Anna Keen, DirectorAcre Frameworks sits within the wider recruitment business, Acre – also known as the market leader in sustainability and safety recruitment for the past two decades. Together, Acre and Acre Frameworks deliver recruitment and talent development solutions that are designed to equip health, safety, and sustainability professionals across the globe with the non-technical skills required to be effective in their role.
In an interview with Manage HR, Anna Keen, Director of Acre Frameworks, talks about skill development for purpose-driven professionals and how a changing skillset is required to create social and environmental value while promoting good business.
What is Acre Frameworks’ story?
I joined Acre in 2015 to launch Acre Frameworks, a unique development solution focused on improving soft skills in health, safety and sustainability professionals.
Prior to joining forces with Acre, I had been recruiting health and safety specialists for about 14 years. I found it challenging that there was so much emphasis on improving technical abilities in the community, but a very limited focus on non-technical skills. Given that the essence of the profession is to safeguard individuals in the workplace to provide a healthy and safe working environment, I found myself compelled by the lack of focus on non-technical skill development and as a consequence, the way it was limiting them from making a real impact. I was being asked to recruit candidates with a skillset that didn’t really seem to exist.
We spent the first three or four years at Acre Frameworks focusing on health, safety, and environment professionals, supporting them to understand and develop the non-technical skills needed to disrupt traditional thinking and make a true impact. Interestingly, what we observed was that this need wasn’t exclusive to the profession. We now assess, coach and train professionals from all the sectors we recruit in at Acre – namely, corporate responsibility and sustainability, ESG and impact investing, climate change, energy and clean-tech, and more. This generally encompasses organizations ranging anywhere from startups and NGOs to large corporates with a strong sense of purpose who are looking to create meaningful change in our society.
Could you elaborate on your leadership offering?
At the core of everything we do is a competency framework that we co-created with 100+ leaders in the industry to understand what good leadership looks like in traditionally technical professions and how to create more space for purpose-driven professionals to think differently and innovate from day one.
We arrived on a very clear set of competencies to support skill acquisition at two levels: a ‘Foundations’ level for junior to pre-management professionals and a ‘Leadership’ level for management to executive level professionals. We then partnered with SHL, a leading psychometric assessment provider, to develop an assessment tool that would help us objectively measure non-technical competence. Today, we’re able to not only draw people’s attention to how their behaviors are impacting their performance in a work setting, but also the help them understand how to ensure that these behaviors don’t hold them back from achieving their purpose.
In addition to our assessments and leadership reports, we also deliver a range of coaching and training services which create a fail-safe environment for people to get curious about their development and motivations, as well as to experiment with new or different skills to foster change.
How do your services work?
The first stage of our development process is called ‘Discovery,’ which involves getting people into a position where they’re ready and willing to learn – particularly if they’re naturally resistant to change. It begins with an assessment, followed by personalized feedback to help people better understand how their behaviors are benefiting or limiting them. We then bring teams together to examine their collective behaviors and to identify group strengths or development areas. This encourages them to embrace their differences and to leverage the diversity of thoughts and skills they possess.
We call the next phase of our development process ‘Explore’ which is where coaching comes in. This is about leading someone from a place of curiosity about their behavior to a structured one-on-one learning environment.
Acre Frameworks sits within the wider recruitment business, Acre – also known as the market leader in sustainability and safety recruitment for the past two decades. Together, Acre and Acre Frameworks deliver recruitment and talent development solutions that are designed to equip health, safety, and sustainability professionals across the globe with the non-technical skills required to be effective in their role
The final phase is called ‘Experiment,’ which enables skill acquisition by bringing people together as a community to learn collaboratively. This is the training element of our service, which we call ‘Learning Pods.’ Unlike traditional learning and development methodologies where you bring people together for two to three days and drown them in content, we deliver ‘bite-sized’ development programs where participants come together once a month for one or two hours to explore and discuss specific development themes. The modules we offer for these sessions are based on the development opportunities identified during the Discovery phase. We then use the time in between sessions to help participants reflect, put their learnings into practice and turn their insights into actions.
What can clients expect from this process?
Impact happens in different ways at different times. At an individual level, it’s about becoming more self-aware, self-confident, and efficient. It’s also about actively promoting a growth mindset to drive sustainable change. We pay attention to habit formation, as well as challenges health, safety, and sustainability professionals face in their role like influencing, cultural sensitivity, building resilience, etc.
At the team level, we create spaces for them to feel psychologically safe to share their learnings and reflections. By the end of our programs, we hope participants can leave feeling more curious, creative, and courageous.
Can you share a client engagement story?
We work with one of the world’s largest tech companies, and they have a global team dedicated to ensuring safety. We were brought in to work with them five years ago to help them enhance their individual learning, assist them in developing a high-performing team, and build a culture of continuous improvement within the group. Through years of successful development interventions, people in the team have since taken on greater responsibility and began to deliver global-scale projects in a far more efficient way. Despite the pandemic, the team has remained resilient and really demonstrated the value that they add back to the bottom line of the business.
What is the value proposition that makes you stand out amidst market competition?
Having worked at the forefront of the health, safety, and sustainability marketplaces for the last 18 years, we understand what it takes to deliver impact. We work closely with the industry to set a benchmark for good behavior and continue to grow and refine our services to help address and promote it.
Current issues like climate change, plastics and COVID 19 have been instrumental in redefining our market landscape. Concepts surrounding sustainability, ESG, impact and purpose have taken center stage. With all the changes taking place, it is going to take a different form of learning and development to make businesses truly sustainable, and that is exactly what we deliver.
What is the future roadmap for your company?
We are socially conscious as a business and want to work with organizations that are proactively driving change. We are continuing to scale what we do now to get our work in front of people who need it the most. We have expanded into the US in the last two years and in different parts of Europe as well. We also have a strong community of global clients like Amazon, Netflix, PepsiCo and CBRE, who rely on us to build their health, safety, and sustainability functions.
We’re also evolving our approach to D&I (diversity and inclusion) to help create more inclusive hiring and learning environments for our clients. We believe that cultural sensitivity is key and want to continue to expand on that while using our experience and knowledge to deliver solutions to clients that make an impact and drive sustainable behavior change within their organization.
