When it comes to learning and development, employees need different support, tools, and resources depending on their role and unique learning needs. Service and manufacturing employees, in particular, have different working environments, access to technology, and day-to-day realities than other workplace groups.
Lexi Hernandez, Executive Director of DE&I Workforce Initiatives at RTX, Richard Rykhus, Senior Director/Head of Global Learning and Development at Shure, and Ani Binishi, Senior Specialist of Culture, Equity, & Inclusion at Wendy’s sat down with Anthony Greco, Managing Director of Learning Solutions at Aperian®, to discuss how they have overcome some of the biggest and most unique challenges in training manufacturing and service employees. You can watch the recording and read through some of their helpful insights below.
Lexi: RTX is an aerospace and defense corporation with over 180,000 employees worldwide. We have a vast employee base that spans the globe, highly skilled manufacturing employees who work various shifts worldwide, and employees who spend a significant amount of time in engineering and test labs. As a defense contractor, many of those labs are classified and limit what employees have access to from a technology perspective while working in those labs. We also have training professionals who are out in the field working side-by-side with our customers to ensure the safety and effective use of our products.
We have to be really cognizant as we deploy different learning and development resources. One challenge we face, first and foremost, is timely communication. We want to ensure that all of our employees—truly all of our employees—have access to the information and resources that they need to not only perform effectively within their role but also chart a pathway of career development and professional growth for themselves.
When we design learning programs and development opportunities, we work really closely with key partners in our organization to make sure that we’re considering not only the needs of those different employee segments, but we’re also looking at having robust change management and communication plans from the very beginning. We want to make sure we’re reaching our different employee segmentations at the right time and in the right way. Timely access to information is critical.
The other challenge we often face is access to technology and computers. We often refer to some of our employee segments, like our manufacturing employees, as being “non-wired” to remind ourselves that some employees do not have immediate access to computers. We also consider that many individuals may be accessing the same computer at different times and in different ways. We need to make sure that there can be multiple login opportunities for our employees to access learning and development opportunities.
Ani: Wendy’s is a fast food brand and our locations span 33 countries. A significant portion of our workforce is nonoffice workers, including crew members, shift managers, and general managers in our restaurants. These employees are the face of our brand, and it’s crucial that we create an inclusive and supportive environment for them all.
One of the biggest challenges is addressing the diverse needs across these different locations. The culture within each location varies drastically depending on its location and management. We have to be conscious of the diverse needs of different locations as well as their cultural aspects.
Secondly, hourly workers often face scheduling flexibility. Everyone works a different shift, and catching people at a specific time of day might not be feasible. So it’s more about how we work around different schedules and how we can simplify materials. We also focus on consistency in communication. It’s not about just communicating it in a timely manner. It’s more about how to continually build upon foundations.
Richard: Shure celebrated our 100th anniversary in April. I was in our archives just a couple of weeks ago and was shown an article in a magazine that was published in Chicago in 1945. Our founder, Mr. Shure, was featured, talking about the importance of the diversity of our workforce. There weren’t many DEI programs 80 years ago, and there wasn’t a formal name for it back in the ‘40s. Yet this was something that our founders saw as important, not only strategically, but as people at our company know, just treating people as human beings—and treating people well.
That gives us the foundation that we have today. We take an approach of having fun. About 40% of our workforce is in manufacturing plants in Mexico and China. Since we make audio equipment, specifically microphones, we have many musicians and people involved in the music industry in our company. We bake that into awareness around diversity. We celebrate all of the big months and days that we have on our cultural calendar in this way. One of my favorite celebrations we have is a Diwali celebration. One of our employees plays music from India, we cater some of the best Indian food in the Chicago area, and many people wear their traditional garments from India. There’s eating and dancing in the middle of the workday, and it’s a way to teach people about another culture in a fun, very accessible way.
Ani: Similarly, we hold monthly celebrations—we are currently focusing on Hispanic Heritage Month for example—to recognize the diversity in each location and the company as a whole. But beyond that, at Wendy’s we’re really focused on equipping managers with the awareness tools to first understand themselves, and then their teams as well.
