The Future is Purpose Driven (Advanced)

Watch the live recording of our live event from 9th June 2023. Intrepid English Founder, Lorraine was joined by Jules McVey PhD to talk about the Employers Who Empower programme, our business English and communications training for purpose-driven organisations.

The Employers Who Empower programme is CPD-accredited, offering the same world-class valued-led English training that Intrepid English is renowned for, but on a much bigger scale. If you lead a multinational team whose lack of English communication skills is holding them back, join us to discuss the many ways our unique programme can help.

Jules is a Senior Program Manager with 15 years’ experience building data-focused programs and scalable operations for organisations including Meta and the US Government. She holds a PhD in Organisational Psychology and is passionate about training teams to streamline operations and boost performance.

You can find a full transcript below, as well as a complete list of the sources cited in the webinar and even and a lesson plan for English learners.

Transcript

Lorraine

Hello!

Jules

Hi!

Lorraine

Hello, Phyllis.  Hello, is it ‘Nur’? Lovely. I can see you’ve got your camera on.

Nur

Yes, It’s Nur. Thank you!

Phyllis

Hi, it’s Phyllis

Lorraine

Yes, Nur, Hi! And Phyllis. Oh lovely. It’s great when people actually speak back!!

Jules

It’s amazing. 

Lorraine

Yeah, it’s feedback. Great, just let me check. Is anyone else waiting to get in? How are we all doing today?

Jules

Fabulous. How are you, Phyllis? 

Phyllis

I’m good. And how are you?

Jules

I am very busy. Very busy.

Phyllis

Good. It’ll keep you out of trouble.

Jules

It does! I go to bed exhausted, I’m not gonna lie. 

Lorraine

That’s good, though. You’re at your best when you’re busy, Jules. 

Jules

Yes. All of us, you know. It feeds the soul, you know, it does.  

Lorraine

Absolutely. Alright. I have to remind myself to keep my eye on the participants’ list in case anyone joins once we’ve got started. We’ll wait for a few more minutes. Phyllis, it’s great that you’ve got your camera on. Thank you for doing that. It’s lovely to see a face! At least one!

Phyllis

Yes. Yeah. 

Lorraine

Great, awesome. Would you like to introduce yourself and say why you’ve joined the webinar today? 

Phyllis

Well, I saw something that Jules had posted about it on LinkedIn. And I thought, you know, this involves teaching. That’s what I do. I’m gonna chime in. Why not join? 

Lorraine

Absolutely. Why not? I love that attitude. That’s awesome.

Jules

And we got another face. I see some more people, come on.

Lorraine

Hi, how are you? Would you like to introduce yourself, Nur?

Nur

Hello, I am from Turkey. My name is Nur. And I am a mechanical engineer.

Lorraine

Nice. 

And I don’t know. I’m just… I found out… sorry, I forget the name… Eventbrite. I found it on Eventbrite, this event. So I just want to come here and look around. Just something like that. 

Lorraine

Great. Have you been to one of our sessions before, Nur?

Nur

No, I didn’t come to any other session. This is my first time. 

Lorraine

Okay. Right. Wonderful. Well, if you have any questions, please feel free to ask any time. Or if you want to write something down in the chat, then we’ll get to them at the end as well.

Nur

Okay, thank you very much.

Lorraine

I know a few people who are looking forward to the recording because they aren’t able to make it to the live webinar. So I think we can get started. All right. As you can see, I’ve got two screens. So I’m looking in two different places. Okay, so hello. I’m Lorraine, I am joined by Jules today. And I’ll introduce you to her in just a second.

The theme of today’s webinar is the international workforce, and specifically challenges that people are facing.  So, we’re a purpose-driven organisation, Intrepid English. And I have a massive passion for this field. So does Jules, so we’re going to really get into the details today. I’m going to tell you a little bit about what a purpose-driven organisation is, in case you don’t know. And outline some challenges that are facing leaders of purpose-driven organisations, as well as leaders in general.

Then we’re going to talk about the future of an organisation and why it’s important to have and communicate a purpose. And then we will talk… well, Jules will talk to us about employee engagement and course participation because we offer a corporate English course.

Okay, so I’ll be talking about lots of data and research today. I’ll be sharing a document after the webinar. I’ll send out the recording and a list of all the websites and sources in case you’re interested in doing a little bit of further reading. And as I said, please feel free to write your questions in the chat box and I’ll get to them… well, when I see them, essentially. And Jules can dive in if there’s anything that’s under her specialty.

So, who am I? I’m Lorraine, and I am the founder of Intrepid English. Intrepid English is a purpose-driven English school, we’re completely online. So we don’t teach any face-to-face lessons. And we’ve got fourteen teachers in six different countries now. It started in 2013. So we’re nearly ten years old. We’ll be ten in October. And now our teachers are based in the UK predominantly, but also France, Mexico, New Zealand, Egypt, and the USA. That’s a little summary of us.

One important thing about Intrepid English is that we donate 6% of our revenue to three different charities. One is to help youth homelessness. One is for refugees. And another one is to help unemployed women here in the UK have training and clothing to find a new job. We also volunteer our time and teach those unemployed ladies English if they need it, if they’re non-native English speakers.

Jules, you are joining me today from Seattle. Yes, you’re a senior programme manager with fifteen years’ experience. Would you like to introduce yourself a little bit and say who you’ve worked for? 

Jules

Yes, I would love to. So, I have a fun-filled, expansive career. And some of the most recent employers that I’ve worked with are Meta, the US Government, healthcare and universities across the US. I’ve gotten to move across the US and build up different divisions in hospitals, as well as startup clinics and really transform an organisation. The coolest thing about all of that is the culture, the different, you know, human capital that I got to embrace and also grow for the different organisations and the local communities as well as that global niche right there. But I love taking any kind of place, you know, starting from an initial foundation, or one that is, you know, crippling and falling apart and really asking employees, what is going on?

