Investing In Your Employees: Laura Bayzle Of The Link Group On The Benefits of Offering Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Initiatives For Employees

An Interview With Chad Silverstein

Increasing Employee Engagement and Retention. If an employee feels like their employer is investing in them, then they will pour that investment back into the company. That means employees who are more engaged with — and loyal to — the company.

Investing in team development has become increasingly crucial for forward-thinking companies, who understand that their greatest assets are their people. From implementing innovative training programs and wellness initiatives to cultivating a supportive work environment, these strategic investments play a vital role in enhancing employee satisfaction and retention. As the business landscape evolves, mastering effective methods to support and retain employees is pivotal for achieving long-term success. I had the pleasure of interviewing Laura Bayzle, The Link Group.

When Laura first walked through the doors of The Link Group seventeen years ago, she was struck by its employee-focused culture. Now, as Managing Parter, she leads the organization of 100+ employees where that culture of growth and development has been integral to the company’s success. During her career, she has dreamed up and led many continuous professional development initiatives and is a coach and mentor to employees. Her work continues in the non-profit world, where she serves on the boards of arts and education foundations.

Thank you for joining us. To start, could you share a little about yourself, and how you got started?

I’ve always been interested in the study of people and culture. In college, I was an Anthropology major and spent a summer in Manhattan, interviewing and observing people and behaviors to better understand cultural dynamics in the lower east side. After college, I expanded these skills by working in marketing at a major bank. And after business school, I found myself drawn to marketing research, which, in its own way, is the study of people, culture, and behaviors. Today, I am one of three managing partners of a Top 25 market research firm in the US, and juggle managing the business and the people with being a wife, a mom to two elementary-aged children, and a board officer of an arts-based non-profit.

What was your biggest challenge in those early days?

Early in my career, I struggled with finding work that I was truly passionate about. I worked for a time in the banking industry, but that wasn’t the right fit for my personality. And I loved marketing, but wanted to do something different from product or brand marketing. Continuing my education at business school and keeping an open mind about industry and focus area ultimately created the opportunity to learn about market research and The Link Group (TLG), which turned out to be the perfect fit on both accounts.

Was there anything specific that inspired you to prioritize CPD initiatives in your company? Can you explain why this is important for the success of a business?

The Link Group has always been employee focused. When our employees grow, so does our business. Because our employees are our only real assets, investing in them is part of the DNA of TLG and critical to our continued growth. Our employees collaborate with one another, conduct qualitative and quantitative research, dig through the insights to deliver strategic recommendations to clients, and partner closely with clients to help them answer their top business questions. We rely deeply on our collective experience, expertise, and relationships to be great at our jobs and grow the business. And so it’s inherently important that we ensure our employees have opportunities to continuously develop and hone their skills and behaviors.

In a recent survey among young employees, 66% consider the professional development an employer offers when evaluating a job offer and 30% find learning and development an essential employer benefit (Handshake, Attracting top early talent: what students and new grads want in an employer, 2024). So it is immensely important, especially to our newer generation of employees, that we prioritize CPD initiatives if we want to attract and retain top talent.

Can you please share with us, and briefly explain the first major initiative you started that directly benefited your employees?

We are a team-based organization. This gives our employees great flexibility and autonomy in running research and managing clients, but it also means that we do not have managers who oversee work and timelines. About 15 years ago, we realized that our model would benefit greatly from newer employees having a coach (who we call a Development Manager, or DM) who was invested in their professional development and who could help them manage project challenges and celebrate their growth. This system was greatly successful and is still in place today. It allowed us to maintain the flexibility and autonomy that makes our organization successful while also providing guidance and support for our employees to further develop their skillset. Over time, this program has evolved to include an Advocate. With this new model, the DM provides tactical, day-to-day coaching while the Advocate provides mentorship and high-level oversight. Working together the Advocate and DM provide a support network that directly benefits all employees’ professional development.

Do you have an example of a situation where you didn’t get the result you were looking for, and tell us what happened as a result?

We’ve made a recent change to our Advocate program to make it even more effective for our employees. In our old model, each Advocate would mentor employees across a range of titles and career experience. For example, of the ten employees an Advocate would mentor, maybe three of them would be within their first year with the company, three would be mid-level employees, and another four would be more senior. Of course, employees at different levels have different resource and time needs, and it was causing a strain on Advocates to manage this balance and provide meaningful mentorship at different levels.

We changed the structure so that each Advocate is mentoring employees within the same career band. For example, of the ten employees an Advocate mentors, all ten may be within 5–8 years of their career. This creates greater intentionality and impact.

What has been the most impactful CPD initiative you’ve seen other companies offer, and how did it inspire or influence your own approach?

I’ve always loved seeing the internal professional development learning modules that other companies offer. As researchers, we are naturally curious people and love to learn, but we were missing our own learning modules; learning was self-directed which meant it often got deprioritized due to busy schedules or employees being overwhelmed by the many options out there and not knowing where to start in their search. Inspired by other companies who offer internal education, we launched our own platform last year. We made it uniquely ours, curating material from internal sources and catering it to needs for employees in different roles and at different career levels. We have pulled our employees into the process, by asking them to help create meaningful content. We have found that employees love having a single point of access for relevant and impactful professional education, and they have used this information to sharpen their skills across the board.

What challenges might companies face when implementing these initiatives, and how can they overcome them?

