The Cairngorms National Park Authority is a values-driven, non-departmental public body with around 120 staff. Funded by the Scottish Government, they ensure that both the park’s natural environment and its local communities are cared for, sustained, and enhanced for current and future generations to enjoy.
Recently, we chatted with Kate Christie, their Head of Organisational Development, to hear about some important leadership training we delivered for them. Read on to learn how the course they booked has had a tangible, lasting impact on the organisation and the leadership of women now and for the future.
Small organisation. Big responsibility. Even bigger aspirations.
The Cairngorms National Park Authority has three directorates covering nature, climate change, communities, visitors and tourism, economy, and corporate services. Over the last five years, they have grown rapidly (by 57%!), prompting some cultural changes for the business.
During this period of growth, the Cairngorms National Park Authority has placed a strong focus on equality across the organisation. They developed both an internal equality group and an external equality advisory panel to critique and guide ideas related to equality in the business. This has already introduced pioneering policies, including a menstrual health and endometriosis support policy, and was among the first organisations to introduce a menopause policy.
Kate frames working with The Hub Events to deliver a dedicated female leadership training programme for them, not as a reaction to a problem, but as a natural next step in an ongoing cultural journey, aligned with an aspiration to be the best small public sector organisation in Scotland.
“I think every single one of us loves working for an organisation that has values that are close to us: caring for nature, sustainability and legacy for our children.”
Kate Christie
Why is gender equality important in senior leadership teams?
The Hub Events were introduced to the Cairngorms National Park Authority at a crucial time, as they were reassessing the business’s values. In fact, they have moved away from ‘values’ as a concept and instead introduced a set of principles instead, Kate explains,
“It just felt like a good time to act. Part of our organisational development strategy is about upskilling and succession planning, and it felt that we needed to address the fact that our senior management team is not diverse.”
This paved the way for dedicated development, training and upskilling, not because of any failures or crises, but to proactively plan for a more equal, resilient future for the business. As an organisation, they found barriers to this parity were threefold:
- A gender pay gap between 10% and 13%
- A lack of representation, with only three of the 12 senior managers in the organisation being women
- A low staff turnover limits recruitment opportunities
The gender pay gap, an imbalance of female leadership representation and turnover and retention are familiar challenges for growing organisations. The senior leadership team were clear that they couldn’t simply hire their way to more diverse leadership; they needed and wanted to develop the talent already in place so that more female staff would be well-positioned to apply for senior positions when they became available.
A tailored, in-house female leadership course
“I feel like they invested quite a lot into this contract with us, which not all training providers would do. And it’s an investment that we appreciated and would make us want to go back to them, because we know that they’re more than just an off-the-shelf provider.”
Kate
The right course for Kate and the team was clear: Women Advancing in Leadership. Two of the team had already attended Emma Walker-Cotton’s massively popular course for female leaders in the workplace and recommended it to Kate as a great course for their organisation to run in-house for women in management and leadership roles.
Being a public sector organisation, budgets obviously had to be considered very carefully. Kate initially reached out to us to arrange for the course to be delivered in-house and in person. Due to budgetary constraints from the Scottish Government, the training had to be temporarily put on hold. We kept in regular contact with Kate, and when the time was right, we could seamlessly pick up where we left off. To fit in with the budget and timescales, an online course was the perfect solution.
“Emma was brilliant online. You couldn’t have faulted it, and I can’t imagine it could have been any better had it been in person because she designed it in such an engaging way- with breakout rooms and such like- and she was very agile and flexible as we went.”
Kate
The female leadership course was targeted at those operating at heads of service level, and all the women operating at a managerial level in the organisation. Importantly, it had the full support and buy-in of the whole senior management team. What’s more, it was developed and tailored to a real understanding of what was happening in the organisation at the time. Emma met with Kate before the course to understand their culture and data (including reviewing the internal gender pay gap report). This meant that as a trainer, she could tailor the course to fit, which Kate recognised as a key differentiator,
“Emma really understood our business when she delivered the training. The opportunity to meet with her in advance and share information in advance was extremely valuable.”
Training that delivers tangible, lasting impact
Women Advancing in Leadership has had such an impact on the Cairngorms National Park Authority that it has actually brought about some lasting operational changes to the way they work.
- It has led to the formation of a Women’s Advancing in Leadership Network within the organisation, which meets quarterly to ensure the course learnings continue to have an impact.
- From this, there are offshoots within the network in which some members provide peer-to-peer support, guidance, and mentoring to one another.
- The network is now informing and consulting on new policies and approaches to their implementation, acting as one of several staff forum consulting mechanisms.
- Network members are now presenting directly to the senior management team rather than via their manager.
Kate highlights the positive impact this has had,
“It was just incredible to see that their confidence had grown to the degree that they felt they could do that. And equally, it was great to see the willingness of the senior management team to welcome them in. The benefits and impacts of the training are genuinely tangible to our organisation.”
Leaving a legacy: truly embedding skills and practices
Perhaps the most important thing about this training is the lasting impact it’s having. This course didn’t end when the screen was switched off; it’s constantly used and referred to by Kate and the team. It’s become an intrinsic part of how they work and develop their people. Kate puts it best here,
“You so often hear about people going on training courses. They do a tick-box exercise, they get the training materials, put them in a drawer and forget about them. That has absolutely not happened here. The training materials are live. We refer to them; we talk about them. I like the word “legacy” because I don’t think it’s often associated with a one-day training course. But this definitely has that.”
Kate understands that the value of the training’s impact, in terms of networks and confidence, is critical. Even if that means women may leave the organisation in the future and go into senior roles in another organisation, according to Kate, “Then I think we’ve done our job. We wouldn’t see that as a bad thing because ultimately it means we’ve embedded female leadership and succession practices that are live and in action.”
As an experienced HR practitioner, Kate recognises that, for EDI in any organisation’s workplace, there is a need to balance the valuable experience of long-serving team members with the fresh, diverse insights and perspectives of new people coming through. Whilst there’s no guarantee when vacancies will become available at a senior level, the most important thing is that the organisation is changing its culture for the better and making a commitment to its future, today.
To speak to our team about tailoring your own learning and development programme, booking female leadership training or to find out more about our in-demand Women Advancing In Leadership course, contact Caroline and Gemma at [email protected] or call us on 0161 484 5002.
To find out more about training that meets your goals and your budget and to talk to us about in-house or online training courses, get in touch today. Find out how we can deliver courses tailored exactly to the challenges you face, the problems you need solving or the future you want to build.