How can we make them invested into the business? Because when we get our employees to be invested in us, they’ll, you know, it’s a two-way street right there. It is absolutely amazing when you can see people come to life, especially when you’re working with individuals who might struggle with English in, like, say the US.

One also thing that I’m super excited about this programme and working with Intrepid English is the advancements that people will get. I have personally witnessed employees who are brilliant, I mean, exceptional minds, right? They can do great things for revolutionising the workforce. But, they have limited English. And so yeah, having Lorraine, you know, talk to me about this, coming on and helping here… Like, I cannot wait. Because these individuals will not only gain confidence, they’ll grow their career, and they’ll impact so many lives, you know, as well as our culture. Yeah.

Lorraine

Amazing. Thank you. Yeah, you’ve already taught me so much, Jules. Yeah, isn’t that great? I have a lot of experience of speaking to the individuals, to the employees themselves. People who, honestly, the main complaint that they have is that Monday morning feeling of dread or even Sunday night feeling of dread where they’ve got to go to work, but they don’t have the English skills that they need. So they’re basically, sort of, faking or, you know, dealing with a lot of anxiety and pretending that they’ve got it all under control, but feeling quite confused, stressed, you know, and that’s not sustainable is it? It’s not a healthy position to be in. And many of them, you know, think, I’m going to look for another job. But the thing is, these days, almost every international organisation requires English.

The thing is, they can often learn to love their job when they learn English, because that’s the barrier, that’s the thing that’s really causing them the stress. Moving to another company would just be transporting that stress to another company. So, oftentimes, they come to me when they are ready to tackle this issue, they’re ready to learn English. And it’s like a whole new world is opened up to them. Obviously, they’re able to speak English enough to do their job, but not well enough to do their job well. So after a while of talking to so many students who find this difficult situation constantly, I decided, right, it’s time that we actually work with the organisations because they should be providing this English training. And that’s what the inspiration was behind the programme that I’m going to talk to about today.

Okay, so before we go any further, I’d like to ask you some questions. Now, if you bear with me, I’m going to try and make the poll work. Aha! Can you see a pop up? Yeah, nice. Okay, so these are anonymous questions, just to get a sense of, you know, where you guys are? And how you feel about these topics. So, the first question, if you wouldn’t mind answering this, is:

‘How important is professional development to you?’

So, number one would be ‘not important at all’. And number five would be ‘extremely important’.

And then the next question is:

‘How often does your organisation provide opportunities for you to attend professional development courses?’

So the organisation that you work for. If you’re a freelancer, the question would be, how often do you have the opportunity, really? Is that available to you? Okay, so number one would be ‘never’; you never attend development courses. Okay. Number five would be, ‘all the time’; I love attending these courses and I join them whenever I can. Interestingly, a lot of places don’t even train staff when they join. When they join the company, the staff do not get the proper training, they don’t get the proper support. So you know, that is a big problem.

Jules

One of the biggest ones to overcome too is even when organisations they establish a good framework, they don’t hold it accountable to actually arrive at it, to complete it, and that’s another really positive thing about your programme with a commitment contract that I cannot… I celebrate you for that because we also need to hold our leadership accountable that we need to create that time and make sure that our staff, managers, frontline… they go to it, they attend it, because it is enriching. We are providing it, you know. That is the cornerstone. Yes, we get busy. But we’ve carved out that hour and that specific framework to accomplish this.

Lorraine

That’s a really good point, Jules. Yeah, so many students… I mean, English. Learning English online, okay, you’ve got every different kind of English teacher, from someone who’s offering free lessons, free videos on YouTube, which we do as an organisation, by the way. We’ve got more than six hundred videos on YouTube. But you can you can have a teacher charging literally a pound, or a dollar per lesson. And then all the way up to I’ve seen freelancers charging up to ninety pounds per hour for a lesson. You know, just for one hour, there’s no strategy there. There’s no, you know, accountability, Jules, to use your favourite word.

So, there’s, you know… there’s a real mixed bag. Anyone can go online and find a teacher to fit their budget, let’s say, but accountability is the thing. If you’re learning anything, or if you’re in a journey of any kind, you need to feel like, you know, there’s a destination. You’ve got some goals. You know what to do next. And, you know, it really helps when there are people going, “Have you done that thing?” “Have you done the thing yet?” So that’s a really important thing, yeah, definitely.

Okay, question three was,

‘Have you ever missed out on a career opportunity due to a lack of English language skills?’

And finally,

‘Have any of your current or former colleagues missed out on career opportunities due to the lack of English skills?’

You’ve definitely, you’ve definitely worked with people before Jules, haven’t you, where English has just made all of the difference to… well, their life really as well as their career!

Jules

Yes. And complaints and customer service? I mean, it’s a full circle.

Lorraine

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Okay, great. Let’s see, have we got these questions? Oh, lovely. I’m looking at the results here. Fantastic. That’s really interesting for me to know. I’m going to end the poll there and share the results. Yeah, professional development is very important to all of us. Yet it’s often not something that is a priority for employers, unfortunately. Okay. ‘Does your organisation…?’ Right, that’s a never. Okay. Sometimes… okay. Yeah. But not as many courses or opportunities as you would like, in any case. Okay, missing out on career opportunities. Okay, that’s good. Nobody here… well, not many of us here have missed out on an opportunity. And former colleagues, yes. The majority of us know somebody, have worked with somebody who has been held back in their career because of their lack of English skills. Yeah. Excuse me. All right. Thank you for completing that everyone. 

