“To help people learn, they’ve got to be able to go away and use these skills and capabilities,” says Specsavers’ Head of Brand Expression and Marketing Excellence, Abi Willstead.
With the demands on marketers “greater than ever before,” according to Willstead, how can marketing leaders support their teams in this pressurised time for the profession? How can they provide opportunities to develop and grow – as well as the time and space to learn in a strategic way that benefits the business?
Willstead was speaking as part of a panel discussion, alongside marketers from Henkel and Sainsbury’s, at the Festival of Marketing (October 3), moderated by Econsultancy Managing Partner Paul Davies.
The panel tackled how to set priorities for learning and development, getting buy-in among learners to spend time on development, and how to advocate for capability building even when budgets are squeezed.
The modern marketer is expected to have a wide array of skillsets, with the role broadening to encompass a variety of disciplines, and new tools regularly popping up that marketers need to master.
To support marketers and promote excellence, creating a capability or development programme can give marketers the chance to build these skills in their professional environment. However, with limited time available in the day, deciding which skills to prioritise can be a challenge.
“[Specsavers] were strategic about it; we were thinking about where we wanted to take the brand, what the business goals are – and how we’re going to reach customers … what’s the experience going to look like for them moving forward?” said Willstead.
To answer this question, Specsavers introduced skills and capabilities reviews – encompassing both core competencies and newer, more cutting-edge skills. “We mapped those against where we were going … [We wanted to] be very clear on: What are the use cases for these? We could talk about generative AI, but in what context?
“There was a need to be very clear on the ‘why’ – to make sure that … it’s motivating for people.”
Radha Davies, a marketing director at Sainsbury’s, highlighted that there is in fact “a lack of specialism” among marketers in the organisation as employees frequently move around, depriving them of the opportunity to build up a depth of knowledge and expertise.
As a result, “There is a huge demand for the basics – ‘What is brand-building? How do you brief to get brilliant work? How to make sure your objectives are SMART?’”
Another vital but possibly under-recognised skill is “How to … use the data and analytics to really sell your marketing case – so that you can rally a whole organisation behind the initiatives you’re trying to drive. Because [marketers] wouldn’t be able to achieve anything without selling it in a way that the business wants to invest in.”
It’s easy for even well-thought-out opportunities for development to falter if employees struggle to see the value in them, or struggle to find time for them in their schedule – especially if they don’t feel the need to prioritise them.
Willstead recalled that as Specsavers rolled out its capability programme, the team heard some feedback from employees that, “Not 100% of this is relevant to my role.” In order to get buy-in from across the organisation, she realised how important it was to have senior leadership completely on board with the initiative – “We need those leaders and the people managers to coach people through this stuff …
“To build that culture of excellence, you’ve got to have a story-led narrative of where you’re going. Helping people understand how they’ll fit into that is really important at a human level.”
Radha Davies talked about the benefits of allocating ‘smart time’ for employee development – “About a day a week of time that you can use for yourself; in my team in particular, I really want them to go and look outside of Sainsbury’s and outside of supermarkets as a category.
“It’s a time for them to go and do something creative, or do store visits, or spend time doing the training that they’ve got waiting in their inbox; but it’s time for them.” In order to allow for this time to be set aside, Davies noted that the organisation strictly caps the attendance of meetings so that employees aren’t stuck in endless meetings unnecessarily.
“Be really, really cautious about the number of people who are on the invite list … Be rigorous about who you invite, why are you having the meeting, making sure there’s an agenda – so that you free up as much time possible … [to] invest in learning and development and a bit of headspace.”
Tim Petzinna, General Manager UK and Ireland at Henkel, agreed strongly with the idea of reducing the time taken up by meetings, urging marketers to “Kill a meeting a week.”
He noted that he has introduced “Monday morning meeting amnesty” in his team, in order to ensure that they have space to start the week on the right foot. “I told my team to block their calendar on Monday from 9 to midday … it’s something that resonated very well with my team. It’s only three hours, but those three hours, if you use them wisely, can make such a big difference and can help you throughout the week.”
Petzinna also advocated for marketers to go outside the office and connect with their work in a more tangible way: “…I ask my marketeers on a regular basis – please go out there, and check out where our product is being sold … and really see first-hand how it’s being presented. It’s so important.”
In a time of squeezed budgets, it can be difficult to convince organisational leaders to invest in development even when the benefits seem clear in the long run. One audience member asked for advice on how to advocate for investment in learning and capability building when there is a lack of budget to go around.
Willstead explained that Specsavers incorporates a question about learning and development opportunities into its annual employee engagement survey – to find out whether employees feel invested in by the organisation and feel that Specsavers cares about their growth and development.
“We have a benchmark that comes through the staff engagement survey,” she said. Initially, this feedback from employees was one of the factors that led Specsavers to create its capability programme. “They want to … feel part of where we’re going, while [receiving help] to upskill themselves to keep up with fragmentation of media and a changing technology landscape – they need the support to feel that they are on the journey with us as we take the brand and business forward.”
Moderator Paul Davies added, “There are lots of measures you can use to prove the value [of upskilling] – it doesn’t have to be commercial-only. You can use simple measures like NPS … you can look at the quality of the work output that happens as a result. There’s lots of ways to do it without looking at the pounds, shillings and pence that come as a result.”
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