I think we can all agree that 2022 has been an eventful year, and for us, it has been a remarkable year of growth. With that, we’d like to say a very big thank you to all of our incredible clients, and everyone who has supported us on our journey of growth.
Covid-19 marked a significant turning point in the transformation of Summit. The pandemic forced us to ask ourselves whether we were going in the right direction with our goals, looking intently at how in-demand skillsets are developing and adapting. It became clear to us the importance of building our clients’ businesses to the point where change is seen as an opportunity rather than an adversity.
From this, both our ethos as well as our actions, had to evolve.
Where Can You Expect to See Change?
Let’s look at some of the biggest growth points that 2022 revealed for Summit…
How our ethos has evolved
Our ethos has always been centred around people. This year has taught us that while our focus is on people, we must also be looking forward.
Acknowledging that uncertainty will always be a part of life, training your company to be agile in the face of change has to become a top priority. To adapt a business for the future of work is a mammoth task for leadership to take on without the assistance of a Learning and Development team. This is why Summit aims to obtain and retain the trust of our clients, where we can take over this critical responsibility, so that they can put all their time and energy into other areas of business growth.
How our approach to problems has evolved
Where previously our approach has simply been solutions-focused, we are now adopting a more people-focused approach.
Summit is intentional about partnering with our clients to discover and analyse complicated problems, and innovate unique solutions. The keywords here are discover and innovate. It is common for businesses to be unaware of the challenges that could be hindering their growth. We work with organisations to piece together their goals, and dig until we get to the root of potential problems – before we even think about the solutions.
What Were Our Highlights for 2022?
Trust is at the foundation of our relationships with all of our clients. Once we connect and partner with a company, we stick with them. We are proud to say that we have retained all of our customer relationships this year, and we have had the honour of growing beside them.
Anglo American Zimele
One client that we have experienced significant growth with is Anglo American Zimele. The project has challenged us to constantly press into the mission and goals of the organisation. We need to be consistently working at recruiting new youth into the program, and placing them within good positions when they finish the programme and have been found competent. This challenges us to always be focused on turning the dial.
Summit always welcomes an opportunity for growth, and where other training providers weren’t willing to leave their comfort zones and work in environments that are challenging, we took those opportunities and grew our processes and strategy from them. Most training providers want an easy production line process with their clients, however, we are grateful that this project has pushed us to find bespoke solutions that fit unique environments where there were otherwise no one-size-fits-all solutions.
KFC
We had the great privilege of working with KFC this year. As the top-performing fast food chain in South Africa, KFC has to constantly keep up with unpredictable and unavoidable challenges, and look to the future for their customer needs. Enter Summit – we were able to work alongside them to build a bespoke customer service program that proved successful as an effective, scalable solution. The results we saw following the roll-out of the program exceeded expectations.
Our goal was to incorporate the identity of the brand – including culture, business terminology, values, approach and purpose – into the unique program we created for KFC. Our collaboration with the internal employee training team at KFC made our work that much more effective and efficient. We were able to develop our language, feedback and how we communicate with employees so that the content resonated with them. As the brand has recognised the importance of training as a part of their operations, we are excited to continue working with them in the future.
What Can We Offer You That No One Else Can?
Customised solutions at scale. We can effectively cover all of your needs at the biggest scale you require. Summit has built models that allow us to recruit talent and train employees at scale, but with nimbleness no other competitor can match. As a training provider, we operate as though we are a small, agile company. However, we execute as a large, established training provider.
Looking for customised solutions at scale? Get in touch with Summit today and let’s get ready to start the new year with strength!
Matt Lambert, Managing Director
Matt has a passion for innovation and doing things differently, which comes from his broad experience in front line and management roles within Business Intelligence, Sales, New Business Development and Commercial Finance held within blue chip companies. Matt has worked across five continents and 19 countries to launch new products, establish sales operations and lead strategic projects.
His passion for education comes from a desire to address fundamental structural issues within Africa. Matt has extensive experience within International Hotel School heading up its Durban Campus before taking over the online business, and then moving to Operations Director, before taking over and growing Summit since the beginning of 2018.