Richard Anderson: The boss who sees the value of speaking to clients directly

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>The boss who is passionate about healthcare >A day in the life of a Dales doctor My first task is breakfast duty before doing the nursery run.

My wife is a GP in Grassington so she has to leave early, and I am lucky enough to live and work in Ilkley. You could say I am a country guy through and through – with the Yorkshire Dales on our doorstep and Ilkley being the official starting point of the 84-mile Dales Way trial, which runs all the way up to Bowness-on-Windermere in the Lake District.

Nursery drop-off done, I make the short trip to the office – the lack of a long commute is a real bonus. It also means that on Fridays I can pop into Lishman’s Butchers for a sausage sandwich on my way to work.

I start the day meeting with our creative and content production teams. We are working on a cross-team project to revamp one of our training courses. It’s really exciting to see the ideas that my colleagues have come up with and today I will be ensuring that both teams have the resources they need to put their ideas into action.

In this case, we are lucky to be working with a local restaurant that is allowing us to film some videos and carry out a photoshoot, in order to give our customers a real insight into what a good catering premises should look like.

It’s important that our training reflects the real-life scenarios that customers come across, and using relatable media is just one way to do that.

Meeting over, I have a phone call with one of our external education experts to discuss the latest developments in Ofsted. We work with specialists in all our subject areas, in order to understand new training needs and to ensure that our content is up-to-date with the latest guidance and legislation.

When customers have queries about this our fantastic customer-facing team can offer support and advice relating to compliance across a number of sectors.

It is now time for a scheduled conference call with one of our customers, involving our business development manager, one of our learning analysts and myself. They are a large national bakery and we have established a good partnership with them, providing health and safety courses as well as bespoke training.

We recognise the importance of speaking to customers directly as it helps us to understand the everyday challenges they face in training large numbers of staff. The relationships we have with our customers ensures the content we provide has both a realistic and accessible touch.

Lunchtime comes around and I head into Ilkley for a spot of food. We’re lucky as the town has a great mix of quirky food places and traditional Yorkshire cafés.

Back in the office, I catch up with the team over a cup of tea. It’s great to work with such lovely and talented colleagues at High Speed Training.

After lunch, I head into our weekly learning and development meeting with our research team to look at forecasted learning trends into 2020.

It is important to balance the latest technological advances in the industry with what is best for our customers. Sometimes the eLearning industry will want to push forward new technologies such as virtual reality courses, but we recognise the need to consider how these advancements impact the practicalities for the customer taking the course.

We aim to make sure our training is as accessible to as many people as possible, so we sign off plans on a range of new measures to ensure that people with disabilities are not excluded from using our products.

Customer satisfaction/feedback is incredibly valuable to us and so we also study and discuss our latest reviews.

With over 13,000 reviews and a score of 4.76 out of five on Google, we are doing really well but there is always room for improvement and we always seek to take on board any feedback.

Before the end of the day, I have time to chair our Working Environment Group meeting. We have a number of committees in the company open for all staff to get involved in, including ‘Values Champions’ and ‘Giving Something Back’ groups.

Members of the company from all levels participate to ensure that colleagues have a voice on what is happening in the business.

On this occasion, we are looking into implementing a cycle-to-work scheme that offers a range of benefits including free cycling training for staff.

We see the value in supporting and promoting the health and wellbeing of our employees.