To showcase the experience and impact on participants, this is the story of a Regional Manager who participated in one of our programmes for a global client, sharing his perspective on what it’s really like.
What did your organisations want to achieve through the programme?
The company had set an ambitious goal to become the best logistics company to work for, and to do business with. To meet this goal, it set out on an ambitious cultural transformation journey, to ensure that our company culture put both employees and customers at the heart of all our activities. This involved significant changes to employee job roles, developing new skillsets and following new business processes.
What challenges were you facing in your role?
When I arrived in my new role as Regional Manager, four members of the leadership team had recently resigned so my immediate challenge was to rebuild morale and stabilise the team. I also wanted to build trust with my team, so that they felt they’d be supported in making the necessary changes in their roles and developing the new skills that were required as part of the cultural transformation.
How did you find the training programme?
I elected to join the programme, led by LIW, after a few months of being in my new role to help me gain the skills I needed to be a better leader and to support my team through this significant cultural change.
I found the bitesize learning format of the programme and the ‘doing to learn’ approach made it easier to absorb and apply learnings into real-life situations. I was able to quickly put into practice the new skills and behaviours I developed through the training with the 1:1 support of a coach.
Initially I was worried I wouldn’t have the time to participate in the programme, but it was absolutely worth the time investment. It has given me the skills and frameworks I need to drive the desired cultural transformation in my area of the business.
How have you put into action what you learned?
The programme provided a fantastic platform of content and frameworks that I could directly apply in my business to deliver the cultural transformation we needed. Many of my team were required to take on new roles and develop new skills, and these changes were supported and underpinned by understanding how to nurture a culture of trust.
I started by running a strategy session employing the 3Ws and 3Cs frameworks to involve all team members and support team thinking. I committed to providing constructive feedback to my team in order to help them to develop and learn. I also introduced several initiatives to build collaboration, including sharing simple strategic models so that all team members could contribute to developing and implementing the new strategy. We also made sure to regularly celebrate success to help us connect as a team.
What have you been able to achieve as a result?
Firstly, we built a new organisation structure which is recognised by the wider business as being far more effective.
We have also retained and stabilised the leadership team and turned around our NPS, staff engagement and customer satisfaction scores by building a culture of trust based on deep personal engagement and empathy.
My area of the business has increased staff retention by 8% and customer retention on 19% year on year. We also grew transportation volumes despite a 10-week lockdown and profits have increased significantly.