, getting through the training is going to get you. So far, we've seen as much as in in some areas of our business, upwards of 300 basis point lifts.
Brian Paige
By just having a team that's 100% at this level of the training program. And then we see incremental increase when the demonstration of skill scores even higher. So we can see, okay, this training by itself is going to get you this far. And engaged manager that's administering the training is going to get you this much further. And that's that's pretty impactful.
Brian Paige
So 300 basis points and some areas we've seen 500 basis points and others. So it's it's a good it's a good weighting. it's a good way to close and drop the mic and walk out of a room.
Al Kinnear
Well congratulations on that. Those are meaningful metrics I'd have to say. And, I want to thank you too, so much, Kathy. Brian, thank you for joining us today. I, I really feel that you guys have developed a dream team at Aaron's in terms of your learning and development. So continued success. on that front. And again, thank you for joining us today.
