Lauren Leighton

Director, Talent & Training
Pet Retail Brands - Pet Valu & Pet Supermarket

Lauren has worked in employee learning and workforce development for nearly 15 years. In 2016, she became Director of Talent and Training at Pet Retail Brands, just as the company had merged Pet Valu and Pet Supermarket to create the third-largest pet specialty retailer and the largest small-format, neighborhood pet specialty retailer in North America. In her presentation, Lauren will discuss how she standardized manager learning across 930 stores, trained a national network of trainers and built a new curriculum while supporting a team of Talent Acquisition Specialists. She will also discuss how insights gleaned through their revamped learning program spill over into Talent Acquisition, allowing Pet Valu and Pet Supermarket to change their hiring practices to target new core competencies that support the business strategy.

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Lauren.

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Agenda Day 1

Saturday, June 10th, 2017

1:45 PM How to Identify Real Training Needs — The Do’s and Don’ts of Surveying Your Workforce

HR and Learning leaders are increasingly relied upon to align workforce strategies with business objectives. One primary method for accomplishing this goal is surveying employees to discover gaps in competencies, whether among individual employees or specific teams. Our panel members, will draw upon their business-case experience with surveying their workforce to uncover strengths and weaknesses among their workforce skills. HR records, focus groups, interviews, on-the-job observations and assessments are all tools in the learning officer’s toolbox but not all are appropriate, depending on the situation. Learn how to identify business needs, perform a gap analysis, assess training plans and costs in this practical panel.