84 Lumber’s Blueprint for Training Success

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From entry-level roles to advanced leadership positions, Senior Director Talent Development at 84 Lumber Sue Kasko shares how the company’s commitment to training — from the hands-on Lumber Camp experience to cutting-edge digital learning tools — is transforming the employee journey.

 

Show Notes:

84 Lumber’s Sue Kasko explains how their culture of promoting from within and innovative approaches to learning, like Lumber Camp and career lattices, drive employee engagement and development. Her key takeaways include the following:

• Focus on Developing Talent: 84 Lumber is deeply committed to promoting from within, with nearly 100% of store managers and higher-level leaders starting in entry-level positions, creating a culture of continuous learning and career development.
   
• Diverse Training Methods: The company employs a variety of training methods, including classroom learning, online courses, videos, and in-person sessions like Lumber Camp, ensuring that employees receive relevant, contextual training tailored to their roles.
   
• Managers as Trainers: 84 Lumber empowers its managers to take on the role of trainers, providing on-the-job guidance and support, which helps adapt learning to specific market conditions and individual employee needs.
   
• Innovative Learning Tools: The company uses microlearning techniques such as "Five Minute Foundations" videos and mobile apps that provide quick, accessible training, helping employees keep up with ever-evolving product knowledge and skills.
   
• Focus on Durable Learning: 84 Lumber incorporates durable learning principles into their programs, aiming to make learning stickier and more impactful by connecting training content to real-world applications and employee experiences.

About 84 Lumber:

Founded in 1956 and headquartered in Eighty Four, Pennsylvania, 84 Lumber Co. is the nation’s largest privately held supplier of building materials, manufactured components, and industry-leading services for single and multifamily residences and commercial buildings. The company operates 320 facilities which include stores, component manufacturing plants, custom door shops, and engineered wood product centers in 33 states. 84 Lumber also offers turnkey installation services for a variety of products, including framing, insulation, siding, windows, roofing, decking, and drywall. A certified national women’s business enterprise owned by Maggie Hardy, 84 Lumber was named as one of the Most Trustworthy Companies in America 2024 by Newsweek and was named one of America’s Top Retailers 2024 by USA Today. The company was also recognized as one of America’s Largest Private Companies in 2023 by Forbes. The company also made the Inc. 5000 list of America’s Fastest-Growing Companies in 2023. For more information, visit www.84lumber.com 

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Transcript:
Susan Cort: [00:00:00] At 84 Lumber, training is a key to the company's success, from recruitment, retention, and employee development.

Sue Kasko: The managers in each location, I think they truly view it as part of their role to be developing people. So, it's not just selling and running the operation, but thinking about who's next. We hire many people into that manager training role, and they get promoted throughout the company.

Sue Kasko: And part of that is that we have to train and develop those individuals. And the culture of the company is that as a manager, that's part of your role.

Susan Cort: That's Sue Kasko, Senior Director Talent Development at 84 Lumber. Learn how this corporation invests in its most important resource, its people, next on Powered by Learning.

Announcer: Powered by Learning is brought to you by d’Vinci Interactive. d’Vinci's approach to learning is grounded in 30 years of innovation and expertise. We use proven strategies and leading technology to [00:01:00] develop solutions that power learners to improve quality and boost performance. Learn more at dvinci.com.

Susan Cort: Joining me today is Angeline Evans, Client Solutions Consultant at d’Vinci and our guest, Sue Kasko, Senior Director, Talent Development at 84 Lumber. Founded in 1956 and headquartered in 84 Pennsylvania. 84 Lumber Company is the nation's largest privately held supplier of building materials, manufactured components, and industry leading services for single and multifamily residences and commercial buildings.

Susan Cort: It operates 320 facilities, which includes stores, component manufacturing plants, custom door shops, and engineered wood product centers in 33 states. Sue, welcome to Powered by Learning.

Angeline Evans: It's nice to see you again, Sue.

