As the dynamics of the professional landscape undergo unprecedented transformations and the traditional hierarchical career mindset becomes a thing of the past, organisations need to embark on their own journeys in redefining talent development and retention.
Those who want their businesses and teams to thrive in this new paradigm need to accept that traditional career conventions, anchored in expertise accumulation and hierarchical ascent, are no longer sufficient in a world shaped by accelerated change and influential forces such as technology, AI, economic shifts, and remote working.
At durhamlane, we have developed a radical new people strategy that represents a departure from our conventional hiring practices to not only raise the bar for ourselves, but the industry as a whole. Unfortunately, our industry – sales – is often stigmatised and isn’t always recognised as a respected career here in the UK so we are striving to change that.
We want to redefine sales by prioritising talent development, retention, and comprehensive training. It is not just a paradigm shift; it’s a commitment to future-proofing the country’s workforce and capitalising on the opportunities that lie ahead.
Our new people strategy therefore extends beyond hiring and is built around a long-term plan – we want to create opportunities for our team to grow beyond; to develop phenomenal salespeople, to nurture and retain them until they are primed for their envisioned future roles with other employers.
This means providing structured training programmes, helping employees gain the skills that they can use anywhere in the world at any time, and go on to create amazing, high-performing sales teams of their own for other businesses – with the ultimate objective being for them to return to us as clients.
We stay in touch with ex-employees throughout their careers and seeing them become clients only serves to confirm that this method works, and that the growth is sustainable and powerful, taking employees with no experience to new levels. We’re always supportive of employees wanting a change—this can’t be to out detriment, as it affirms the power of our ethos and culture to nurture sales and marketing experts through every stage of growth, and see individuals come out stronger.
We take the view that by equipping salespeople with the right skills and supporting their growth, we can help transform the wider perception of the sales profession and benefit our employees in comfortable and steady skilling up.
With that comes fully remote or hybrid contracts, with limited expectation on office attendance and reduced working hours. As an employer that sponsors migrant workers via the Skilled worker route, we considered where some of our employees call home, which led us to looking at the ability to work internationally. “The World is Your Workplace” is the slogan we’ve attached to our new International Working benefit – to reflect the freedom our employees have in where they can work from.
Employees can request up to a maximum of four occasions to work internationally whilst travelling to different countries and can work in any ‘Green’ Country, specified by the Government, for up to 1 month at a time.
This benefit was sparked by a review of our flexibility and current employee wellbeing and happiness at work opportunities. What people want from a workplace has changed since the pandemic—people are prepared to give their all for a fast-tracked career, but on the condition they can work on their own terms and are compensated fairly for it.
Aside from increased employee wellbeing and retention, this approach also strategically aligns with the needs of our globally distributed clients. The ability to work from different countries means our employees can visit their premises to get some face time with the customers themselves – which provides a great boost to the partnership between durhamlane and the client.
While navigating this paradigm shift means venturing into unchartered territory, we remain steadfast in our belief that by equipping and supporting our salespeople, we are not just cultivating a workplace that embraces change and values individual growth, but is transforming our industry as a whole.