Right, moving on. We’re going to talk about the main theme of today, which is the international workforce, and very quickly have a bit of a summary of the last few years. As we all know, COVID-19 changed almost every kind of landscape, especially the landscape of work. You’ve probably heard of the great resignation or great attrition. So, if you haven’t, the great resignation is a large number of people who resigned or quit from their job. And the great attrition describes a huge number of people who move to different companies. Attrition, by the way, is something from a business owner’s perspective, is a huge drain on cash. Because it’s very expensive to hire, and train new… and recruit, new staff members.

People reassessed their work, and their work-life balance during COVID. And in 2021, there was a study released by Gallup that said, globally only 20% of employees were engaged, which is a phenomenally low figure. Only 20% of employees felt driven and motivated at work. And in the US, more than 50 million Americans change their jobs in 2022. And you would think that that is, you know, that was a huge shift when we were all going in and out of lockdown at various times. But that trend has continued since 2020.

In 2023 this is almost the same number of people resigning or moving to different jobs. This is… it’s a huge flux going on. And currently, this year 208 million unemployed people globally. So COVID has really, sort of, transformed the way that staff view their employers as well. Many people were let down during COVID. They maybe lost loved ones, or, you know, had real difficulty with child care or even, you know, mental health burdens during the lockdowns that we many of us experienced and huge swathes of people decided they couldn’t trust their employer anymore. And they needed to move to a different situation. Unfortunately, a lot of them moved to a different situation which wasn’t much better. And there have been mass layoffs across industries, specifically in the US in the tech industry. And Jules, you were one of those people, weren’t you, when you were working for Meta.

Jules

I was. I fall into two of your categories. You know, in 2022, I changed my job. I was in healthcare, I got recruited by Meta and then, you know, I got to be part of one of the largest tech layoffs in history, as we know it at this point in time. That’s why I’m like, kind of fascinating, but you know! And so, yeah, you have a tonne of people. It just, yeah, we have a lot of things to change.

Lorraine

And it’s become almost normal, in a way. I mean, the the level, the vast number of people who’ve been laid off, I mean, that is remarkable. But layoffs themselves, redundancies, especially since COVID. It’s like, hardly that remarkable anymore unfortunately.

Jules

Well, and if you go back, like we were talking about just the other day, which is gonna lead up to a different point, I believe that you’re gonna make, since the 1980s, right, you have people who went into organisations, spent 20 to 40 years of their life with them, they retired with them, the 80s came around, and I can’t remember exactly who it was but they decided to make it more efficient. And so they started terminating people, people lost their retirement. Then you had the different, Generation X growing out of that, you know, time period and losing trust in organisations. I’m gonna go in for me, not you. I watched my parents fall apart. So you have all this stuff, that engagement. We’ve been slowly getting it back, but then we keep taking these, you know, hits in the wrong direction. So I love the fact that you’re introducing this, that we have a lot of people looking towards those great things that you’re gonna talk about soon. And as a global, you know, culture, we’re rising above the bar of what the past used to be. And I’m gonna let you talk about all that. But yeah, I’m stoked.

Lorraine

I love your passion, Jules. And it comes from firsthand experience as well, unfortunately, but, you know, we’ve talked a lot about this. In fact, you were the one who sent me the quote that I’m gonna bring up now from Simon Sinek. “Mass layoffs, using someone’s livelihood to balance the books.” I don’t know if that hits home for anyone else. But that’s exactly it. You know, companies like Meta, Microsoft, Google, all the ones that are laying people off, they seem to be looking at it like it’s a statistic, rather than actual people and their lives and their, you know, futures and their children’s future.

Jules

That’s where you get to have this amazing thing, where you’re bringing in the knowledge and the data like Sinek is, and you’re gonna show them where they took a step that was in the wrong direction. And we could be part of the process of healing together, if they want to partner with you to truly remind their employees who they currently have, and are looking to recruit. We made a mistake. We’ve accepted it. And now we’re partnering with these great organisations that want to create a good footprint to let you know you matter. That’s where, like I said, that’s where you come into play, to partner with Meta, to partner with Google, to partner with even the smaller organisations. But those are the bridges that you are right now developing. And it’s an exciting time.

Lorraine

I think that, yeah, I hope so, I hope that there is a shift in the way that people’s, you know, lives and their careers are valued more. That’s one of the many goals that I have, isn’t it? Excuse me. So he mentioned, Simon Sinek mentioned, that it’s become so common that it’s just another economic tool. But individuals and organisations are very, you know, the individuals have real lives and this has a very real impact on them. And especially with the younger generations as well, we’re asking the youngest generations to come to work, often in toxic or not secure companies or roles. And they’re choosing not to. They’re choosing not to join these workforces that are toxic. They’re choosing not to buy into that and there is a huge shift now because of that.

Jules

Which makes me so proud of our younger generation.

Lorraine

Yeah, me too. Absolutely. Yeah, for not standing up for it. But it makes sense, you know, because of the many challenges that we’re facing as a globe… there’s a dissonance when young people are consuming the news, understanding all these almost insurmountable challenges that we’re all facing. And then they go to a nine-to-five job selling cars, or, you know, calling people to get into debt, you know, and it’s like, there’s a disconnect there. And so many of them are saying, “No, that’s enough. I want to do something about these things. I want to feel like I’m actually helping people and making a change.” So organisations, Simon Sinek says, need to start practising empathy, and relate to what these younger people are going through, because this will profoundly change the decisions we make.

And I hope that some of you here will have seen examples of that already, of companies starting to wake up a little bit and realise their role, their duty to pay. Leaders need to take a human-focused approach.  Okay, so leadership challenges. ‘Attracting Top Talent’ on the left and ‘Retaining Existing Staff’ on the right. Two major challenges globally, now that leaders are contending with. Especially at the moment, because there’s such massive fluctuations in the job market. And as jobseekers are becoming increasingly younger it’s all evolving, the hiring tactics, even the way that job vacancies are shared these days is all changing very quickly.

