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.