Sue Kasko: Hi, good afternoon. It's great to see both of you as well. Thank you so much for having me.

Susan Cort: Well, you're welcome. Thank you for joining us. Sue, start out by telling us a little bit about your background and your role at 84 Lumber.

Sue Kasko: Sure, well I [00:02:00] think like many of us in Learning and Development, I've ended up career wise where I am today by a series of what I consider fortunate events. In school, I was an economics major, really nothing to do with learning and development and always had an interest in the hotel industry.

Sue Kasko: So that's where I started my career. And interestingly, when I was working my very first job for the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company, we were in the process of applying for the Malcolm Baldrige Award, and it's a quality focused award. I'm sure many people listening are familiar with that. And as part of what I worked on there, I came to realize how important people were to making everything successful, whether it was process focused or some other aspect of a business.

Sue Kasko: And so I ended up going back to school, getting an MBA and really wanted to change direction in my career. And so through a series of organizations I worked for, I worked in finance positions and always gravitated toward projects where people were involved. And ultimately I ended [00:03:00] up in a performance consulting type of role.

Sue Kasko: I worked in the airline industry and then after that for several years in retail with Dick's Sporting Goods. And have been here at 84 Lumber for six years now.

Susan Cort: That's quite a journey.

Sue Kasko: Yeah, it's all over the place, but I find so many colleagues who I meet in our field have a similar story, right? They, they ended up here because of a passion and interest in learning, um, helping people develop.

Sue Kasko: And so I feel really fortunate to be here at 84 today in the role that I'm in. Here, our team is responsible for all learning and development across the organization. I'll say leading it in the sense of putting informal learning in place. So we do onboarding and role specific training, leadership development, compliance training, as well as other pieces of talent, things like performance management and employee engagement, as well as internal communications.

Angeline Evans: Wow. So there are a number of roles at 84 Lumber. Can you tell me a little bit about the roles that your department [00:04:00] serves?

Sue Kasko: Sure, so our business is actually quite varied. If people are familiar with the company, they often think of our store locations, which you mentioned in the introduction. And I would say they're the heart of the company and really where we started.

Sue Kasko: So we have, of course, many different roles in the stores, starting with what I consider our core foundational role. We call it a manager trainee. It's the entry level position into our stores organization. Almost every associate who starts in that part of the business starts in that role or one of our yard associate positions.

Sue Kasko: Um, and then we have various paths. We have operational roles, which are more like dispatch and operations management. We have, um, a big piece of the store business is around sales, of course, so we have a lot of sales positions. Um, as well as some of the leaders and managers in the stores, but we have a whole other part of the business that's focused on connected, of course, components, which is building components, manufacturing, so manufacturing part of the business, we have engineered [00:05:00] wood, EWP, we have installed, so installed sales.

Sue Kasko: As well, and in those parts of the business are a variety of roles as well. Manufacturing, of course, we have production associates, leadership roles, design, so design, building, um, like designing trusses and wall panels, et cetera, that then we then build. So a variety of different roles. And with that, a variety of different training needs, I'm sure.

Angeline Evans: Yeah, thank you so much for sharing all of those different role types. I'd love to know how you handle training an audience with so many diversity and skill sets and geographically dispersed across the company. It just feels like a lot to take on.

Sue Kasko: It is a lot. I say a lot. A couple of things. Um, first of all, you know, as far as modalities, we approach it with lots of a variety of different methods.

Sue Kasko: We use classroom training. We use online training. We create videos and do video series on certain topics. We focus a lot on resources [00:06:00] and performance support and how to help people in their roles, um, putting in structured learning paths, so some of it becomes a little bit self-serve for some of those audiences.

Sue Kasko: I would say probably one of the key components, because of what you mentioned, the geographical dispersion and also the variety of different roles is the role that the manager or the leader on each location plays in learning. And so we put a lot of responsibility on those store managers and other leaders and part of our business to take on that as part of the role of developing the future talent of the organization.