When attracting top talent, yeah, okay, a competitive salary is important, you know, that’s what we all work for at the end of the day, but it’s no longer enough. And there was a survey last year by IBM of more than 22,000 employees, and it found that 71% of high potentials. And if you want a definition of that, then I’ll send out the link a little bit later. They are attracted to job opportunities in which they will learn new skills. Okay. Gallup recently reported global companies that offer more than a paycheck, that offer meaning, purpose and development will eventually attract Europe’s top talent. So yeah, that applies to Europe, but it also applies to many other places in the world. And Forbes recently reported as well.

Organisations that pay well, but still have a poor culture typically continue to lose top talent to their competitors. So two of the fundamental characteristics of roles that both attract top talent and retain those employees for the long term are opportunities to learn, and a focus on meaningful work.

Okay, so that’s why young job seekers are searching for jobs with purpose-driven organisations. I don’t know if you have heard these terms before. Purpose-driven organisation, sometimes known as purpose-led or values-led, ethical, values-driven, when companies have a policy of CSR, so corporate social responsibility. And when they’re certified, when they’ve gone through the very, very long process of being certified as a purpose-driven organisation, they hold B-Corp status. One of my friends went through this for more than a year and a half and she is like, it is not for the faint-hearted! It is… you need to be really into this, you know, you really need to feel the desire to do this. It will drive you through the very, very long-winded but excellent process.

Okay, so all these labels signify a greater purpose at the core of everything that the business does. And I found a really, really great company, an organisation called Everfi. And actually yesterday, I went on a bit of a… I went down a rabbit hole on their website. I was just so impressed by the work that they’re doing. They’re an organisation that’s really helping to change the purpose-driven organisation landscape. And actually he called me back today! And I got to chat with him on the phone. And he was like, I noticed that you, you know, you downloaded some things from our website. And I was just like, massive fan! So hopefully there’ll be a possibility for us to collaborate later. Yeah, I’ll tell you all about that later, Jules.

So they, on the top of their website in, you know, prime position is this, quote: “A cultural transformation has occurred in the last couple of decades, and is now undeniable. Companies are now expected to assess control and leverage the impact they make in the world. Yep, it’s no longer enough to be profitable. It’s important to contribute to a sustainable planet and a fairer society. It is essential to have a purpose.”

Jules

One hundred percent. I couldn’t agree more. 

Lorraine

Exactly. 

Jules

And if I can’t find that company to work for, I’m creating it.

Lorraine

Yeah you are! You know, this is the general theme. People agree. Exactly, Jules.

Jules

Oh, wait, I am. I get to partner with you. So check that! This was done.

Lorraine

So, Richard Branson… I’m not his biggest fan, honestly, but I really agree with this quote. “Doing good is good for business.” Okay, so if doing the right thing is not a big enough motivator, and if climate change has told us anything, it’s not apparently, then there’s a business case for having a purpose-driven organisation. Let’s take a look at the stats. So these are from a customer perspective. Okay.

64% of global consumers find brands that actively communicate their purpose more attractive.

62% want companies to take a stand on issues that they are passionate about.

And 52% say they are more attracted to buy from certain brands over others if these brands stand for something bigger than just the products and services it sells, which aligns with their personal values.

And 74% of consumers believe companies can take action to both boost profits, okay, we’re not ignoring the profit, but boost profits and improve economic and social conditions for their local communities.

Right, these are not small figures. These are significant. So that’s from the customer perspective. Now let’s have a look from the hiring perspective. Okay, these stats are also from Everfi, my new favourite organisation, as of yesterday. Purpose-driven companies. 90%. Sorry. Good purpose-driven companies see employee motivation and loyalty. 70% would not work for an organisation that didn’t have a solid purpose. Okay. 95% of all employees believe that stakeholders should benefit from a company’s success, including the community, of course, the surrounding community is a stakeholder. Jeff Bezos, paying your taxes. And 60% would choose to earn less in order to work for a purpose-driven company. But of course, with the evolution that we’re talking about, hopefully, they won’t have to choose to take that paycut in order to work for a company that they’re passionate about. So, now that we’ve established the consumer trends, and the, you know, the impacts of attracting and retaining new hires, and high potential diverse talent, these are really, really positive figures.

And it is very, very difficult to see why organisations do not, at the very least, build donations, revenue-based donations into their business model like we have, at the very least. If not, really drive towards a bigger purpose. Okay, the overall purpose motivates a stronger customer engagement and leads to lower employee churn and higher margins. All of the things! All of the reasons why purpose is important. But, as I said before, people often like to stay… well, they don’t like change, or they see it as difficult or maybe they just want to stick with the traditional profit-driven model.

So what are the consequences of doing nothing? There’s a fantastic report by McKinsey that came out last year about human capital. Jules, if you haven’t read it already, you will love it. It’s a big one, but it’s definitely worth reading. So human capital, for those who don’t know, human capital is the accumulation or the total really, of expertise, education, knowledge, and work experience that an individual gains over the course of their young life and their career. Including all of the professional development courses that they do, as well as high school, university, and all of the little skills that they gained through working in one job or various jobs throughout a career. And this report really shines a light on the consequences of not doing anything in this regard.

80% of job moves in the world over the last few years have been to new companies because, like I said before, the employees want to develop, but if their employers are not giving them those opportunities, they have to move to another company. And this is a huge missed opportunity by those companies. They then the companies themselves then have to recruit temporary staff, as we’ve seen in the health service here in the UK over recent years, temporary staff are much more expensive than providing the training to the existing employees. Phyllis, I see you nodding here as well. Yeah. Of course, then when there’s people leaving on mass, there’s huge staff turnover, motivation drops, people are having to do the job of two or three different people, you know, and the remaining staff, statistically earn a lot less during the course of their career. And the big one, which is costing companies trillions every year, absenteeism, or sickness, or people not coming to work, because of stress, or illness, or all of the many other reasons why people need to stay off work. It’s obviously not sustainable. So yeah, check that report out.

