Clients and projects

The client

Gloucestershire County Council wished to commission an online training package to support their 200 plus team leaders in identifying, when online with remote team members, signs of increased anxiety within their teams and thereafter opening and conducting a wellbeing based conversation with individual team members.

The challenge

There is no health without mental health. During the pandemic, more than half of adults and over two thirds of young people have said their mental well-being has deteriorated since Covid-19 emerged, according to mental health charity MIND. In addition, research by the Gartner organisation found that 53 percent of employees feel burnt out, 42 percent feel depressed, 55 percent are lonely and 89 percent are worried about their own personal welfare. Consequently, 68 percent of UK organisations introduced at least one new wellness benefit by late March 2020 to aid employees during the Covid-19 pandemic (source: Gartner 2020).

The Solution 

In collaboration with GCC leaders Change Corp devised a two stage solution.

Stage 1: Online Learning Video & Keeping Well Video with Resource Manual
This involved the design and production of a bespoke short video covering the process of identifying symptoms of reduced wellness and type of questions and interventions team leaders can use with team members. The video was approximately 8 minutes. The learning video was supported by a detailed Keeping Well Resource Manual with tips and techniques to support this activity.

Stage 2: Online Learning Video incorporating recorded Experiential Role Play.
This stage involved the design and production of a video using professional actors modelling the wellbeing conversation. Divided into three segments – the poor conversation, the right type of conversation and then an annotated summary video highlighting key learning points for a positive wellbeing conversation.

The Benefits

The GCC team leaders :
• Gained a better understanding of their communication style when conducting conversations with team members remotely;
• Shifted behaviour in ways that produced positive outcomes from wellbeing conversations;
• Gained skills that are transferable to face to face coaching and mentoring;

We designed and delivered a series of half-day online development events for our client which included the CEO, Directors and Heads of Service.

These were designed to set a strategic direction as well as exploring opportunities to embody a growth mindset within the leadership teams and their direct reports. Each event utilised a range of innovations including the use of gamification and live feedback.

Change Corp are leaders in culture change, team leadership and building resilience. We work with both public sector and private sector clients.

Recently we were delighted to support Johnson & Johnson and Syneos Health in running their Virtual Leadership Summit for the North American annual national sales team conference. There were three business units involved – the oral care, skin care and self-care organisations. We adapted the Lencioni 5 Behaviours of a Cohesive team and were able to implement an online survey to over 130 sales representatives in advance of the Summit on how they perceived their team leaders/managers as well as tapping into their feelings on current pressures they face during the pandemic as well as what their feelings were about the Johnson & Johnson culture, values, engagement, wellbeing and belonging.

We combined quantitative and qualitative data which provided a “rich picture” for all participants. During an online workshop, these data were presented to the District Managers (who had themselves completed our online survey) – and we facilitated rich discussions on the District Manager’s self-perception versus how the representatives on the ground perceived the District Managers. Using gamification tools, a keynote address on the 5 Behaviours and facilitated online breakout sessions we created an engaging and dynamic framework to achieve the Summit objectives – identify team development areas and build a Growth Mindset.

We supported Sykes’ 2020 annual European team conference with pre-conference survey, keynote on ‘what brings a positive advantage in our changing world’, digital workshop using gamification and high energy, well-being sessions.

Change Corp was engaged by the CEO and founder of Pearl Group to find out key areas of improvement that had come out of The Great Place to Work survey, to strengthen the culture and team spirit as well as developing their team leaders to succeed in their roles as people managers.

The review of the areas if improvement was done in two stages, focus groups and a selection of interviews. We conducted 16 focus groups and 11 interviews with team leaders and senior managers. After presenting the findings to the leadership team we delivered a 2 day training for all team leaders from various countries and we embedded and made the learnings sustainable by ending the program with a 6 month coaching program for each team leader.

A key outcome of the change management awareness training held for the Google leadership and sales team in Norway and in Germany was enabling the teams to become even better change consultants for their clients. Key achievements: Design and delivery of a consulting skills programme based around a ‘real’ customer case-study.

Working with Town Council on the change management aspects of a large-scale property review including the introduction of flexible working. Key achievements: Developed an implementation plan for the engagement approach from 2017 – 2020 which includes communications strategy & plan, stakeholder engagement, senior leadership coaching, IT training, training in flexible working for managers & process reviews. Deployed a staff engagement survey which resulted in a behaviours framework being developed for the organisation with the survey to be repeated later this year.

Develop & implement a behaviours framework to drive improved performance.  Also, to make recommendations about how to embed the new behaviours into the organisation. We also expect to undertake the implementation work. Key achievements: Behaviours framework and set of recommendations to embed these into the organisation.

UMS had culture challenges and wanted to improve communications across 7 countries. We worked with the top management team to design a measurement methodology and rolled out a survey to all employees. The survey was well received by employees and provided the top leadership with insights they could use to improve communication and employee engagement in their organisation.

Conducting an organisational review during May 2015 that reported to Monitor and now implementing several learning and development initiatives within the Trust. Key achievements to date: Design and delivery of career development and interview skills workshops. Early 2015, will be designing elements of a leadership development programme for clinical staff.

We worked with the senior leadership team of a large unitary authority over a 2-year period.  We kicked started the process with a personal assessment of each leader as well as the allocation of a coach.  We then designed targeted learning inputs every 3 months covering ‘Managing Self’, ‘Managing Others’ and ‘Managing the Organisation’. These were very challenging sessions designed to turn an essentially ‘avoidance culture’ into one where honesty, trust, openness and collaboration were the norm.  In between each taught session, the leaders received monthly coaching and were each put into a Mastermind group to discuss common issues.  In an organisation where budget cuts had become an everyday challenge, the leadership development process enabled the group to collaborate more effectively and challenge each other to create wide ranging efficiencies.

We worked with an organisation struggling to understand the high levels of stress and sickness in their largest department.  We undertook a survey as well as focus groups and interviews to understand what was really going on.  The survey revealed a leadership style focused on task and delivery that paid little account to staff well-being and development.  We reported to the Board about our discoveries and made a series of recommendations.  Our recommendations included:

• Cascade of leadership development interventions from the senior management team to team leader level
• Coaches for senior staff to help embed learning
• Defining new values and behaviours
• End to end review of HR policies and procedures
• Code of conduct for managers to help them deal with mental health issues
• Improve staff communications
• Review of certain work processes

After a year of intense action, we re-ran the same survey.  There was measurable improvement against 69% of all areas and 75% of staff agreed that the culture and staff engagement levels had improved.