We have people-leader essentials training for district managers that focuses on various DEI topics like allyship, unconscious bias, and psychological safety. We also have yearly one-on-one DEI training for general managers to create a baseline standard of understanding of self and others and psychological safety training that’s ingrained in the onboarding process. Shift managers also participate in cultural training, and as people progress from role to role, they go through each of these training experiences.
Beyond that, we’ve also started a DEI development series that brings awareness to different dimensions of diversity every month. The series has three parts, including a one-page handout providing general information on the topic and discussion questions for district manager staff meetings. The last aspect is a more in-depth lunch-and-learn session that allows people to engage in company-wide dialogue. Timing is a challenge, and we try to be intentional about not hosting them during peak times for the restaurants so field employees can also engage.
Anthony: I love that you have this cascading of information at Wendy’s. Everybody’s being exposed to the same topics, but in the way that best suits them. So it’s really creating a common language, a common thread, for everyone regardless of where they are in the organization.
Richard: I’m going to continue with the theme of fun, specifically as it relates to what we call IDEA, which is Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access. We have associate resource groups—we call them “Vibes”—and we follow their lead. They are often the ones who set the agenda for areas that they want educational focus, and they come up with different methods. They’re very creative. And in many of those areas, global learning and development plays a role, but it’s very much in collaboration with the Vibes or specific locations. To provide an example from one of our manufacturing locations, for Pride Month in Mexico, our associates all received chalk and drew the Pride flag on the sidewalk that everybody has to pass by or over when they go into work. And so that greeted them in June during Pride Month. When they got inside, there were tables with educational information, data, and quick facts that people could read and learn about without having to sit in a classroom. In both our Suzhou and Juarez locations, these events are both extraordinarily family focused.
We also had a Women’s History Month event with family-focused activities, tours of the facilities with different women’s history facts interspersed throughout, and speakers who in part talked about the contributions of women at Shure, including our two women Presidents, one is which is Chris Schyvinck, current President and CEO. So we have some stories to tell that really inspire people.
Lexi: It’s really critical for us to work with key partners in the organization to identify the different needs of our employee segments and make sure that we’re designing learning content, resources, and initiatives that support those needs. We work really closely with leaders across the organization, our HR partners, and our Employee Resource Groups (ERGs). Our ERGs have such a great pulse on the needs of our broader employee base, so we work very closely with them as strategic partners to help us shape strategies and resources, and then work together to make sure we get it in the hands of our employees in the right way.
For example, a lot of our factory teams will have daily stand-up meetings, and we use Aperian’s conversation starters from their Global Diversity Toolkit, to provide leaders with questions to pose to their team to help them get to know each other a little bit better. This also allows them to better understand and celebrate different experiences, backgrounds, and strengths, and find opportunities to tap into those different experiences and perspectives in a meaningful and valuable way. In these conversations, we find that we often have more in common than people realize. It’s an excellent way to bring people together from a connection and belonging perspective.
The key is to always ensure you’re meeting the needs of your populations. An example that comes to mind is when one of our manufacturing sites came to us and asked for help supporting a “speak-up culture.” They were trying to minimize microaggressions. So we partnered closely with our employee relations and labor relations team, as well as legal, and we decided to flip the script on our typical harassment types of training and talk more about becoming an upstander. We wanted to help all our employees feel empowered to be active bystanders, so we created content with specific examples from manufacturing settings, and we pulled a thread around psychological safety and physical safety. Physical and product safety, of course, are huge components of our culture, and our manufacturing team members are well-versed in multiple safety protocols to ensure that they’re keeping themselves and their team members safe every day. We used some of those same examples to talk about psychological safety and creating an environment of trust, respect, and protection when individuals speak up and intervene in moments of poor behavior. We delivered content in a way that made sense for that employee group, and it was a huge hit. The next thing we knew, we had other teams knocking at our door to deliver similar training for their teams.