Jules

One thing that I loved was when I worked for a hospital in West Virginia, they had a nurse that injured patients. And so the local staff.. not the local staff, the local community lost trust in the organisation, and we were doing this rebrand, right. But the doctors… and it hits every single one of these points, the doctors, the RNs, the NPS, they would hide in different rooms, so that you couldn’t find them, to see their patients, right? And I was going around knocking on doors like, we’ve got these scheduled patients, you’ve got to see them. Let’s talk about this.

And I loved it when our, you know, Associate Chief of Staff told them at a staff meeting, “Hey, I can’t give you you know, elective time off right now, because we’re understaffed, you know, we’re understaffed. We need you here. We have a huge backlog. But if you call out sick, well, I have to approve it.” And I was just like, oh my gosh, what are you talking about here? You know, and in a few months time of me being there, like they had rescheduled over 3000 patients because of high turnover absentee rates. And then one of the temporary, you know, chiefs that they brought in to oversee the whole hospital, had the exact same conversation I had with the Associate Chief of Staff, you’ve got to sit down with your people, this is no longer acceptable, like, but thing is, is there was so much turmoil, nobody was talking to the current people to find out what they needed.

And that’s where all these points hit. And that human capital really comes into play. You’ve got to talk to the people who are there to support you. And then, again, you grow. So, just that, you know, one of those fun moments.

Lorraine

And one of the things that, you know, has become a specialty for you then now over your career, it’s creating and maintaining and developing scalable teams and organisations.

Jules

Yes.

Lorraine

There we go. Nice segue there. Okay, Jules, do you want to talk about this?

Jules

Oh, yeah, definitely. All right. So one of the things that I absolutely love is creating sustainable workforces or organisations because as it states right here, you develop the whole person. When you look at an organisation, and you only see them as, you know, the brick and mortar, the systems that create the components, you know, the networks, the big area that you’re always most often overlooking, is the people that do the job. They bring in a whole toolbox of issues to the conversation well before they’ve even looked at the work systems, right. You have your home systems, the issues in society, but this is where, like I said, I got to work with Meta on looking at their issues.

I got to work with the US government. And I got to create a humanised work system. It’s my specialty now. And that’s how you create sustainable, scalable organisations. So one of the biggest ones is empowered employees, okay, and employee-centric policies, creating the brand ambassadors. When you have an employee excited about work, they leave the workforce, they go and talk about you in the local communities, on the global ones, on social networks. They do the talking for you, and you don’t have to do anything, but you put in the effort to create them, to develop them, and you encourage them to grow past you. They’re going to put people back and feed that system to you. You want to go to this organisation, they’re going to develop you. They’re going to allow you to create that career funnel outside of them, and support that network of affiliate organisations that really thrive.

So, you know, the one area is, you know, with what you’re doing here, is allowing organisations to develop people within their teams to be able to communicate their cultural differences, understand task delegation, and then to truly embrace the opportunities for conflict resolution negotiation, and say, you know, here’s where I see the gaps in the policies, and I think we could do better here. That is why you want to be able to communicate at the same level. So the sustainable organisation, as you know, it’s going to have your, you know, inclusivity, the communication, the recognition.

So, again, your employees can’t get recognised if they can’t communicate with you. And that is one of the biggest discourses right there. You want to be challenged, because when you are challenged, you find out those gaps, like one thing I’ve always taught leaders is how to help their employees hold them accountable, and at first they’re like, how, why I don’t understand this concept.

Well, when you have empowered employees, they aren’t afraid to voice their concerns, there is no fear of that backlash, there’s psychological safety as shared earlier on your slides. You create that room for them to say, “Hey, I found this local and the global charity that we can work with for our CSR, that we can partner with, that we can build your footprint as the mission, the voice that you say you want to be. That is how we scale. We buy into the community and the community buys into us. Plain and simple.

The biggest crux of organisations is they have a fear towards the collaboration. If you think about school, we’ve all been to school, we all had to do teamwork assignments, and there’s always that one guy who’s got the name on the paper who didn’t do anything, right? But you don’t want to not put their name on there because then you’re gonna have this tension, even though it’s already there. And you’re just like, ah, alright, let’s call them Bob. But here it is. When you have, and I really do… I create this in every place I go. And it has been literally a lifesaver because it does create a 95% stakeholder satisfaction that is leadership, local communities, customers and internal staff, right. I mean, it is powerful.

But basically, in a nutshell, right, leaders want to lead. People are afraid to talk. How do we bridge that? Well, we’re going to go to that area where we propel human contribution, creativity, accountability, there’s my favourite word, and employee ownership. When you allow people to own their work it is a game changer because now they are responsible for not just their livelihood, but the organisation, their teamwork, their team members. It’s a whole dynamic right there. But you want to also teach employees on that regular basis, I say every six months, in person or hands-on training, with the act of listening, conflict resolution, interpersonal communication, group decision making, and that proactive change management. You need to do it every six months because you’ll have new employees, the market will change, you’re going to be shifting constantly, it’s a living document, living experience.

You know, if you stay with ‘this is how we’ve always done it’, you are going to die very quickly in the market. No one is going to work with you. But then yes, the other big one is to create the self-regulating teams.

