Matching values – The importance of selecting the right L&D partner
An interview with Nick West, Head of Learning and Development at Julius Baer International.
Having had a long association with MatchFit and MD Bradley Honnor, we caught up with Nick to find out what he looks for in a training and leadership development partner, and how the MatchFit approach has helped solved some of his career challenges.
To begin, we asked Nick about his career to date.
“I’ve spent 35 years primarily in banking and finance, starting in sales at Lloyds working for Black Horse Finance. When I became a branch manager, I supported work on learning and development packages and became more interested and involved in people development – I’d been a sports coach from a young age and there was a degree of congruence for me. From supporting the groups sales training in the branch I moved into sales support across a branch network and then into training for our call centre. My next career step took me into the Defence sector with the MoD; primarily onboarding, mid-career and leadership development. From there I moved to Old Mutual Wealth, which is a South African heritage wealth business, once again supporting early careers, leadership development and building out an L&D function. My last role before Julius Baer was for the UK’s Banking and Finance Trade Association – UK Finance, where I re-built a team outside of HR focusing on commercial L&D delivery to members. Over two years we built out a sustainable model of delivery which reflected members needs across the industry.
And how did the MatchFit connection come about?
“After a few rebrands, Old Mutual Wealth became Quilter in the UK. That’s where Bradley and I met originally. When I arrived, the team needed to rebuild and grow and we had incredibly broad training needs across the business with little ability to deliver to a business numbering close to 5000. In order to take first steps we used external suppliers and Bradley was a part of this team.
It was quickly clear that Bradley has an innate ability to flip his skills to suit different groups people. He would stand in front of a senior relationship manager and we would get very strong feedback, as easily as he could a new apprentice. He had a good understanding of people and was able to adjust his delivery to match the needs of the business, or the people we were putting him in front of. He also had a lot of learned experience that brought the sessions to life.
So, when we moved over to a tender process and selected a supplier for a Managed Learning Service, we asked Bradley to join the new team. As a key delivery mechanism for face-to-face training Bradley and his business took time to get to know us even better and build a deep knowledge of who we were and what we did. Most importantly they got to know our culture and were able to reflect this across a wide range of activities. Towards the later stages of our time, we partnered to deliver the UK business’s Leadership Programme for over 200 Leaders across the UK; supporting the strategic growth direction of the firm and building on from a Global programme.
How did you reconnect professionally?
Julius Baer is a private banking corporation founded and based in Switzerland. Established as a traditional private bank and named after Swiss banker Julius Baer, it provides investment management, real estate financing, wealth management, and select offerings in sales and trading based on an open and managed architecture. Julius Baer employs a staff of over 6,600 worldwide with a Global HR function, and a Global Learning and Development function; the Julius Baer Academy. Around 35 people work for the Academy, delivering learning and development across the entire globe for the business. We asked Nick whether this had posed any particular challenges?
The Head of L&D role at Julius Baer International, which is the UK business, was brand new. As the business was growing, there was an understanding that people are a competitive advantage and growing the business would require investment in people.
As JBI grows, we focus on ensuring our investment in our people is linked to our strategic goals and their career aspirations and setting up the function has been centred around delivering significant corporate content alongside bespoke personal development. We have delivered a Leadership Programme, a yearlong series of activities focused on our Women in Wealth (our internal colleagues) and we have begun to build a back bone to embed L&D.
Globally the role sits within the JB Academy; the business’s L&D function, which reaches across all our people and locations. The ability to reach out and draw on existing JB expertise and knowledge, global programmes and their offerings has been invaluable. In return we have deepened their knowledge and understanding of our regulatory environment.
As this relationship has grown, we have begun to deliver programmes of work which have global reach, last year leading the launch of a new approach to employee on-boarding. MatchFit have been instrumental is this progress.
Through existing relationships across the sector, I had already introduced Bradley (under the MatchFit brand) to Julius Baer several years prior to my arrival – I felt his business had the skills and expertise to help JBI in the initial stages of preparation for expanding L&D in the UK. When I joined the business in 2022, we directly re-connect on active delivery, reinforcing a now decade old relationship.
Working with MatchFit now includes coaching, Leadership Development, career development and we have invited them to be a part of our Leadership Programme tender process.
We asked Nick how he was able to introduce UK suppliers to the global mix
The strength of our relationship as a function with each other as an Academy and the business means we can take advantage of the skills needed on any given project and connect each other’s initiatives. As my role and function has grown within the UK and I have added high quality suppliers the business values, we have been able to expand some of these offerings beyond the UK, giving colleagues around the world access to more development and enhanced our supplier pool. The extent of their success is always built on the quality of the partnership and the delivery.
