Meet Jenny Baber
Some careers follow a straight line. Our Client Relationship Manager’s, Jenny Baber, has taken a few interesting turns.
Before joining Time Education & Training eight years ago, Jenny worked across industries including electricity, telecommunications, retail, building and shopfitting, books, charities and the arts. She has worked with small businesses, large organisations, government statutory authorities, tradespeople, executives, volunteers, schools, libraries and community groups.
It might sound like an eclectic career path but today Jenny sees it as one of the greatest strengths she brings to her role, which involves working with businesses and organisations to understand where they are, where they want to go and how corporate training programs might help them get there.
And that starts with listening.
Finding the real need
When an organisation contacts Time Education & Training, Jenny doesn’t simply start with the course or corporate training programs they have requested. Instead, she wants to understand the bigger picture.
What is the organisation trying to achieve? What challenges are they facing? What is happening within their workforce? And what outcome are they hoping training will help create?
‘Training is not just for the sake of training,’ she says. ‘Training has a purpose.’
Jenny believes this is particularly important because no two organisations are exactly alike.
A solution that works for one business, workforce, region or industry may not necessarily suit another. Even within the same organisation, different groups of employees may require different approaches.
‘You don’t want to overtrain. Nor undertrain. You don’t want to train things that aren’t relevant. Instead, the aim is to understand the people involved and create an approach that supports where the organisation is trying to take them.’
A career built around connecting people
Looking back, Jenny can see that connecting people, ideas and information has been a common thread throughout her career.
In one of her early roles in the telecommunications sector, Jenny often acted as the link between highly technical teams and their internal customers despite not have an engineering background, but she knew how to ask questions and remain curious.
That ability to understand different perspectives and translate between them continued throughout her later roles.
In the book industry, she coordinated programs involving schools, libraries and community organisations. In the charity sector, she worked with volunteers across different towns and regions. Behind the scenes in theatre, she worked as a dramaturg, researching productions and helping performers understand the characters, place and context behind their work.
Today, those same skills help her work across a wide range of industries that become clients and partners of Time Education & Training.
Six business cards and a lasting lesson
One early career experience has particularly stayed with Jenny.
A senior manager sent her interstate to attend a conference on his behalf. Jenny was young and didn’t understand why she had been chosen, particularly because she knew very little about the conference topic.
His instructions were simple: come back with six business cards. The point wasn’t really the cards. It was to meet people and develop the confidence to do so.
Jenny later realised her manager had recognised her natural ability to network and build relationships before she had recognised it herself. And anyone who has met Jenny today instantly understands her warmth, problem solving skills and friendliness.
That lesson has shaped the way she approaches events and industry relationships ever since.
‘You never know who you’re going to meet,’ she says. ‘You might be able to help them. They may be able to help you.’
It is also one of the things she particularly enjoys about the vocational education and training sector.
‘The training industry is incredibly collaborative. It is not done in a silo.’
Whether it is employers, registered training organisations, universities, councils, community groups or government programs, Jenny sees collaboration as essential to building stronger industries and workforce pathways.
‘I’ve got this idea’
Jenny also jokingly admits there is one sentence her managers have heard fairly regularly throughout her career: ‘I’ve got this idea.’
Her colleagues may occasionally wonder how much work the latest idea is going to generate, but curiosity is an important part of how Jenny works.
She likes understanding how things operate, identifying opportunities and asking what could be done differently.
That curiosity extends beyond work too.
Jenny has studied professional writing, had a children’s book published, worked in theatre, played and coached sport, volunteered in youth leadership programs and remains an enthusiastic Adelaide Crows supporter.
She also loves walking, particularly near the beach, getting out into the bush and trying something simply because it looks interesting.
Part of a bigger team
While Jenny’s role puts her in contact with organisations and industries across South Australia, she is quick to point out that her work depends on the wider Time Education & Training team.
‘I can talk to people and organisations and industries around who we are and what we do because I know how good the people are here and how passionate they are about what they do.’
From the facilitators delivering training to the staff supporting students behind the scenes, Jenny sees each person as part of the process.