When you give those people the ownership, right, that accountability, what you’re doing, to make it truly successful, you allow them to know what kind of budget they have, what kind of projects they’re going to be doing. And you let them assign the leader, but you shift that leader, so nobody is stuck, leading, and no one is, you know, falling behind. That person, that guy named Bob, right, he’s going to have to pay attention and contribute because in a few months, he’s going to be leading the project, and when he didn’t help on this one, and he’s expected to lead it over here and everyone’s like, you know, I’m gonna resist you, it’s gonna hurt. So, it’s amazing what happens when you start talking. And then in those conversations, you find out your strengths, your weaknesses, and how to build both. Um, so yeah, I can talk about all this for hours. I know we’re running out of time.

But the other one that is really big, especially when you’re talking about business English, is having verbal instructions, that’s great. But you need to write it down. You need to have it documented on how to communicate concerns with team members, leaders, but also how-to guides. And you can do that in various languages, as people are learning to adapt to the English so that they can see the comparison, and then grow from there and then have that competence.

But yeah, it is one of the greatest things when you have everybody accountable to each other. It’s not just themselves, but their little team, the organisation. And then again, you’re gonna feed that organisation as sustainably because they’re gonna want their kids to go there, you know, the local people. Well, they took care of us and look how happy these people are. They don’t have to spend so much money on training. They’re putting money into local community gardens, you know, to libraries. There’s so many things that you can do to really thrive and have a name that is worth saying in a room.

Lorraine

Wow, I’m nodding constantly, yeah.

Jules

That’s how you get that buy-in, like I said. When I see a company like that I cannot wait, you know, to knock on the door and be like, Hey, how do I get to work with you? That is the people you know.

Lorraine

Yeah, I mean, on a global scale, as well, like, the example that comes to mind is Patagonia. Like, there are queues around the block, metaphorically, of course, for people to work for Patagonia, because they care about the world, their employees, you know.

Jules

Yes. One of the questions on their application is ‘What are you doing for the environment?’ And I was like, well, man, I thought I was a good human. But apparently, I have to improve on this. Because my footprint isn’t good enough, yet, right? For Patagonia to want to work and partner with me because I haven’t done any extensive projects to save the Earth. Right? I’m like, well, I don’t travel much. I take, you know, public transportation as much as I can to reduce the carbon footprint. I do this, but I’m like…

Lorraine

Not good enough for Patagonia. Sorry, Jules. You’ll have to try harder.

Jules

One day. One day they’ll have me!

Lorraine

I know several people who have applied for jobs at Patagonia, several. It’s the only company that I can say that about, and they give away a crazy percentage of their profits. That’s the same for individuals as well as organisations. If people will talk so enthusiastically about you, when you’re not in the room, then all of your problems are solved basically, you know, you don’t need to look for business at all.

Jules

Yeah, and and quality is, I mean, it is amazing quality. So yeah. It’s a great company. It is one of those that I have looked at. And like said, I’ll talk about them, even though they don’t wanna talk to me yet, I’ll talk about how great they are, because that is what they’re doing.  Yeah. So, I mean, that’s what this course though, that we’re talking about today, that’s what it’s going to do. And that’s why I am excited. I am on the outside coming in. You know, this is an amazing company that you have created.

And I can state too that.. even, I had a jaw surgery in 2010. And I couldn’t talk for almost a year, right? I was discriminated against. I couldn’t speak. I spoke very little English. And I’m an American citizen. It’s my native language. It took me two years to sound American. I had to go to speech therapy. And even now I have to articulate my words for you today with that relearning process, but I was treated differently when I could not speak proper English. And I even had a teacher tell me in my communication studies course in college, a observer in the class came up to him and said, that girl over there, that mute girl, she speaks really well for being mute. In my head, I thought I was talking really well. But I was struggling so much to pronounce my words, everything else that I sounded like I was deaf.

Lorraine

I had similar discrimination in Germany when I lived there as well. Yeah, I mean, people really did… were very rude often, you know, when I was trying very hard. But that really informs my empathy, you know, for people all over the world now who speak English as a second language.

Jules

All right, let me open the ears a little bit more, so that I can hear you and that I can let you know, I am listening and seeing

Lorraine

Exactly. So we’ve talked about all these problems today. And I don’t want to leave you on, you know, feeling so depressed. We’ve talked about all these challenges. And we’ve talked about the need to really absorb purpose into decision making, for all of the reasons that we listed, okay, and what can that purpose b? It can be anything. There are multitudes of causes. You know, it’s what the organisation, the leaders feel passionate about, and listen to the employees to figure out what that is. There’s no excuse for not having at least a small purpose focus in the organisation. And basically, this whole conversation which has been going on within my company, within my circle of friends, within my family, since 2020… it’s really inspired me to do something about it.

And that’s why I’ve developed this programme. It’s called Employers Who Empower, and literally those two words just kept coming up throughout the talk so far. Employers Who Empower. We’ve listened to the students, we’ve listened to the individuals, the employees. And we recognise that, you know… a quote by Desmond Tutu comes to mind.

“You can only pull so many people out of the river before you need to
go upstream and see who’s pushing them in.”

Desmond Tutu

Jules

That’s a great quote.

Lorraine

Right? And it’s so true, though, isn’t it? So that’s what this corporate programme is really designed for. It’s making a difference at the source and helping organisations,fast-growing organisations to grow correctly, to grow sustainably, to grow in a right way. And, conveniently, we can do that with English training.

These are the areas that we brainstormed and we really wanted to figure out these, the answer to these questions or these issues. We wanted one programme that can increase a team’s productivity, elevate their communication, improve employee retention, attract diverse talent – very important. And by diverse, I mean, diverse, racially diverse, diverse in age, you know, accessible for people with disabilities, hidden and otherwise, you know, really diverse workforces. Because it is proven that those workforces can speak to the customer base better than then a homogenous workforce, which all kind of looks the same.
Okay, we wanted to boost employee morale, enhance business skills, improve cultural awareness. I know this is ambitious! Reward great performance, and drive sustainable company growth. So in the way that Jules mentioned earlier about, you know, scaling sustainably. Okay.