We are looking for partners willing to get to know us, understand our business and our people and build with us. Often we see training companies who simply want to deliver off the shelf and make money rather than build a true partnership that benefits both firms and helps us both grow.
We asked Nick if he didn’t already know MatchFit, how would he go about evaluating whether they could be a fit for the business?
“Part of my job early role activity was to assess the portfolio of providers that had been working in the learning space and supporting a part-time consultant with the business.
I’m never really looking for a supplier, unless we’re doing a one-off event where I want a speaker, for instance. Most of the time, I need a group of partners to work with us. The difference to me is a supplier tends to get into a ‘supply of client’ relationship i.e.. ‘What do you want? Tell me and I’ll do it’. The danger of that is they don’t ask questions; they don’t challenge, and they don’t present new ways of thinking..
So what am I looking for? Well, flexibility, commercial awareness, an understanding of the industry we’re in, or an ability to translate current delivery into this industry, are important. A willingness to understand our people is vital.
What we look for are supplier who helps us solve a challenge.
MatchFit meet that requirement. They already have strong reputation across the industry, a high-quality catalogue of content and good people in their associate pool.
We are looking for a partner with the right skills, for someone who says, ‘You shared your challenge with us, but we’ve done a little bit of digging around, and we think there is a different or broader challenge We have ideas that would help you and we can help you to build a better and broader solution together.’ Personally, I want someone who is going to look at each opportunity like every opportunity like that, and ultimately, that matches the culture and values within JBI. I’m able to see the fit between the values of MatchFit and ours and I know MatchFit are not afraid to say ‘we think the issue is different to what you initially thought’.
Bradley isn’t afraid to tell us.
We asked what part early analysis plays in the process
“I think a mistake often made in learning and development is that when someone comes to you with a problem to solve, you only have that person’s view on the problem. Experiences shows that you always need to get someone else’s view on what the problem is as well, otherwise you’re just making a set of assumptions.
There could be a fundamental difference of opinion – someone might come to you and say, ‘We can’t do this task because we don’t know how to hold that conversation with our client’, for instance, but the head of sales might feel the conversation’s irrelevant to the actual task. The upfront analysis MatchFit do really helps to crystallise what the problems or challenges really are, not what they’re perceived to be. Even for me, as head of learning and development, it’s still really easy to make assumptions on what I see as the challenge. So the analysis helps you understand what the real challenge is, and how we do something about it for the future, rather than just training people do something better next week. How do we change behaviour long term? And that’s what we’re looking for – long term impact.”
How important is measurement to the process?
“I would say that what gets measured gets done! If you put people on a course and you don’t do any form of measurement, how are you ever expecting there to be any change? Because the very act of measurement means that people have to go and practise those skills. The measurement indicates the direction of travel as a result of that practise. In our business, when we talk about performance, we mean how someone performs as a person, and that includes their personal life, work life; as a whole.
And that doesn’t mean we want you to be 100% between nine and five so we can get the best out of you. It means we want you to be the best person you can be, and bring that to our business. This comes all the way from the top, from our CEO. He is absolutely 100% about asking, ‘What is the best that we can do? And, ultimately, why?’ If we designed a programme that didn’t match, then it wouldn’t fit our culture.
So we are looking for partners who can make a real difference to the people they work with. Bradley and I will often have conversations around the skills people pick up that won’t really be useful in the day-to-day business, but they might be useful to them on a personal level. And if they’re better in their home life, it could help them be better equipped to perform in their work life. If we’ve got something horrible going on at home, it’s harder to perform at work and vice versa. So if we can upskill people in a number of areas of their life, then performance is naturally going to follow.”
How was credibility of UK partners built in the eyes of the global business?
It’s about building a reputation. I may be part of an academy that sits at a global level, but I am also judged on my local level against performance and delivery. I want to build a model here that really makes a difference to the global business, and as a business, we’re going through a lot of change For some teams that change can have significant impact and Bradley has experience of addressing this issue. When we bring him in the teams are able to make significant change. Bradley helps them on the journey and to chart a way forward.
As a business we are managing generational money. We are looking to develop skills in our people that sit alongside our investment approach and this is a lifelong learning approach. Everything about us puts the client at the heart of what we do. And therefore we need the best people. My job is to make those people the best they can be in the long term. MatchFit help to make that happen.”
