186 | How Integrating Practical HR Training into Manager Development Helped Managers Succeed (with Amy Critchley)
HR Coffee Time
In this episode of HR Coffee Time, host Fay Wallis interviews Amy Critchley, Head of People at Indigo Networks, about building a management development program from scratch after
Key takeaways
- Amy Critchley joined Indigo Networks after five years of operation without a dedicated People team or formal management training protocols.
- Workshop content strategically combined high-risk compliance topics (disciplinary meetings, sickness absence) with foundational nurturing practices like one-to-ones and employee recognition.
Main topics
- Manager development program design
- Integrating HR policy with leadership training
Notable quotes
"I wanted them to also realize that the people team were going to be there as a support function for them. We were not just going to be the place where there's an issue, HR will go and deal with that."
Conclusion
The episode provides actionable frameworks for HR professionals to replace dry, compliance-heavy training with engaging,
Transcript preview
Speaker 2 (0:00) HR Coffee Time is proud to be sponsored by SeeMe, a behavioural profiling tool designed to help people understand themselves and their colleagues better. Arranging for everyone in a team to complete the SeeMe questionnaire and then explore their SeeMe profiles together in a workshop afterwards is a great solution for helping teams bond and find ways of working brilliantly together. And there's lots of support once the workshop is over with access to the CME digital platform and CME is also built into Microsoft Teams. More than 250,000 CME profiles have now been completed across hundreds of organisations. And if you'd like to try it for yourself, you can get a free profile at colour-profiling.com forward slash. hrcoffeetime. That's colour c-o-l-o-u-r hyphen profiling.com forward slash hrcoffeetime. You've probably heard the expression that people don't leave companies, they leave managers. And although that isn't going to be true 100 % of the time, there is no doubt that managers play a hugely important role in helping their organisations and the people in them to succeed. Speaker 1 (1:16) In fact, the Speaker 2 (1:17) importance of good managers is a theme that has cropped up again and again on HR Coffee Time this year. And I know that understanding managers are important is one thing, but knowing how to actually develop them and set them up for success in their roles can feel a lot harder. Managers are expected to handle so much, from one-to-ones and development conversations to absence. performance issues and disciplinaries and they're often trying to do that without ever having been properly Speaker 1 (1:47) taught how to do any of this. And Speaker 2 (1:50) if Speaker 1 (1:50) you Speaker 2 (1:51) work in HR you'll probably know how difficult it can be to make sure that managers really understand the HR policies, the processes and the employment law that they need to know without overwhelming them or delivering training and support that they quickly forget or maybe even find a bit boring. So this episode of HR Coffee Time is here to help. And my hope is that by the end of it, you'll have some fresh ideas for how to develop your managers, build their confidence and help them understand and apply the HR knowledge that they need in their roles. This HR Coffee Time podcast episode is a special bonus episode being released as part of the Workforce Success Stories Summit, which is taking place online on Tuesday, the 29th of September, 2026. The summit is all about learning from real workplace success stories. You get to hear from HR and business leaders about challenges they faced in their organisations, what they decided to do about them, and how they put their ideas into practice, as well as what happened as a result and what they learned along the way. You can find out more about the summit at summit.workforcesuccessstories.com. And for this special episode, I'm joined by Amy Critchley, Head of People at Indigo Networks. She is sharing the story of how she created a management development program from scratch. And in our conversation, Amy takes us behind the scenes of the program that she created after she joined an organization that hadn't had a dedicated HR or people team before. She explains how she identified what it was that managers would find helpful to learn. She shares how she designed the programme, making sure that she was combining practical HR knowledge with wider management development, and how she made subjects like absence, investigations, disciplinaries and employment law engaging, instead of being dry or overwhelming for everyone. You also get to hear some fantastic ideas from her for making training more interactive, the extra support that she put in place to help learning stick for everyone, and how the programme helped managers feel more confident and change the way that they worked with the people team. I Speaker 1 (4:13) hope Speaker 2 (4:13) you're going to enjoy learning from Amy and meeting her as much as I did. Let's go ahead and meet her now. Speaker 2 (4:23) Welcome to the show, Amy. It's so fabulous to have you here today. Speaker 1 (4:27) Thank you so much for having me, Faye. It's really exciting to be on the other side of these sessions because when I'm driving into work, when I'm doing the hybrid model and driving in on the motorway, I need some company. So I'm always listening to your podcast. So it's really good to be on the other side. Speaker 2 (4:45) That's so lovely to hear. I'm the same as you. I love listening to podcasts while I'm driving. Although I don't listen to my own podcast because that would be really weird. I suppose I listen to it sometimes just to make sure there haven't been any glitches that I haven't been aware of. Welcome, welcome. And I'm so excited to hear all your answers to the questions I'm going to be asking you today. I know that everyone listening or watching is going to hugely appreciate hearing from you. So I better dive in with the first question, hadn't I? Which is, how did you identify the need for manager training in your organisation? Speaker 1 (5:22) Well, I'm sure this is a question for many, many people within our profession. For me, I was lucky enough to begin almost with an open slate. I came into the business, I've been operating for about five years, and it was a very small team, and they didn't have a dedicated people team, HR team. And very quickly identified there was no policies, there was very little management support. And also, there was no prior training occurring. So I was thinking, how on earth are these managers meant to know what they should be doing correctly or what potentially could be steering them down the wrong route? So as part of my short-term, medium, long-term strategy, I wanted to hit the nail on the head a few times to make sure that I've got policies in place, procedures in place, tools in place. But how could I do that? I needed to be in a position that I bring all of that together. in potentially quite an engaging management programme. Oh gosh, yes. Well, I Speaker 2 (6:24) think for anyone listening, it's going to be so reassuring if they've ever been in that situation of joining an organisation where they've never had any of that HR or people support before. And perhaps even more likely, I'm sure there are going to be loads of people where there may never have been manager training before, or it's something that they know they can really improve on. The next question that I'd love to ask you about is if we could hear a little bit more about the training. So how did you decide on what the content was going to be that you were going to include? Because when it comes to manager training, there is so much that you could have covered that I think that can make it feel really overwhelming for people. So I think it's going to be so helpful for anyone listening or watching just to hear your experience of. how you knew what to include content wise and so they know where they can start to. Speaker 1 (7:15) Yeah, like you said, I was in a position where I was looking at all the content and even I was going, how on earth am I going to get all of this across to my line managers? But ultimately, what I decided to do is I need to tell them what policies are coming in and give them the top line information from the policies. You know, what processes have we brought in that's going to support them down the line? You know, the tools that we have then created. And then as a result of that, I took the contents where I realized if we didn't do something, that potentially could be an issue down the line. So, or it could be a potential risk to the business, you know, in the future. So the content that I created was then quite heavily influenced by... those elements there. And I would talk about things, let's say, for example, I would pick four topics for a day's workshop. And it would include things such as an investigation meeting, a disciplinary meetings, you know, sickness and absence, but also not just the scary stuff that I think the managers are afraid of. also those fundamental like nurturing elements such as managing one-to-ones, recognizing our team members, training and development. I wanted to be in a position that I gave them this information to make sure that those small little issues didn't bubble up. I wanted them to also realize that the people team were going to be there as a support function for them. We were not just going to be the place where there's an issue, HR will go and deal with that. That's not how we wanted to be perceived. And that was a mindset that I wanted our managers to move away from, that they don't see the HR team as the resolution to the conflicts that they've got. They needed to be nurturing. They needed to really understand their team members. And they've got to support their team members to prevent any issues from escalating. So the content that I would create would start to give them those tools to prevent those issues from being bigger. I love how you're Speaker 2 (9:26)