Continuous Professional Development initiatives are not copy and paste. For them to be both impactful and sustainable, they must fit into the fabric of the organization. Therefore, an initiative that works well for one organization cannot be ported into another company; it must be tailored to the unique needs of those employees and the culture of the organization. And that can be challenging to implement, and to implement quickly.

We have found that a slow rollout of initiatives has worked best for our organization: we ask for feedback or have listening sessions, which act as input into our custom approach. Once we have an approach, we communicate the objective and the timeline to our employees and keep them updated along the way. And after implementation, we continue to evangelize the initiative to make sure there is high awareness and to help them incorporate the initiative into their work process.

Can you share a story of an employee who significantly benefited, and how it affect their performance or career trajectory?

We have an employee who has been with the company for about 8 years and is a high performer. She was finding herself in a bit of a career “rut” and feeling disengaged. We didn’t want her to leave the organization or have this disengagement impact her performance and productivity. Through conversations with her Advocate, she discovered that she wanted to shift her focus to primarily quantitative research, but also felt that she had the opportunity to sharpen her knowledge of higher analytics.

The Link Group offers all employees an annual budget to use for conferences or outside professional development opportunities. She decided to use her budget to attend a series of conferences and outside workshops focused on quant analytics. She came back energized and engaged, with a sharpened sense of purpose and a deeper understanding of advanced analytics. In addition, she has shared what she learned with others in the organization, honing her coaching and skill sharing abilities. She is now armed with the tools, energy, and inspiration to make a big impact on her projects and with clients, which will help her become an even higher performer and create new business for The Link Group.

Could you please list the “Top Five Benefits of Offering Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Initiatives for Employees”?

I think of these five benefits as working together to create a virtuous cycle:

1. Staying Adaptable and Innovative. The world and industry are constantly changing. Upskilling employees means your company can more seamlessly change along with the world. And that gives your company a competitive advantage.
2. Bolstering Company Culture. A culture must be rooted in values and CPD initiatives can be one way to bring those values to life. This, in turn, can bolster your culture and create a place where employees love to work.
3. Creating a Better Work Product. And if an employee loves where they work and they are upskilled in their profession, then they are more engaged. An engaged employee is happier and puts more care and attention into what they produce, which is evident to both internal and external stakeholders. And that means more value for the company.
4. Increasing Employee Engagement and Retention. If an employee feels like their employer is investing in them, then they will pour that investment back into the company. That means employees who are more engaged with — and loyal to — the company.
5. Attracting Top Talent. Employees want to work where they feel valued and where there is forward momentum. Offering CPD initiatives as one employee benefit attracts motivated, curious, and engaged talent. And who doesn’t want to work at a place that produces excellent work, has a great culture, and is full of happy employees?

How do you measure the success and ROI of these CPD initiatives?

In some cases, we can measure utilization rates of our CPD initiatives (for example, the number of employees who log into and use our professional development learning platform). However, we also know that utilization doesn’t always translate into success.

Our measures of success are indirect. We can measure how employees perform against key skills and behaviors during their annual performance review. For example, if we see that employees within a certain career level are performing well in research skills, we can assume that our professional development modules may be playing a part in creating competency.

Employee turnover is an indirect measure of the success of our DM and Advocate program. A low employee turnover, which we have boasted since implementing our DM program, indicates that our professional support system is working. Soon, we plan to implement an Employee Satisfaction survey, which will be a more direct way of measuring satisfaction with different CPD initiatives and perceived success of those programs.

Looking forward, how do you see the role of CPD evolving in the next 5–10 years?

As our professional and personal worlds continue to bleed into one another, we see CPD evolving to include programs and education outside of just career development. In some cases, we already see a desire for programs aimed at Mental Health and Wellness, with employees asking our company to provide initiatives aimed at educating on personal financial literacy, building a self-care routine, and improving physical health and nutrition.

We also see AI improving the efficiency, effectiveness and ease of implementing CPD in organizations. This may allow organizations to implement programs more quickly and more tailored to employees’ needs.

What advice would you give business leaders who are hesitating to make these changes?

If you employ people, then your business depends on it. Think of these initiatives as an investment in the business. Just as you may invest in new technology or infrastructure to improve your business, so too, investing in your people’s growth and development will reap rewards. Determine how to measure ROI for your company to measure and validate this investment. And start small. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were our CPD initiatives. While investing in our employees’ growth and development is part of our DNA, it has taken 15 years to implement the different initiatives we have today. Start small and grow as your capacity allows.

Can you share any upcoming initiatives or plans you have for further investing in your employees?

As I mentioned before, it can be challenging to implement new initiatives quickly. We just rolled out our new Advocate structure and so want to give that time to solidify and breathe. We will also be rolling out an annual Employee Satisfaction survey which may identify future areas for investment. And as always, we listen to the needs of our employees and the needs of the business. Based on that listening, we anticipate new opportunities will be identified for us to ideate on and explore.

This was great. Thank you so much for the time you spent sharing with us.

About the Interviewer: Chad Silverstein, a seasoned entrepreneur with over two decades of experience as the Founder and CEO of multiple companies. He launched Choice Recovery, Inc., a healthcare collection agency, while going to The Ohio State University, His team earned national recognition, twice being ranked as the #1 business to work for in Central Ohio. In 2018, Chad launched [re]start, a career development platform connecting thousands of individuals in collections with meaningful employment opportunities, He sold Choice Recovery on his 25th anniversary and in 2023, sold the majority interest in [re]start so he can focus his transition to Built to Lead as an Executive Leadership Coach. Learn more at www.chadsilverstein.com