AXA regulates training quality with TAP
Part of the 15th largest company in the world, AXA Sun Life provides pensions, financial planning and investment solutions and advice to millions of individuals and businesses through Britannia and Birmingham Midshires. In the fiercely competitive, tightly regulated financial services sector, it is essential that all customer facing staff are trained to sell the right product at the right time in a way that is fair to all customers, whether individuals or companies. This responsibility falls to Regulated Sales Training Manager Paul Ingleby and his team of four trainers, who operate out of AXA's Coventry-based head office.
This busy team covers a breadth of training needs across a 200-strong audience based at building society branches throughout the country, spanning management development, sales skills and highly technical, specialist product training. In challenging economic times, advisers also need the skills and confidence to overcome inevitable customer nervousness by going back to the basics of good financial management and investment practice.
Regulatory compliance is implicit in everything Paul and his team do and quality assurance is right at the top of the team's agenda.
"We have robust testing and assessment processes for every programme and every delegate," says Paul, "and this extends to the trainers, who also go through an annual training competence process to ensure that they have the product knowledge themselves, as well as the skills to deliver it."
As the markets go through a period of turbulence, Paul and his team have also experienced major changes over the past 12 months. Originally ten-strong, the team is now half the size, yet is delivering more training programmes than ever before. Coping with these challenges required some
radical action, as Paul explains:
"A huge amount of experience resides within the team, both as trainers and, formerly, as advisers - a crucial factor in the quality of the training experience for the delegates because they want to know the trainer has a thorough understanding of their role and the products they are selling."
"However, a lot of knowledge and expertise was locked away in the individual's head and this was further compounded by a real lack of consistency in design, delivery and standards. Not only this, there were also softer differences in consistency because some team members had presentational styles, others had facilitative styles and there was a tendency, particularly with some of the technical programmes, to bombard delegates with every last bit of knowledge, whether it was required for the job or not."
The danger posed by these inconsistencies and idiosyncrasies was that if a trainer fell sick, the course would have to be cancelled - a drain on time, cost and reputation that Paul could not afford. Fortunately all of these issues are now history because another big change for the team has been brought about by the introduction of The Training Foundation's TAP Learning System.
"I knew the importance and value of training for the trainers because when I joined Birmingham Midshires ten years ago Chris Sutton, now a director at The Training Foundation and then Head of Learning & Development at Birmingham Midshires, had put me through a programme. I liked the look of the TAP Learning System, but needed to be convinced that it would really make the difference I was looking for, so I sent one of my trainers on the Training Delivery Skills programme as a pilot for the rest of the team."
Jerry Rolls had been with AXA for 14 years and worked as a trainer for the past three. With a natural flair for training but no formal training qualification, he carried his audience through sheer enthusiasm and innate ability to do all of the right things and do them extremely well - but without knowing why. Somewhat ironically he was also highly sceptical about the value of going on a training course, which made his feedback all the more persuasive.
"He was almost jumping up and down after the course and the transformation has been remarkable," says Paul. "His enthusiasm hasn't waned, but he's a much calmer trainer, who now knows why he was doing the right things but has the structure to raise his personal bar even higher. He knows what questions he's going to ask, everything is much more activity based and the feedback from delegates is amazing. We don't just get very happy 'happy' sheets; delegates go out of their way to tell me how much they've got out of Jerry's courses."
Jerry also re-wrote all his course materials using the TAP methodology, which has offered benefits at a number of levels. Whereas it could take Jerry up to two days to prepare for a course before the epiphany facilitated by the Training Delivery Skills Programme, it now only takes a matter of a couple of hours, freeing him to focus on developing new materials and programmes. And because all of his materials are now designed to the TAP format, it is a lot easier for his colleagues to pick up one of his programmes and run with it, should the need arise.
Convinced by Jerry's experience of the power of TAP and his infectious enthusiasm, Paul enrolled the rest of his team on the Training Delivery Skills course, even though they all had a Certificate in Training Practice.
"TAP isn't just another qualification it's a passport to becoming a better trainer. Now the whole team is working in a completely different, much more consistent and coherent way. They challenge one another to improve and develop their courses so that delegates have a better learning experience. We also have greater confidence to challenge management on issues which they might see as training related, but are really motivational issues which need to be tackled within the business. For example, we can equip advisers with sales skills, but we can't provide the motivation to sell."
Another important benefit of adopting the TAP Learning System is that it provides a sound evidence base to demonstrate the best practice training, evaluation and assessment standards demanded by regulatory compliance.
With all trainers now delivering and designing to TAP standards, the team qualifies for TAP Gold Partner status, an accolade which has gained them credibility and respect with senior management across the business. More importantly, however, feedback suggests that enhanced training proficiency is translating into improved skills within the business, which is what really matters in Paul's book.
"It's great having Gold TAP Partner status because it demonstrates that we are specialists and professionals. In addition the entire team is working towards the TAP diploma, which means we will not only be delivering but also designing and facilitating programmes to the highest quality standards. And this is what counts, because it is the quality of our training that can really make an impact on performance and outcomes for the business, as well as the customer experience."