Home > Topics > Learning and Training in Organisations >

Continuous learning and development at Avon

In this contribution from Best Practice Club, Valerie Cooke, Personal Development Advisor at Avon Cosmetics, explains how establishing a culture of continuous learning and development is a rewarding challenge for both the business and employees.

Avon UK has a £250 million turnover and is a household name thanks to the 'Avon Lady,' who started selling cosmetics door-to-door in the UK in 1959. Avon Representatives are self-employed and there are now 160,000 in the UK alone. Avon UK also employs 2,500 sales managers throughout the UK, and has main offices in Corby and Northampton.

Creating and meeting the training and development needs is an ongoing process and a real challenge. Like many international companies, Avon operates as several businesses in one - Northampton is home to one of Avon's European manufacturing facilities alongside UK Marketing, European Regional Marketing, global ITS to name but a few. The Customer Service Centre at Corby has a call centre as well as warehousing, shipping and distribution, so there is a wide variety of careers, specialist skills and professions to consider.

Avon has always enjoyed a strong company culture and employee loyalty to match - however, to stay successful as a business it has to keep up with the times. Six years ago, Bronwen Curtis was appointed Vice President of HR and set about a radical re-think of the HR function, so that it could drive the cultural shift needed to support changing business needs. Her vision was to get 'people growth' as respected at board level as sales and profit growth.

She assigned three managers as a development team with the brief to design an HR function, which would be an equal partner in the business and would lead the change to a continuous learning and development culture. She also started to hire into her own team - people with specific business skills and knowledge to work alongside the specialists.

How we created the change

After re-designing the HR function to align more closely to the different aspects of the business, the development team created initiatives to deliver change. This was led by linking cascading business goals to an appraisal process, which in turn has an element of performance-related pay. There was also considerable emphasis on the management development needs, starting with the concept of 'manager as coach'. This is easy to say but as an established business, which also has large numbers of operational areas, neither of these initiatives is easy to do.

The concept of 'manager as coach' means that managers are trained to understand and develop the complete needs of their staff. This does not stop at training; it means making sure that their real learning needs are catered for. Management's job therefore includes encouraging the learning of subjects that have no direct link with working at Avon. Bringing out the real person by addressing their personal learning needs is what makes the Avon life long learning plan different.

Another key to success in the change process was something of a 'leap of faith'. Without a clear business pay-back, Avon opened two Learning Resource Centres (LRC) and started to promote self-managed learning opportunities. This is a very visible (and tangible) way of letting employees at every level know that they can choose to work on their own personal development - perhaps for possible job moves in the future.

The LRCs are an open door for employees who wish to take up any kind of learning initiative. With information on recognised courses and exam programmes, this learning could be as straightforward as picking up a couple of French phrases, or as exciting and challenging as studying for a new qualification. Staffed by trained and enthusiastic Personal Development Advisors, employees can gather all the information and resources they need to help them with their chosen subject.

Not everyone has happy memories of education and Avon makes no apologies for showing what fun learning as an adult can be. One of the LRC skills workshops is called 'Maths is Magical'. Though it may be fun, the benefits to the individual - and therefore the business - are considerable. Conquering maths in an enjoyable way has creates confidence and the motivation to continue with other types of learning. Because it gives adults an understanding of the maths children currently learn in schools, it also supports them if they are carers or parents.

Positive outcomes for the business

No modern manager can afford to think that training and development will encourage their best people to leave - the talent war being what it is - they'll leave anyway. The tangible benefit of a learning programme is that companies can grow their own talent, keeping staff for longer by being able to offer them new and challenging jobs thanks to their improved skills base.

Employees at Avon have traditionally been very loyal, but that isn't taken for granted. Increasingly employees assess personal development opportunities before joining or staying with a company, and rightly so. People are Avon's asset, so it makes no sense to restrict their development and keep them doing the same job - the business needs them to grow. Avon does have opportunities for employees to change careers (from Finance to Sales, for example) and to work in Europe or globally, so it makes good business sense to adopt this approach.

Continuous learning and development creates opportunities to increase manager's skills too. For example, during the appraisal, managers are expected to coach employees to develop their own SMART goals, to negotiate whether an employee has met the behavioural standards and what overall rating they have achieved and offer the chance to discuss future aspirations.

At Avon, the value of continuous learning and development isn't restricted to managers and high fliers. The Avon approach is to create an environment where everyone can aspire to be 'the best they can be' and to take responsibility for their development. This means they meet their needs in terms of job satisfaction and meet the company's need for maximum contribution from each individual.

Top tips:

• An inspirational leader with staying power is a must, with a business case for change and a process, not a shopping list of ideas.
• Manage expectations - it's a long haul if the culture change is considerable (3/5 years) and it's an evolving process, so the job of development is never finished.
• Start the changes within HR and don't stop.
• Shop around for best practise examples, to save time and tears.
• You've got to really want to create change. It's not just an exercise in good personnel management; you're actually impacting on the lives of the workforce.

Back to top   

© 2004 Best Practice Club. Reproduced with permission. Any opinions or views contained in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Training Reference.

More from Training Reference

• Learning and training in organisations homepage
• Books about training strategy

Visit the Training Reference Directory to view supplier details for a wide range of courses, products and services.

Sponsored links

Back to top