The Glanbia Ireland Growing Together Learning Series for 2022 offers all employees the opportunity to reach their full professional potential

Launched recently, the series has been revised for this year, with special consideration given to GI’s current and future business requirements, the cultural changes we are currently living through and our aspirations to develop an organisation with coaching, psychological safety, diversity, inclusion and sustainability at its core.

To find out more about how GI’s employees, with the help of the Growing Together Series are helping us realise these high-reaching ambitions, Overherd at Glanbia Ireland grabbed some time with the architect of the programme, Head of Talent & Development Karen O’Brien.

Overherd: Firstly Karen, congrats on the new programme. It must have taken a lot of work to get it to launch stage?

Karen: Yes, we wanted to truly understand the needs of the business and the needs of our people when considering this new programme. We spoke to people across the business to understand what capabilities they really needed to develop, both to do their job right now and to progress their careers into the future. We spent significant time co-designing the courses with our external partners to ensure they met the needs of our people and our business. So much work goes on behind the scenes to get it right and Rhona Howley, our Talent Development Manager, spent many days and weeks ensuring it’s at the quality it is today, which we are proud of.

Overherd: The Talent & Development team appears to take a very holistic view of employee development at GI. Can you explain a bit more?

Karen: It’s about the whole person, how you understand yourself, how you become your best self, how you interact with others, how you build the best relationships you can, how you inspire others and deliver your very best. We care about our entire community and want something for everyone.  We want to create an environment where people flourish and if we can do this, we set our business up for success.

Overherd: We’ve seen in the programme brochure that you mention special consideration given to GI’s current and future business requirements. What exactly does this mean?

Karen: As citizens of the world, we know that change is part of our lives and we know that every organisation is undergoing significant change now and into the future. GI is fundamentally changing as we become Glanbia Co-Op and so, we need to be future focused when we are building our programme and set ourselves up with capabilities that will allow us navigate changes in the future.

Overherd: The deadline for PDP conversations with managers recently passed. It looks like there’s a lot of great programme content to help people with their development plans?

Karen: Yes there is and development plans need to be alive all year. This programme is available to help colleagues navigate the 10% formal learning of their development journey, alongside our coaching culture, opportunities for mentoring and on the job development opportunities.

Overherd: The Thrive and Lead courses started last month with more to come in March. Are there any particular courses you’re interested in attending yourself

Karen:  All of them! Well, I would say that 😊. I am particularly interested in building my own resilience as we learn how to thrive in the hybrid-working world. It will be an interesting year in this respect. I am also fascinated by how we are creating an organisation where psychological safety is at our heart. We only flourish when we feel safe to be ourselves, to challenge, to give our point of view. Too many great ideas are lost when we don’t feel safe to express them. So, that will be a major focus this year. Finally, as leader of our coaching culture transformation, I am so excited about spreading the message across the business about how this can elevate us, enable us to lead better, interact better and grow together.

Thrive focuses on increasing personal effectiveness, developing people and performance and helping all our employees thrive.

THRIVE SERIES COURSES

• Personal impact and influence
• Presentation skills
• Resilience
• Prioritising & time optimisation
• Finance for non-financial roles
• Understand your customer: Building value add capability
• Problem solving
• How to: Individual development planning
• Lean Yellow, White & Green Belt Certification

This leadership development curriculum supplements group programmes, with learnings focused on becoming more effective as a leader of people.

LEAD SERIES COURSES

• Communicating with impact
• Managing stakeholders for change
• Increasing collaboration on your team
• Project management essentials
• Transforming meetings

The Keynote Series focuses on increasing personal effectiveness, developing people and performance and helping all our employees thrive.

KEYNOTE SERIES

• Data driven decision making
• Imposter Syndrome
• Understanding a coaching culture
• Psychological safety

Overherd: Finally, if anyone is interested in realising their full professional potential this year, what should they do?

Karen: Understand yourself, what are your motivations, what are you good at? Where do you need to develop? Attend our IDP training in Thrive. Really reflect on what you want. Talk to your manager, your HRBP, myself or Rhona, we are there to support you in your journey. As an organisation we want you to thrive, all you need to do is reach out and ask and for sure, you will receive all the support you need.

You can find full details on all the courses on offer by downloading our new brochure here.