Sue Kasko: And they are training the individuals in their stores. And so of course, you know, our team's function is to support them in doing that. And so some of that is through the formal learning that we create. Um, some of it is by creating that structure that then they can implement in the store. So whether that be an onboarding checklist or [00:07:00] an online learning plan that a new associate would follow.

Sue Kasko: But that manager is really key because they're there at that location, they, that on the job training is how a lot of the skills that you maybe learn piece of it in a classroom, but it's the actual applying it, doing it on the job that really brings that learning home, and so that manager is really critical to that.

Sue Kasko: And not just the geographical dispersion, but our business is very unique market to market. So, even if we're based here in 84 PA, which is Pittsburgh, so if we bring people here to Pittsburgh and they are in a classroom setting learning something, we're teaching the common principle it apply to many. But when you go to a location, what happens in that store in that location might be very different based on market conditions, their customer base, their local building codes.

Sue Kasko: Um, and so that manager translating what we do into what it's like in their environment is really important.

Angeline Evans: That's really interesting. I'm sure, I mean, I know a number of [00:08:00] organizations have a similar setup where their regional managers might service trainers. How do you get those managers comfortable with being in that training role?

Angeline Evans: Because it's different than just, you know, being a supervisor to a team, or a team lead. I mean, training does have a different aspect to it. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Sue Kasko: Sure. So part of it, I think, is Our culture, as I mentioned, the managers in each location, I think they truly view it as part of their role to be developing people.

Sue Kasko: So it's not just selling and running the operation, but thinking about who's next. Um, we hire many people into that manager trainee role and they get promoted throughout the company. And so part of that is that we have to train and develop those individuals. And the culture of the company is that as a manager, that's part of your role.

Sue Kasko: So I would say that's one piece of it, but also, um, many of them have also gone through a lot of the same learning experiences. So they have [00:09:00] that foundation as well. We also, I think part of the structure we put in place helps with that. So, for example, when We have new store associates in that manager trainee role.

Sue Kasko: We have them all come to Pittsburgh in probably between four and six weeks in role. So from all over the country, they come here to our training center where they go through an experience called Lumber Camp.

Angeline Evans: I love that name. Yeah, I know. I

Sue Kasko: know.

Angeline Evans: Sounds like fun. It does sound like fun. I want to go to Lumber Camp.

Sue Kasko: It's a lot of fun. We even have dorms here. You can stay in dorms. And I'm sure you would stop it. That's awesome. Enjoy staying in a bunk bed as well. But it's ironically, it is part of the experience that I think is builds the culture in the organization. But we bring everyone here so they have that same foundation, so that we have a new associate, they learn basic product knowledge, blueprints, material estimating, some of our basic [00:10:00] sales models, so that when they go back to the location where the manager is leading the on the job training, we know that everyone has a core foundation the same, which helps managers know, okay, this is, this is what we're working with and what our starting point is.

Sue Kasko: And along with that, we have for that role a pretty extensive self study program, Continuing Education, which is an expanded version of pretty much most of those topics that I mentioned along there. So that Lumber Camp is a foundational piece that I think sets the individuals up for success, but also the managers, to your point there, Angeline, about, you know, how do the managers handle that?

Sue Kasko: So that's, that's one of the things.

Angeline Evans: I love to hear that the managers are really getting developed holistically to know that they're developing people and just not managing the work, so I think that's wonderful. How much time, I mean, I know it's a lot to be a manager in those different roles, how much time do you think they invest in training each month or each week, just out of curiosity?

Sue Kasko: Oh gosh, um, I don't know if I can say an exact number. [00:11:00] I would say the, it depends, of course, on lots of variables. But one of the things I think that responsibility is shared, so for example, if there's a role in the store called a co-manager, and that person is, um, think almost like an assistant manager type of role, they are directly responsible day to day for guiding the manager trainees, and I would say probably in some ways if that person is new, half their day they're spending really helping that person, whether that training is literally walking them through how to do something in the system or reviewing product knowledge with them, or maybe just answering the myriad of questions a new person has when they start a job, and so it is a large part of their role. And then a store manager, it would be, probably less, but dependent on if they have a new salesperson, maybe they're spending a day, a week out driving to customers with them to help coach them through that process.

