Global leadership program - frontline leaders

The content and delivery have been developed to provide first-time leaders with a solid foundation on which to build their leadership. It covers both a broad understanding of the goals of a leader and a core set of tools to apply in different settings. The annual engagement survey provides individual engagement scores which set the starting point for personal development. 

In order to optimise impact, line managers are engaged and support participants’ development through the program.  At the start of this journey, participants and their managers each attend orientation meetings to understand the goals and scope of the program and expected outcomes. Before the first formal session, participants meet with their manager to discuss their personal engagement scores, in order to identify strengths and development areas to focus on.

The first face-to-face session is two days and covers the following topics:

• Situational leadership
• Employee engagement
• Emotional intelligence
• Managing in a matrix
• Managing conflict
• Goal-setting
• Coaching & feedback
• Delegation

The session is highly practical, with lots of opportunities for role play and application to participants’ individual business challenges. Participants also get the opportunity to share experiences with peers in Tate & Lyle and to discuss the Tate & Lyle Leadership Framework and how it applies to them and their role. At the end of this session, participants write their own Leadership Action Plan to take back to their role.

After the two-day session, participants meet with their manager to review learning and build on their Leadership Action Plan. Over the next three months, there are follow-up webinar sessions on a range of topics where participants can share their experiences since the program start as well as learn new skills and approaches to build on their leadership capabilities:

• Motivation
• Managing change
• Creative thinking
• Team meetings
• Time management Communication/presentation skills

Participants are further supported in transferring their learning to their work by three 1:1 coaching sessions. These are delivered by telephone by specialist learning transfer coaches and ensure participants stay true to the commitments in their Action Plans and help them to drive to measurable business outcomes. Typically, 2 months after the individual coaching there is a second 2-day workshop where participants review their success in applying learnings and cover further leadership topics, including:

• Communication
• Change
• Learning journey
• Coaching application

At the formal end of this 6-month leadership development journey, participants complete a business impact survey in which they report the changes in behaviour they have made and the impact they have achieved for their team and the business. In some locations, several people had attended the program and had worked together to make significant changes to their group leadership at the manufacturing plant level to raise both individual performance and team flexibility, engagement, skill levels, accountability, and collaboration.

Participants report extremely high levels of relevance and learning from the program and were particularly motivated by the investment by Tate & Lyle in frontline leaders who had not previously benefited from non-technical training opportunities. Since the emphasis throughout the workshops is on practical application of learning, participants find it easy to transfer the learning to their role and make a real difference to their own and their team’s engagement and performance.

Participant performance highlights (FY15 participants – 20 cohorts, 228 participants): 

• 82% participants report having achieved improved outcomes for the business
• Average performance improvement reported by all participants is 19%, equivalent to almost one extra day/week

Greatest areas of impact are improved efficiency, increased engagement, and strengthened relationships with internal stakeholders.  Scope of impact extends to individual, team, and department level as expected.  

• 68% report being more engaged since attending the program
• 71% report their team are more engaged since they attended the program

Program participants have achieved real and important impacts for the organisation. They are supervisors and managers in manufacturing and corporate office locations, so they have real influence over the productivity and performance of frontline staff and how they work together to deliver business outcomes. Many initiatives have led to greater involvement of staff in decision-making and clearer alignment of individual roles with business outcomes – both of which have significantly improved employee engagement.  In several manufacturing plants in particular, program participants have driven change which has increased safety standards, raised production efficiency, and improved skill levels to enable greater flexibility in manufacturing planning.

In the USA Richard May drove an initiative to ‘make safety a personal responsibility’ and engaged frontline staff in developing guidelines and identifying and fixing safety concerns. The plant has since continued to break records for safety and the safety agenda is discussed daily throughout the plant.

In Brazil, a number of supervisors and managers attended the program and 100% would recommend the program to others. Together they transformed the culture in the plant from one of individual performance to team responsibility for outcomes with strong collaboration and support. The pace of work has increased dramatically and teams are taking responsibility for problem-solving in production.

In the Netherlands, Area Managers in the plant worked together to develop a process for regular reviews and skill building to enable flexibility of staff across manufacturing lines. Operators were encouraged to make suggestions and take responsibility for safety, quality, etc. Engagement increased, and results followed – a key new product trial was completed on time and with collaboration across the plant.

Sustaining and growing learnt initiatives

The Management Essentials program has two key elements to support and sustain learning and change:

Learning Boosters – sent to participants every 1-2 months for the year following the program. These take the form of a review of content with a video or example to illustrate and a link to the learning portal for further support.

Executive sponsorship of the program that demonstrates corporate-level support for the program as well as providing senior level visibility for participants and locations through the impact reports and case studies.

The Management Essentials program forms the backbone of frontline leadership development at Tate & Lyle and is linked to a wide range of resources for first-time managers, through the T&L Learning Portal.  The program is strongly aligned with the Tate & Lyle leadership competencies so there is a common language across all these resources and both the program and the resource library are regularly updated to reflect changing business conditions and challenges. The program has been rolled out globally in order to develop a consistent style and standard of leadership across all Tate & Lyle locations, whilst also reflecting local challenges and opportunities.

Tate & Lyle recognises that in a global business access to learning must be flexible and tailored to local needs, so the learning portal provides 24/7 access to articles, videos, and podcasts from thought leaders as well as monthly reading lists tailored to individual needs and interests, and monthly updates on specific topics including Change Management and Culture Development.  A range of WebEx modules are delivered on a ‘just-in-time basis’ to support leaders in delivery of key processes such as performance management, talent management, etc. and a Summer School program is offered in partnership with CorpU.