Case Studies
Read more about our approach and the results we achieve with our clients
Organisational Development
It is always a pleasure to work with a business that wants to progress and invest in positive culture change. It was wonderful to meet with an HR manager who was one year into her role and looking to make positive improvements. We spent time getting to know the business, what challenges they faced, their goals and aspirations for employee engagement and ideas to introduce a collaborative coaching culture.
It was quite a big change for them. Managers were not equipped with key coaching skills, although many had a style that suited this already. Teams worked in a fractured and independent way, with little collaboration and a disconnect with the wider goals – unintentional, but a likely result of rapid growth and less clarity of direction in the last few years.
Initially we are asked to develop a programme to improve coaching skills and build team effectiveness, however, when we did our research and really got to know them, we found that this approach was potentially jumping ahead a little.
The business had grown quite rapidly over the last 3 – 5 years and the increase in output had left less time for the business to look inward and focus on the workforce. It was clear that job descriptions were not accurate and up to date, managers felt that they were firefighting a lot of the time and felt they didn’t have the capacity, support or backing to focus on their teams. People were joining the business, but potentially the recruitment process could have been better, and the initial few days, weeks and months for new starters was not the most engaging and positive introduction to a flourishing business.
It was also apparent that the connection between teams has been lost and, although working towards common goals, there wasn’t the vision and communication that had been there years before.
We were lucky enough to have the time to talk people across the business and really fine-tune their development aims. We supported them over the period of 8 months, initially providing them with a clear training needs analysis and big picture organisational development strategy.
We supported the leadership team and managers in developing a clear vision, a greater understanding of their purpose, their ‘why’, and how to engage the workforce and communicate this.
Clear organisation values and behaviours were created, with input from people from across the business, and this supported the work we did to update job descriptions and improve their recruitment, induction and performance/talent management strategies. It was great to see the commitment and buy-in from people as they saw results.
All of this started to support better relationships, as we were bringing people together aligned with a common goal and vision. We wanted to ensure that the work we did with them was sustainable, not just whilst we were around, so we developed coaching skills across the business, created and supported the running of regular action learning sets and facilitated networks across the business to champion key development areas.
We were delighted with the changes in the time we worked for them, we hope to continue to see them improve and thrive by investing in their people.
Ready to find out how we can help you? Contact us.
Effective Teams - Together you achieve more
We love to help teams become more effective and collaborative, as we know this gets great results and supports a more productive, positive culture. People are rarely going to feel a great connection to everyone they work with and yet, when teams are driven by a common goal, common values and work together in a trusting, collaborative and responsible way, great things can happen.
This team were, in effect, just a group of people who came to work together in the same office. They had their own roles and responsibilities, some of which involved collaborating with others in the office and other roles where seemingly independent of everyone else. The manager of the team worked well with each individual and supported them in achieving their results. Targets and objectives for individuals were clear.
However, the team rarely came together for any shared purpose, creative thinking, reflecting, learning, growth or even fun and this potentially had contributed to a culture of poor communication, silo working, a lack of feedback, a reduction in trust and commitment to others in the team and the team had become stagnant.
We were asked to deliver an initial team away day – an event that would re-engage the team and help them work more effectively together. We love days like this! Prior to delivery we spent time gathering more insight about how the team worked, the issues, evidence of ineffective working and the desired outcomes from this day. We wanted to create something that would really make a difference.
We started the day with some fun activities to help the team break down barriers and reconnect as people, not just job functions. We explored shared values and goals connected to the business, preferred working styles and key listening and communication skills. By the end of the day the team had a shared mission statement, values and a roadmap for continuing with the themes of the day and making connecting with each other part of normal working life.
The key to our success here was not taking an off the shelf approach – we know this rarely works. Spending the time upfront to understand the status quo meant the day was more impactful in the longer term.
Ready to find out how we can help you build a bespoke team building programme? Contact us.
A Coaching approach to transformation
We recently worked with a Local Authority in the South West on several transformative projects including change management, establishing management competencies and providing training.
Coaching is at the heart of our way of working with businesses – after all, once we have completed our assignment it is the individuals within the organisation that have to embed the work. Leaving them with the skills and confidence to take it on is part of our offer.
We saw real breakthroughs in improving management and communication skills so that change management processes were engaging and successful, placing the organisation in a great place to meet the future challenges of local government.
However, it is the lasting impact coaching had on individuals that will stay with us.
From the talented individuals we coached to finally achieve their professional development goals and achieve that promotion, to those needing more confidence to perform well in their role who are now standing up in front of a room full of peers presenting like a pro!
At a time where there is a scarcity of great candidates on the job market, hanging onto and developing talent in-house is vital to the sustainable running of local authorities. It makes sense to keep the knowledge, skills and experience you have within your teams and invest in their professional and personal development – coaching can be key to this and a low-cost solution compared to the recruitment and training of new staff.
Ready to find out how we can help you? Contact us.