Interview with Adrian Price

Article Type: Leading edge From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 25, Issue 1

Adrian Price is Learning & Development Manager, TUI Travel UK &Ireland. Adrian started his journey into learning and development at Tesco,where he spent nine years experiencing the challenges of stores before moving into a number of full-time people development roles. He moved into the events industry to help other companies experience his unique brand of delivery and common-sense approach to learning and delivery.

At TUI UK & Ireland Adrian works closely with the business to ensure learning is embedded and as effective as possible. Significant change has been required to ensure learning has become high on manager’s agendas, and works to make sure development and self-improvement is part of everybody’s job.

He has embraced new and exciting technologies to integrate learning into TUI. In a dynamic industry such as this learning and development needs to be agile and by bringing together new ideas with internal experts he has built a culture where development is seen as an essential criteria in getting the job done and creating a high performance company.

How did TUI UK & Ireland go about rebuilding the brands of Thompson and First Choice following the merger of the two companies?

Difficult to answer this as this is ongoing. It was clear that both brands were to be kept and evolved. They both had loyal customer bases so it was important not to alienate them, and bring in new customers by having differentiated products that aligned to the brands, such as Holiday Village,Splash and Sensatori.

What opportunities were created through the merger?

• Reduced running costs.

• Part of world’s largest tour operator.

• Largest UK tour operator.

Could you take us through the company’s new L&D approach?

Its cyclical – review the company strategy and priorities for the next 12 months, design appropriate interventions, market them, deliver them and then evaluate.

Its about making sure change enabling skills are delivered throughout, making sure the performance management process is supported throughout and managers are doing the basics.

How were you able to build a culture of trust around the organization when implementing these changes?

Making sure managers have the skills and self-awareness to deliver messages honestly, empathetically and optimistically.

How have you gone about evaluating the results of your training programmes?

Evaluation questionnaire 24 hours after the workshop asking about relevance,having a plan and initial impact, then another three months later asking about embedding, efficiency, impact on team/peers and cost saving/generation as a direct result of attending.

As the presentation said: 84 percent say they are more efficient and 66 per cent say their team have positively changed.

Do you feel that the changes to the L&D framework at TUI UK Ireland were felt by your customers?

I think the workshops and other interventions (the intranet site, webinars,e-brochure) were well received. More than 70 percent of head office viewed the intranet in the first week and feedback generally has been very positive.

This year has looked at developing everyone, regardless of level and this has been well received by populations who traditionally experience less formal development.

What has been your biggest challenge in your current role?

Wouldn’t like to say!

What advice would you give to businesses that are trying to make large-scale changes?

Start at the end and work back – think about where you want to be in 12 months. What’s the impact? How do you know you’ve been successful?Then what are the steps you need to take? Who do you need help from?

Think about what you do now – its best to keep and adapt than new products that people have to get used to.

What do you consider to be the biggest obstacle to L&D within organizations?

The biggest challenge is staying relevant. Always challenge whether what is being delivered is appropriate and will do what its supposed to do – help people do more and do better. Doing development for the sake of it is pointless.

Adrian Price