Gain extraordinary results by investing in workers’ wellbeing
APRIL is Stress Awareness Month, and one entrepreneur who is all too aware of the struggles some employees experience regarding pressures in the workplace is Jane Rennie, founder and CEO of The Extraordinary Training Company.
“Over the last year, I think stress has taken on a very different meaning for a lot of people,” Ms Rennie explains. “Oddly enough, one of the ways that Covid-19 has sparked a small revolution in training and coaching is that it’s actually forced a lot of firms’ hands. They’816ve really had to take a hard look at some long overdue interventions, and I think people having issues coping with change has been a huge part of that.”
Based in Perth, The Extraordinary Training Company is a people development organisation specialising in training and coaching for small businesses throughout Scotland. As well as creating strategies for tackling stressful situations in the workplace, Ms Rennie and her team are valued for their solutions and in helping businesses embrace a readiness for change.
And as a result, the company was recently chosen to deliver the HIT Scotland Leadership and Development programme for the hospitality industry – a project funded by the Scottish Government to aid the recovery process for hospitality business owners.
“It’s a ten-week programme – we started it at the beginning of February,” says Ms Rennie, 53. “It’s been a lot of hard work but well worth it. We’re delivering 77 sessions a week, with just under 2000 participants and 27 different trainers.
“Our aim was not just to give them new
skills and new tools that they could apply, but also give them a completely different mindset about what was going to be expected of them and how things needed to shift and flex.”
Ms Rennie cites the programme as a major career highlight, and admits it came at just the right time – with the pandemic triggering great uncertainty for the firm. Despite being proficient in online ‘virtual’ training, 80% of The Extraordinary Training Company’s business had been conducted face-to-face. When the pandemic hit, Ms Rennie’s core team of four staff had to come up with some of their own solutions to effectively deliver results.
“There was a huge amount of pressure
on us to do what we had always done, but to do it virtually, and to still have the same level of engagement and interaction that you have with that natural human connection,” says Ms Rennie.
In spite of the setback, the company is now on target for turnover of around £750,000 this year, whereas in years prior the figure sat at the £250,000 mark.
Ms Rennie, originally from Shropshire, moved to Scotland in 2016. With 25 years of experience in learning and development, her last professional position was with the global training organisation Franklin Covey in Dubai.
“I suppose that curiosity I had for my own learning led me to realise that whilst I loved working for corporate, there was just always something missing,” she says.
After relocating to Scotland, Ms Rennie admits that founding The Extraordinary Training Company in 2016 was new territory for her. She explained: “When we came back to the UK it was quite hard in the early days. I’d gone from being someone quite well known – there’s not that many women in senior leadership training organisations, particularly in the Middle East – and then to Scotland where I was completely unknown. It was quite challenging in the beginning getting people to understand what it was we were trying to do.
“I was very aware that there was huge demand for people development but that some of the smaller businesses really didn’t have the kind of budget to go to the big boys, and I just felt they were missing out. I thought the way to get round this was for me to laser focus all my corporate training experience and make it affordable and accessible for some of the smaller businesses.”
Ms Rennie’s company presently has a training network of 28 different trainers from throughout the UK and Europe – and she forecasts a rise in demand for training development with the arrival of Stress Awareness Month – which, she says, shows maintaining good mental health is increasingly important to both employers and employees.
“I think the biggest challenge is managing people’s expectations,” she adds. “For an awful lot of people, there is the perception that training is like that magic pill. The reality is it takes a long time, and unfortunately like everything else, when you are then faced with a pandemic the first thing to go is usually budget for training and development.
“And yet, arguably, it is probably the most important thing to continue funding because it’s the one thing that continues to connect people to their teams, to maintain that sense of security and to help people realise that they’re not alone.” www.weareextraordinary.co.uk
Stress has taken on a very different meaning for a lot of people. Companies have had to take a hard look at some long overdue interventions