HR development manager: Sally Wood
Annual turnover: 1 billion euros (625.3 million)
Lever Fabergs five-year plan to establish a culture of radical growth was based on a need to outpace the growing competition. The company wanted to cultivate creativity in its leaders so that rapid growth and changes could take place as effectively as possible.
Previous leadership initiatives had raised the self-awareness of the firms leaders but failed to point them in any particular direction. This time, the company started at the top with the executives, using a seven-step model to train them to coach individual staff members and gain the most from them on a daily basis. The seven steps included creating rapport, giving feedback, motivating people to change, and coaching.
Sally Wood, company HR development manager responsible for development in Lever Faberg in the UK, explains: We were looking at coaching skills as a development need. Lever Faberg chose Performance Unlimited to run the programme because it felt its methods had been proven.
A big investment 20% of the management development budget
The pilot scheme, how to be an effective coach, was run across Europe. Adds Wood: A need was identified: we wanted to improve every leaders ability to coach and listen to people, to improve our employee-satisfaction scores. Leaders must be self-aware and coaching is a key leadership skill that can be built on. Its a big investment 20% of the management development budget is being spent on this training.
Maryse Devonshire, acting training and development manager at Lever Faberg, attended the programme. She is one of three HR staff who will take part in a train the trainer course so that one of them will be able to replace of one of the usual three Performance Unlimited staff.
I look at all training programmes that are run by Lever Faberg in the UK in terms of structure and rolling them out within the business. I get involved in aligning courses to what we need and I monitor the programmes, says Devonshire. She also went on the coaching course to get a feel for the content and to enhance her own skills. I found it extremely useful to have some practical experience in the technique it helps me get the most out of what I do. The course helps managers to coach their teams you gain skills that help others develop, and you develop yourself.
The practical elements are easy to transfer to the workplace
Devonshire says the course focused on communication and incorporated practical elements that were easy to transfer to the workplace. Guillermo Tena, HR manager, Unilever Lever Faberg (Spain), who also attended the pilot, says: The programme helped me to find the motivation to change some behaviours that had been identified, in a previous 360 feedback exercise, as needing improvement.
In Spain, 30% of the management has already attended the programme, with all the target group due to have done so by the end of this month. Lever Faberg aims to put half its 500 UK managers through the training by the end of next year. By training its HR staff, the company hopes to become self-sufficient in this area, minimising the use of external consultants.
