Unlocking the Power of Skill-Building and Community Building: The Care/Of Case Study
Company: Care/of
Function: Personalized Vitamins
Industry: Health, Wellness and Fitness
TL;DR: Care/of was committed to creating an infrastructure that would allow their employees and managers to grow and develop. To do this, they implemented LifeLabs Learning’s Manager CORE programs to equip everyone with the language and tools necessary for success. This allowed Care/of to measure manager effectiveness and observe employee engagement. Partnering with LifeLabs Learning also provided immediate skills improvement for both managers and employees. Not only did this have a positive impact on employee retention, but it also created new relationships among the remote teams that further boosted psychological safety and community building.
The challenge:
Building an ecosystem of support
As a company, Care/Of is invested in growing and scaling effectively. They believe that, in order to sustain that growth, you have to be able to build the infrastructure to support employees’ skills and career development. However, there was a clear gap. Their employee engagement data at the time ranked manager effectiveness as the 3rd lowest factor in employee engagement and their teams lacked the tools to set up an ecosystem for ongoing support.
After attending a LifeLabs Learning Culture Club event, veteran Head of People Lauren Ledbetter was impressed by the data-backed information and simple tools she received and knew LifeLabs Learning could help Care/Of meet the company’s challenge.
The solution:
Part 1: Train managers in people development skills
Care/of understood that managers are hubs for the growth and development of their team members — and that upskilling them in how to enable their team members is key to building a learning culture.
To do this, they began running Manager CORE programs on a quarterly basis to ensure all managers had common language and the tools they needed to facilitate their team members’ success. These programs became even more critical when hybrid workplace culture compounded existing management challenges and introduced new ones.
LifeLabs Learning interviewed Lauren Ledbetter who was Head of People at Care/of at the time this case study was being written.
“When we were building our training out we knew we wanted to have a 360 approach. We found that …in terms of employee retention, Manager CORE was a driver.
Lauren Ledbetter
Head of People
Part 2: Immediately embed those skills
To ensure they built a true ecosystem of support, Care/of worked with LifeLabs learning to combine skill building with system development for their succession planning process. The result saved time, energy, and allowed Care/of to see the impact of their work quickly.
Lauren discussed the immediate impact: “We were getting ready to launch succession planning as a company… so we rolled out People Development a few weeks before we were getting ready to launch the process. And we said, wow, now we are equipped with this amazing framework and this amazing excel spreadsheet and all the questions to ask. We adapted the structure immediately and put it into place and rolled it out to people managers a few weeks later.”
Results: Instant Impact
Increased manager effectiveness
Since partnering with LifeLabs, manager effectiveness is now the highest engagement driver, with 91% of employees in agreement. The three highest rated statements are:
“My manager treats me with respect” at 100%
“My manager genuinely cares about my wellbeing” at 98%
“My opinions are heard and valued by my manager” at 98%
Immediate individual skill improvement
On an individual level, managers and employees received an immediate skills boost from the programs Care/of + LifeLabs Learning launched.
Instant Learning
I learned a lot about individuals and us as a team that I otherwise would not have known.
I learned that we need to work on building trust.
[I learned to] set clear agendas and define what is the outcome we want to walk away with.
[I] learned some great ways to be more inclusive in meetings.
Instant Application
95% of Care/Of managers said they’d apply what they learned immediately
Surprise Upside
The icing on the cake? Care/Of also noticed an unexpected benefit. They found new relationships forming among managers - which amplified psychological safety and building community across remote workplaces.
Lauren explains “We’ve been tying the learning workshops to our employee experience/community roadmap, as we’ve found that one of the benefits of learning is that people have a chance to 1) have a shared experience with co-workers, and 2) get to know their co-workers better - especially when not working in the same physical locations.”
In Summary
Care/Of was able to set up an ecosystem of support and career growth through company-wide skill building — with community building as an added bonus. The tools, playbooks, and common language they received helped them sustain that ecosystem over time, in order to grow and scale effectively.
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