Lexi: I’m super energized because this week we are celebrating our global inclusion week. This is an annual event at RTX and we encourage all of our team members regardless of role, location, shift, or level in the organization to take a few minutes to practice inclusive behaviors and activities. We create a robust toolkit of activities and resources that come at no cost to our departments and can be done with minimal disruption in our employees’ day-to-day activities. We have daily challenges and give out prizes, and it’s so much fun to see employees post on social media and chat internally about what they’re doing.
Something else we’ve implemented is our first women and allies summit that brought together women and allies across our organization for a three-day event, and hosted events that were livestreamed throughout out global offices. We encouraged them to dial in and engage in some dialogue around what they were hearing and experiencing. We’ve also recorded it and translated the transcript to make sure our global partners had access to the content and events.
This is another fun way to get all employees engaged in a meaningful way. Beyond HR owning these pieces, it’s actually the responsibility of different members of our senior leadership team to drive ownership and accountability. We start at the top and then bring in all employees, and we make sure that all voices are heard and respected as part of our strategy and initiatives. That’s been really key for us to ensure that we’re integrating inclusion, belonging, and learning into all that we do.
Ani: Similarly, we work closely with all functions to make sure everything we do touches on relevant aspects. We use our fundamentals training in partnership with Aperian as a tool to develop journeys for people managers and individual contributors. Everyone goes through those journeys and develops an in-depth understanding of common topics, which adds on to the fundamental trainings that we have yearly for all of these populations. We try to focus all of our trainings to the needs of the populations.
We also started a DEI-specific mentor program for field employees to bridge the gap between the restaurant and corporate experience to help people better understand the business on both sides. The mentorship program is focused on soft skills, technical skills, and DEI fundamentals, and developing those skill sets to be transferrable beyond the mentor program experience.
Finally, our ERGs are an extension of us. We rely on them and truly see them as partners in expanding our DEI efforts across the organization. We created an ERG liaison program, in which a representative from each of our company markets attends leadership meetings of the larger ERG groups. ERGs plan programs throughout the year, and it is the liaison’s role to represent their field experience and bring content back to the field.
Richard: I first want to echo Ani’s comment about Aperian—specifically the GlobeSmart® Profile and GlobeSmart Guides. They are fantastic tools that we use all the time. Over the last two years, we’ve also rolled out an everyday inclusion program for every associate in our organization. This program builds a shared mindset and familiarity with terms and concepts like, microaggressions, unconscious bias, and microinclusions.
It was quite an undertaking because of our variety of locations and roles, but ultimately we had over a 96% participation rate, 94% of associates said they learned things that they could apply in their jobs, and 92% of associates said they’d recommended the program to others. We were so pleased to see these results, especially because we did not make it mandatory.
With the help of Aperian, we were able to host engaging, interactive sessions that people really got a lot out of. And I think the foundation we had made it successful. This includes our CEO and her personal and professional commitment to IDEA (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access). All leaders are aligned with her and support the work. We all know leadership commitment and visible support make all the difference.
The second part is our core values, which have been with our organization for decades. They don’t just live on a wall, on posters, or show up on a slide every now and then. People truly live them. And at the core of those values is respect. When we talk about equity and inclusion, it really is all about respecting your fellow associates.
Ani: We focus on not disturbing the business. We have quarterly general manager meetings, for example, when my team can tap in and see if there are opportunities to tailor content based on the needs we see across the board. We utilize times that we know are efficient, and also think through our peak hours so we can be strategic in offering content, even if it’s virtual, that reaches the majority of our employees. We’ll also host multiple sessions at different times of the day to reach a wider audience as well.
Lexi: A couple of things we do is, first and foremost, enabling virtual access. We want to ensure that all of our employees, regardless of role type or where they work, have access to information and resources. When we hold virtual sessions, we keep the groups smaller to ensure active engagement and participation. We all know how easy it is to multitask when you’re attending a training virtually. So we incorporate lots of breaks and breakout sessions to ensure every employee has the opportunity to be engaged in the session. We also hold trainings at different times in the day. We picked this best practice up from Aperian to make sure individuals across all time zones have access to programs.
Want to hear more from these panelists? Check out the full on-demand recording. To see how our learning platform and training solutions can help you deliver training to all of your employees, contact the Aperian team or start a free trial of Aperian.
