25th October 2022
Employee Spotlight - Stephen Hayward
1. How long have you been working at Oadby Plastics?
SH - "One and a half years"
2. What inspired you to pursue the career you have today?
SH - "Like so many people that work within learning and development I didn’t start out my career looking to be a training manager. I was a retail manager in my early 20’s, working closely with my team to improve sales and shop revenue. I quickly realised that I could help them achieve more by developing their skills, knowledge and behaviours and that was it, I was bitten by the development bug. I soon realised I was motivated by helping others achieve and become the best person they can be. Working in Learning and Development gives me that opportunity on an individual basis as well as the buzz that organisational development gives – it’s addictive"
3. What does your job entail?
SH - "This is a really interesting job, there is a lot of talking to people, finding out what they want to do and how they enjoy learning, along with quite a bit of research and development to create opportunities and solutions. I help our people Identify and understand the skills, knowledge and behaviours that they need to do their job well by designing job specific development programmes. This allows their confidence to grow as well as their performance, and consequently, improving performance of their teams and departments"
4. What’s been your proudest accomplishment since working at Oadby Plastics?
SH - "A large part of my time has been dedicated to designing an organisational development plan (the GROW initiative) to ensure we, as a business, meet the needs of our customers through the development of our teams. This initiative brings the processes and practices of the entire business together to allow us to work as one to deliver customer service excellence"
5. What’s the most exciting thing you are working on right now?
SH - "It’s difficult to top the GROW initiative but I am setting up a Learning & Development Team to co-ordinate and report on all training within the Oadby Group of companies. It’s such an exciting and great opportunity to build on the already established positive approach to developing and enabling our greatest asset, our people at Oadby Plastics Ltd"
6. What was your first job?
SH - "My very first job was looking after a rare breeds farm at a village pub in South Leicestershire. It was a great time but a very different workday to the ones I have now"
7. What one skill do you think everyone should learn?
SH - "Learn to make a lasagne, you will never go hungry if you can make lasagne"
8. Recommend a TV show and/or book you have recently watched/read
SH - "Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing. A perfect hour of entertainment (I don’t even like fishing, its not about the fishing), they are so naturally funny and entertaining"
9. What do you do for fun outside of work?
SH - "I love my garden; I can lose hours to the garden and I’ve also got a thing about the lawn being just right!"
10. Tell us one interesting thing about yourself that people maybe unaware of
SH - "I love Christmas"
We would like to thank Steve for taking the time to participate.