Angeline Evans: So there's that shoulder-to-shoulder aspect.

Sue Kasko: Absolutely. Yes.

Angeline Evans: So, so [00:12:00] outside of the in-person training that you do with managers and that managers do with their team, what other 84 Lumber?

Sue Kasko: So one of the things I think I briefly mentioned were videos. So one of the things that we implemented a couple years ago that has been, um, very popular are we call them Five Minute Foundations.

Sue Kasko: So they're five minute ish videos around a very targeted topic. And we take a specific topic. It could be anything from the credit system we use to right now we're doing a series on doors and door knowledge. And so the training team works on creating a video around that specific topic. We publish them monthly, and as I said, they're very popular.

Sue Kasko: People can access them wherever they are in the stores. They're always available through our learning management system as well. So that's one example. We do quite a bit of online training as well. So again, [00:13:00] a variety of topics. We use an app for vendor product knowledge. So, we use a third-party app where it's a little bit of the micro learning, incentivized training that people can access on their mobile devices.

Sue Kasko: That's also been really popular, um, for our store associates because they have that little bit of incentive of being able to earn points when they complete training, but at the same time we're feeding them those nuggets of ongoing information. In the product area, which is, you can imagine, products are always changing, and so you have to continually learn about new features, et cetera.

Angeline Evans: That's awesome. I love hearing about all those micro learning initiatives and even a little, like, subscription learning approach, I guess I would say.

Sue Kasko: Also, like going back to the live training thing, I think one of the things that since I've been here at 84, I found very unique is that building on charging our managers to do training and learning and lead their associates, our area [00:14:00] managers run a program they call 84 University every year.

Sue Kasko: And with that, we bring together, so the learning team supports it by creating an agenda, pulling together the content and the materials, you know, pulling in videos or activities, whatever we need to do, but it is then we do a bit of, I'll call it, kind of train the trainer with our area managers. And then they take that content and they pull together associates from their locations into some kind of in person session where they deliver that content.

Sue Kasko: They make it a more extended learning experience. Of course, they have the ability to flex that content to what's needed in their region, or maybe do an add on thing like going to tour a plant or something like that to create that learning experience. So it's really a blended partnership between.

Sue Kasko: Learning and our leaders to create these learning experiences in lots of different ways.

Angeline Evans: That's great. So hearing more about that, um, I want to take a step back. So [00:15:00] I, like, I see how involved you are in all of the different aspects at 84 Lumber. And when we last spoke, you mentioned you were working on a career lattice.

Angeline Evans: And you also mentioned at the beginning of the session about, you know, the culture of promoting within. Can you talk to me a little bit more about that? And it sounds like that's not just hearing all of the different training avenues you take. How do you not have a culture of promoting within, right?

Sue Kasko: Sure, I'll start there because those, I think both parts of your question are related. So the promote from within, 84, I mentioned before we have this manager trainee position in our stores, and that is the entry level position for pretty much everyone in that part of the business. And so how seriously we take promoting from within, nearly a hundred percent of our store managers, area managers, divisional vice presidents, all started as manager trainees in our store.

Sue Kasko: Okay. Great. And so we have an incredible commitment to promoting from within. Um, you know, we make a, you know, I'll say almost a promise to our new [00:16:00] hires that we'll hire you and you don't need to know anything about our industry, anything about our business. We'll teach you what you need to know. Um, you know, if you make that commitment to, I'm willing to work hard and willing to learn.