And we did it. As a team. We managed to pull it all together. Employers Who Empower.

So this is our new app, which I’m incredibly proud of and a little bit obsessed with. I can’t stop playing with it. The app itself makes our materials accessible on any device, which is really helpful. Okay. We also have a range of different formats for our materials as well. We were able to increase productivity by focusing on the skills that the employees need to learn right now. Okay?

They might need to present or negotiate in the near future. We’ll help them with that. Okay, so it’s not work and English, you know, it’s combined. So they, you know, as we say, killing two birds with one stone, but I didn’t like that idiom. We wanted to focus on communication training. We’re not just teaching English phrases. We’re not just teaching verb tenses and other grammar. We’re teaching people how to communicate in a compelling way. We’re teaching people how to network and introduce themselves in a way that people remember, you know. We’re teaching people to present not just to let people know about their product, but to convince them that it’s what they need, if it is of course what they need. 

Employee retention. No longer will that 80% of people who are disillusioned with work have to leave to another company. Everyone’s a winner in that case, you know. Sometimes you don’t need to completely change everything in order to fix the issues. It could be removing one massive barrier to help people to love their job again. Okay, diverse talent, accessible on all materials, as I mentioned, and improve employee morale. The number of students that say to me, I look forward to my English lesson every week, we have fun, but I learn so much, and I’m genuinely excited to implement what you’ve taught me in my job.

So, the course itself is 46 live online training sessions. And they include all kinds of training, not just on the skills, but also soft skills, awareness of topics that are really important today. And of course, if you are training the employees to have cultural awareness skills, then that is the inclusion part of Diversity and Inclusion, okay. Ticking all the boxes with diversity, you know, that’s not sustainable when people are hired, you know, they’re from a different background, but then they’re ignored, or their voice isn’t heard. They don’t feel like they belong in the team.

Providing cultural awareness training enables conversations among colleagues, helps people to really work together and collaborate. And that’s the inclusion part that is so important and often overlooked, unfortunately. But our course, we’ve worked very hard on creating two really amazing programmes, one for pre-intermediate level English learners and lower, and one for more advanced English learners. Both of them are CPD-accredited, which means at the end of it they get a beautiful certificate that they can show off online to their friends, print out and put it in a frame. You know, that improves employee morale as well.

It also helps them to build their business profile online, and helps the company’s profile to to be improved online. And it gives them the reputation of a company that invests in its employees. And guess what? That helps them to attract better candidates. So it’s all intersectional, you know, the skills that we focused on really help one another. You know, it’s not in silos.

And last year, when we ran the course, the company that bought the most groups last year is a company called TDS, Technical Development Solutions, based in Saudi Arabia. And they found it so helpful, that they invested in Intrepid English. So that really speaks volumes I think. It’s the first investment in ten years that Intrepid English received. And yeah, we now have a Board of Directors helping us to grow sustainably and ethically and you know, properly basically. So that’s really phenomenal to have them on board now. It’s really helped us level up.

And here are our a lovely smiley teachers. This is our team. We are all from different backgrounds. There you are, Jules. We’re all from different backgrounds, we all have different experience. We all have different passions which we bring to our teaching. And there’s one thing that we have in common, and that’s our mission to empower purpose-driven individuals and professionals and organisations. This is one thing that comes up in the interview when I hire teachers, you know, like Patagonia, I guess, you know, what are you doing to make the world a better place? What are you passionate about? What is your cause? Or what are your causes? Because I’ve got many. You know, we are all driven to help organisations to communicate their purpose effectively, and to teach their employees how to communicate that purpose effectively.

Yeah. And our company is very human-focused, which is very meta, I suppose. But yeah, we really focus on the employees and professional development and having an open and honest environment. Because we know that international collaboration requires international communication. And we see it every single day. I’m going to offer everyone the opportunity to ask a question now.

Phyllis

Has your organisation worked with healthcare organisations?

Lorraine

Hmm. Very good question, Phyllis. Here in the UK, we have the NHS, the National Healthcare Service. And it is very difficult to get into working with them. But a couple of years ago, after having seen the news of the staff shortages everywhere, and the waiting lists are getting much, much longer, I decided to do something about it, and started working towards developing an app which helps international healthcare workers to come here into the UK and get a job. So I reached out to a few recruitment agencies that deal with international healthcare workers. And they were like, let me know when this is available. We love the idea. And even, “Do you want me to sign something to help you to raise investment for this?” So they’re on board. They’re ready to work with us when the app is ready as well. Because yeah, Phyllis, I know the healthcare system in the US, you know, has many different challenges to the UK.

Phyllis

Let me, I’ll just tell you that working in hospitals, in marketing departments in the Dallas, Fort Worth area, very diverse communities. A lot of Spanish-speaking cops in one of the hospitals that I worked in, and I actually helped bring English classes to some of the employees so they could train other employees to communicate better with patients and families.

Lorraine

Yeah, exactly. So here in the UK, 2016 we had the Brexit decision where we left the EU. And then in 2017, the Conservative government increased the IELTS requirement, the score that people need to pass to get a visa here in the UK. Native English speaking people cannot pass this benchmark without a lot of study and financial means, you know, it’s the same English level you need to prove to do an MBA at Warwick University.

One of the main challenges that students face when it comes to public speaking is fear. Fear of public speaking. They have to… they may be attending a class, it could be online or in person now, after COVID. So they’ll say, I’m just afraid to get up and speak. But I have to do it. It’s a public speaking class. So I’m going to have to get up and stand in front of this audience and for the rest of the class and give a speech as I work with them on that, because that’s my background is in public speaking, and I’ve taught public speaking at universities. I love that. And that’s, that’s my love. It’s really just public speaking part of it.

