Skills Story: Smiths Detection

Snapshot

Smiths Detection is responding to the challenge of an ageing workforce by transforming its learning and skills offer to align it clearly with career pathways and by investing in personal skills training and mentoring.

The organisation

Smiths Detection is a global leader in threat detection and screening technologies, helping safeguard people, infrastructure, and society through innovation in security and safety. It has over 3,300 employees, working in manufacturing and research and development facilities in France, Germany, Malaysia, the UK and USA, plus sales and service teams in 17 countries.  

The learning and development need

With its highly specialised technology, the core of the training offer at Smiths Detection was historically product and safety based. However, in recent years there has been a recognition of the need for training in durable or ‘soft’ skills, including leadership and management, resilience and working under pressure.  

A key catalyst for this is the fact that many of the Smiths Detection team have been with the business a long time and are now approaching retirement – particularly in its highly skilled field service division, which includes staff stationed at customer sites to respond immediately to any issues. The business needs to tap into the experience and knowledge of these senior staff to train future generations. 

The skills approach

With this challenge in mind, Smiths Detection appointed Carly Spittle as Global Training Delivery Manager, with a remit to extend the training offer and more clearly link learning with career pathways. Carly and her team have adopted a multifaceted approach that aims to make relevant learning open to all, while addressing the business priorities. 

Foremost among these is the risk around the loss of expertise in field service. The HR team spoke to the field service engineers and clients to understand what skills are needed for these roles. As Carly explains, they found that ‘as well the technical skills to service and repair equipment, there were vital behaviours and personal skills involved in ensuring that engineers respond effectively and appropriately in the high-pressure environment.’ These findings informed the creation of a new training programme that focuses on developing these personal skills.  

Formal learning is supplemented by coaching and mentoring from the experienced engineers, working directly with the newly trained staff as they progress into field service settings. The senior engineers have responded extremely positively to taking on this new role and welcomed the training they have been offered to become effective mentors. 

To extend the emphasis on learning more widely, Smiths also introduced a package of some 20,000 courses that can be delivered through its learning management system (LMS), which also tracks attendance and results.  

In addition, the company is exploring bringing its apprenticeship programme in-house so it can deliver company-specific content to apprenticeship standards. 

This is aligned with greater clarity about career pathways and progression opportunities within the business so that staff at all levels, from apprentices to managers, can see what core technical and personal skills are expected in roles at each level. The first area for this was field service. Carly and her team plan to adopt the same approach to defining pathways in sales and other areas of the business. The career pathways are also reinforcing a culture of internal mobility, which has always been strong at Smiths Detection but is strengthened further by this initiative. 

The impact so far 

The reaction from colleagues across the business to this new focus on training has been very positive. Take-up of opportunities has been high and feedback excellent – including responses from external clients who are now being supported by the newly trained staff. There has also been a positive reaction to the increased visibility of clearly defined career pathways.

What’s next? 

With several initiatives already bearing fruit, the next focus for Carly and her team is on strengthening the management training offer and rolling that out.