Sue Kasko: And so, if you think about if that's the culture that we start with, learning is so important to that because you're taking somebody who knows nothing and you are making that investment to say this person will be a next leader in our organization somewhere. And so that promote from within culture, I think, creates this inherent buy in or belief in that learning and training is important.

Sue Kasko: In the organization and there for a long time, that traditional path was I get hired as a manager trainee. I get promoted to a co-manager. I become a store manager, maybe going to sales. But then, you know, that's the path. It was very linear. And as the business has grown and changed over the years, the needs are different as we've developed much larger [00:17:00] stores and different customer bases, the other positions like dispatchers and operations managers and sales coordinators.

Sue Kasko: And install managers, they're all different roles that maybe didn't exist or weren't prominent, you know, a couple decades ago. So as that has changed, the training focus has to change as well. So we used to be very focused on how do we support that one linear path? And now we have to say, like using your term of career lattice, that there's not a straight path to the top anymore, right?

Sue Kasko: There are probably lots of zigzags and side routes that are really important to be successful now in a, in another leadership role where you have a broader scope of responsibility. And so, when we think about it from a learning perspective, we're working with the business to understand, like, what are some of those key career points that are needed from a learning, both a skill and experience perspective, in order to be [00:18:00] successful later on.

Sue Kasko: So, as we do that, we're shifting a little bit of our learning strategy from, hey, let's just support just those core roles, to say, okay, what are the other key transition points and how do we support that from a learning perspective, um, more formally than just saying, hey, they'll teach you on the job, but how do we marry that with something more formal?

Sue Kasko: And then helping map out what that looks like. Because I think there's a lot of people. who are very smart and very ingrained in our business who understand that, but it's not mapped out anywhere. And so I think we can help add value by saying, okay, Based on, you know, the information, what we've collected and pulled together and all the data and the research we're doing with you, we can say, here are the key points and almost taking a little bit of that skills approach to say, here are the skills.

Sue Kasko: And then how do we build a learning plan or a learning approach that will support that skill development? to support that [00:19:00] career lattice. So, as you make those zigs and zags in your career, that you have the learning that matches up with what you need to ultimately end up with the skill and experience set for success.

Susan Cort: It sounds like from day one, 84 Lumber is invested in those team members and they have to feel that connection to the company. And I would also think a sense of pride in working for a company that has such an excellent reputation. How do you infuse that, that sense of pride and commitment to brand through the training that you're doing?

Sue Kasko: I think it goes right back to Lumber Camp and thinking about, like, it is a cultural experience. It's one of the reasons I think we make the investment in bringing people from all over the country who are really, you know, entry level, new to the company here to say, hey, this is really important. And you may work in a state where we have very few locations, and you may not even have known there were other 84 Lumbers.

Sue Kasko: And we bring you here and you're like, wow, I'm meeting people from all over the country who work for the same company. And we have a shared set of [00:20:00] interests and values. And so it creates that bond with people that I see as people come back to various learning events. And as I encounter them throughout their career, they remember those people and experiences from the beginning.

Sue Kasko: So that helps infuse that culture. Um, I really think like some of those, some of those principles, and I, and I was not joking about like staying in the dorms and sharing a bunk bed. There's just something about, you know, sleeping with a bunk mate that you, you build a bond there. And, and so, and we do things, while they're here, like our dorms are very nice.

Sue Kasko: I don't picture some freshman dorm. Maybe, you know, I had a few years ago, they're very nice. We have a fire pit outside. So we encourage that like social interaction, et cetera. And then that culture is across our organization, our marketing team. Um, our internal communications, which is, you know, part of the umbrella of talent as well, they reinforce all of those messages.

Sue Kasko: Um, having our [00:21:00] area managers teach 84 University helps reinforce those cultural things. Um, they're seeing a lot of the behaviors modeled by others in the organization. So, I think it starts early and those cultural messages are, are all around them. And. It is reflected, I think, you know, we talk a lot about the 84 family here, and when we do our employee engagement surveys, I hear a lot of, or I see a lot of feedback and comments about, you know, we talk about 84 family, and it feels real.