Lorraine

Wonderful. Wonderful. Oh, I’d love to see that. Yeah. Often, you know, people fear what they haven’t done yet. That’s that’s the main thing, if they don’t know what to expect, but also, you know, there’s always a bit of nerves when you need to perform in front of people. But I find the more you do it, the more practice you get in a safe space, the more comfortable you’ll feel when it’s time to do it for real.

Phyllis

And that’s one of the things that I try to do is encourage them that I know it’s scary, but it’s going to be okay. And I’m going to support you, and the rest of the class, we’re all going to support you. We’re all in this together. So I don’t want you to feel as if you’re just alone, and just terrified because it’s going to be okay. I’m going to help make it okay for you and for others. And not only that, when you leave this class, you’ll be really glad that you learned what you learned, then you’ll be a happier person, interpersonally and at work, because you can communicate more effectively.

Lorraine

Wonderful, Phyllis. Yeah. I think another point is with public speaking as well,  to try and remember, the audience want you to succeed, and they want you to be comfortable. They want you to do well. Yeah. And they’re all rooting for you in that regard, aren’t they? Yeah.

Phyllis

Exactly. They’re not taking notes to say, oh, man, why did she do that? Or she did that, that’s not good. They want you to succeed. They want to see you be successful. And they’re putting themselves in your shoes, because they know when it’s their turn, they’re going to be facing the same thing, the same anxieties maybe.

Lorraine

They’re thinking, thank goodness, it’s not me up there quite often.

Phyllis

Oh, yeah, eventually it will be them, though. Haha.

Lorraine

With practice, yeah. Yeah, exactly. So you can imagine there the communication and public speaking challenges that people face when it’s just a skill they want to develop. But organisations that are doing good in the world really have a problem, mostly really communicating that message, you know, especially if it’s a charity or an NGO, or, you know, a not-for-profit organisation, very little budget, and training goes on really communicating their message well, and therefore, it ends up going on like advertising, which isn’t, it’s not as personable, it’s not as personalised and it’s not as effective. But watching someone talk about something with passion, that really helps t further a cause, like nothing else, I think

Phyllis

And that messaging, effective messaging is written and oral, the public speaking, it’s all connected.

Lorraine

Okay, see you later. Bye. Bye, Jules. Thanks for coming. Okay, yeah, so I just wanted to share this with you then. So the, you know, part of being an ethical business is having transparent pricing. So just to explain what our programme is, the cost per group, and that’s up to eight participants per group is £5000. It was the same price last year when we did the pilot programme. I’ve kept it at the same price this year because it still is a fledgling programme. And it’s important to us that the participants and the organisations help to develop this even even further and better. The price per person per session is then equivalent to £13.50, which I think is about $15 per hour. With all of the pre and post work that is done, all the homework, and all of the, you know, taking into account all of the time that we spend creating these courses as well.

So you will not find training that cheap, or like this in general, anywhere else online. So I wanted to offer you guys a little special discount. So firstly, if you or your organisation or the organisation that you work for, is interested, then there’s a 10% discount available per group. And because you guys are what we call early adopters, that means people who are first to really sort of, embrace a new concept or a new offer, we’re also offering, excuse me, my voice is finally you’re giving up on me, an affiliate link. So it’s a special link which is unique to you. And that link then, if you were to give that to an organisation and say, I recommend that you look into this and you book a consultation with Lorraine, then if they use that link to then sign up, you get £500 pounds for each referral, for each group. So there’s a huge… Yeah, that’s about $620 I think now.

Phyllis

I can help you.

Lorraine

Brilliant. That’s good to hear, Phyllis. That’s good. Okay, so can you see that QR code on the screen there? Ifyou want to, if you scan that with your smartphone, if you open up your smartphone camera and you scan that QR code, then that will give you the email address. Or alternatively, I can just share that with you here. hello@intrepidenglish.co.uk. I’m sending it to you in the chat. If you just send me an email, then I’ll get that affiliate link set up for you. Same for you Nur, and you know, whoever’s watching this recording later, you can use this QR code or use that email address, send me an email. And I’ll send you your unique affiliate link, which you can give to organisations who you think might be interested. And when they sign up, you get that affiliate commission within 30 days of them signing up. Because we’re all about the early adopters here, we’re all about developing and getting feedback and improving. So the price of this is going to increase. Because we’ve grown as a company over the last ten years predominantly through word of mouth, through happy students making such progress, feeling really supported, and enjoying the process. And sometimes being surprised when all of a sudden, they can understand something or they can do something that they couldn’t before. And they tell their friends and family about it. And then their friends and family come and join us. So we know what powerful advertising word of mouth can be. And that’s why that is still our, you know, our preferred method of getting the word out.

Nur

I don’t have any questions, but thank you for your presentation and everything.

Lorraine

Thank you, Nur. That’s very kind of you. It’s really kind of you to give me your attention as well for an hour and a quarter.

Phyllis

I really enjoyed it,

Lorraine

Oh did you? Great. I hope so, too. I enjoyed having you involved, Phyllis. Thank you so much for your questions and for your comments as well.

Phyllis

Well, it was great. I’m really glad you guys offer these services, because there are so many organisations that need these services.

Lorraine

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, there is a huge demand there. A huge demand. And the thing is everyone wins. When it comes down to it, so thank you, Phyllis. All right. Well, that’s it for today, then. Thank you for joining. Please feel free to, yep, send me an email. I’m gonna send everyone an email with the recording of the webinar, and all of the sources that I cited during the talk as well. And yeah, please feel free to stay in touch as well if you have any questions.

Phillis

Thank you. 

Lorraine

Thanks a lot. Take care. Have a lovely weekend. 

Phillis

You too. 

Lorraine

Thank you. Bye