Sue Kasko: People here care about my career. Um, they care about me, and I think it does come back to some of that investment that managers and leaders are making in their teams.

Susan Cort: Well, by doing that investment, you're making it a career, not just a job.

Sue Kasko: Absolutely. And there's a lot of competition for talent, um, today, and especially bringing people into the organization early in their career, where you're trying to still figure out that fit, where do I fit?

Sue Kasko: Um, and when you find, people who fit with the culture and want to build their career here. There's a lot of opportunity for them and for us.

Angeline Evans: Yeah. Super powerful for [00:22:00] employee engagement and retention. So I was, I saw recently that you presented last spring at ATD's international conference. Can you tell us a little bit about the concepts from your session and how you might apply them at 84 Lumber?

Sue Kasko: Sure. I'm a member of the ATD forum group, and so I presented a session as part of that group with them, and it was the theme around it, or the main message was around how do we make learning stickier. So, I think that's a challenge. Learning professionals, the world over share. Like we invest so much in creating learning.

Sue Kasko: And when people have that learning experience, you want them to walk away actually remembering and being able to apply that information. And so that was the, um, that was the, the theme of the presentation. And it was looking at really durable learning principles and how you can integrate those into learning design or, and not just [00:23:00] learning design, but just maybe your whole learning culture and approach to learning.

Sue Kasko: In that session, we did a very specific application activity to try to illustrate some of that connection. So we used a reflection tool that a lot of people may have seen before, something called just like 3-2-1, which was the name of the session, 3-2-1, make it stick. Like when you have a learning experience, reflecting on it, identifying like three concepts or ideas that stood out to you under the three main points.

Sue Kasko: The two, so what are, um, what are two things from this that I can connect to something I already know or have been thinking about? And then that one, like, what's that one thing I want to explore more or a question I still have? And so, in doing that, you really, if you built in that kind of reflection activity, maybe into part of a learning experience that you have, and it could be anything, it could be classroom, it could be online, where you're prompting someone to process what they're learning in a different way, um, it's connecting to some of those durable learning [00:24:00] principles.

Sue Kasko: So, for example, we talked about durable learning principles, the ones that Accenture has developed and written a lot about. And so we use that as the basis of that. And so one of them is just, you know, contextual. So is the learning contextual? Meaning, can I connect it to some context I already have, something I know to help make those connections in your brain a little bit stronger?

Sue Kasko: And that's the, like, what are two concepts, the two that I can connect to something I already know. And so it was an opportunity for the people in the session to then kind of apply that and think about, as I look across all of these durable learning principles um, how can I incorporate them and how do they make learning stickier?

Sue Kasko: So that's a little bit about what it was about. I mean, I thought the content, the content was great. And interestingly, some members of our team here at 84 were able to attend and listen to it. And one of my team members afterwards said, you know, Sue, what would be really great is if we took these durable [00:25:00] learning principles and we took one of the programs that we have in place right now and kind of bumped it up against And said, where can we make our program stickier?

Sue Kasko: So, you know, for example, thinking about like, how are we making it relevant? What makes it engaging? How are we incorporating reflection? How do we make it contextual? Like look across all of those and say, how can we tweak it? And so we're going to do that at the end of the year, we pick two programs. Um, when we have our annual roundup, where we think about planning for next year, we're going to do that.

Sue Kasko: So. I thought that's almost a creative way. It's not really in the learning design, um, up front, but kind of going back and reflecting on what we're doing today and how can we improve it.

Susan Cort: That's great. Great plan for the future.

Angeline Evans: Yeah, I love it. We're all in a battle against that forgetting curve. So I really like that.

Sue Kasko: Oh, I know.

Angeline Evans: So finally, we ask all of our guests, you know, what's ahead for you in training, and if you're dipping your [00:26:00] toe into anything new or innovative. So oftentimes we'll hear folks talk about AI, if they're just dabbling just a smidge in that to help them generate training faster, or even just analyze data.I'd love to hear if there's any new things on the horizon for 84 Lumber.

Sue Kasko: Yeah, I would say that I probably fall in that category of dabbling in AI. You know, we're like everyone else, you can't escape it today. So we wouldn't think about like, how can we really leverage AI? And I do feel like in learning and development, there are a lot of tools out there that are pretty ahead of the curve, maybe as even some of the other parts of the business.

Sue Kasko: And very accessible to us, so we on the learning team, for example, we're using some tools to help us with a video creation, so a lot of that text to voice, um, and some really good, animated characters that you can bring into the video that are very lifelike. Um, it really has streamlined some of [00:27:00] that video production on our end for training videos where we're doing explaining, we're integrating it into some of our online courses.

Sue Kasko: Um, so we're trying to get a little better at that and it's the time savings. Um, and it's the convenience of, okay, if we have to change the script because there's an edit, we don't have to bring someone back in. And rerecord them and do all that editing. That's been a, that's been really beneficial to us so far.

Sue Kasko: So I say a little dabbling. I don't, you know, I, I know a lot of people are doing that. That's not really cutting edge, but one of the things that we've also been thinking about, I may have mentioned earlier that part of what we do is we try to provide resources to help those, you know, across the country for learning to be able to access them in the time of needs, I'm thinking about like, how do we use, AI in some way to help with performance support.

Sue Kasko: One of the challenges that we have is that difference in markets, locations, et cetera. And what I was saying before [00:28:00] about products being different in every location, like how do you teach all of that? How do you teach the nuances that exist across 300 locations? I mean, we can't have 300 different training programs on every product.

Sue Kasko: So what does that look like? And so is there a performance support tool? That we could give access to individuals to that in the moment of need, um, just like, you know, when your dryer breaks is when you want to watch the YouTube video on how to fix it, you know, so in that moment of need, when someone needs to understand, okay, what are the, how do I do a takeoff in my store, I like to do a materials estimate in consideration of the local building codes, et cetera.

Sue Kasko: How do I get that information in front of me right away? Learn And so, you know, it's an area of interest for us where we're just starting to explore how can we build some really dynamic performance support tools. That would help go forward. And so if there's anyone listening who has some great ideas or just wants to brainstorm about that, [00:29:00] I would love to talk to people about it because, um, I would say that is where we're dipping our toe in and want to try to go next.

Susan Cort: That's a tall order, but that sounds like that would be so helpful for your team.

Sue Kasko: Yeah. I mean, if we can, and I'm sure there's way, you know, baby steps, right? So I'm sure there's incremental ways we can get there. Um, but I do think that it would be something in the future that will, that would be very helpful.

Susan Cort: Well, you need to promise us in a few years or whenever you get this launched, come back on and share again with us about, about what you've done, because it sounds like a great, great plan forward.

Sue Kasko: I would be happy to.

Angeline Evans: Well, Sue, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

Sue Kasko: I appreciate it. Yes.

Sue Kasko: Thanks, Sue. Thank you for having me.

Susan Cort: Angeline, it's great to learn about 84 Lumber's commitment to learning and how it positively affects their workforce.

Angeline Evans: It is. And we hear this so often when we talk to learning leaders, that training is such a key player when it comes to recruitment, engagement and retention [00:30:00] and leadership development.

Susan Cort: Absolutely. And it all starts with Lumber Camp.

Angeline Evans: Oh my gosh, I'm so jealous. I didn't get to go to Lumber Camp.

Susan Cort: We'll have to have Sue sign us up.

Angeline Evans: Yes!

Susan Cort: Thanks, Angeline. And special thanks to our guest, Sue Kasko of 84 Lumber. If you have a suggestion for a topic or a guest, please reach out to us at poweredbylearning@dvinci.com. And don't forget that you can subscribe to Powered by Learning wherever you listen to your podcasts.