Case Studies
These are a selection of case studies showing examples of development programmes we have conducted. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions.
Management & Leadership
BMW's prestige engine factory at Hams Hall, near Birmingham, sees the coming together of a British workforce and a firmly established parent operating culture. The ability of the showpiece facility to meet quality and volume targets depends very much on a successful merging of the two.
The MD of this French owned tooling subsidiary had identified that his senior management team was effective in their own areas of operation, whilst not always being as effective in joint working and overall business delivery. With continental Europe suffering a manufacturing recession a more harsh internal and external environment led him to believe that his successful company needed to adapt to maintain its previous high levels of performance.
Powergen is the 2nd largest supplier to the UK Energy market with some 5 million retail customers. Its business encompasses generation, wholesale trading, distribution as well as retail trading to the domestic, industrial and commercial markets. The Company employs some 5000 staff in the UK and has grown substantially in recent years with the acquisitions of East Midlands Electricity in 1998 and Txu Energy in 2002. Also in 2002 Powergen was itself taken over by E.on of Germany the largest Investor owned Energy Company in the world.
Organisation Development
Peri are the countries leading supplier and manufacturer of specialist building frames and scaffolding equipment. For a number of years they had been using an existing Performance Management system that wasn't meeting all their requirements and was seen by some to be cumbersome and unproductive. The Managing Director asked us to look at the current system and to propose an alternative approach that would better suit their culture and needs.
Personal Development & Presentation
This Birmingham based subsidiary of Honeywell had a range of people on an internal Communications Group, drawn from all over its organisation. There was a tendency for meetings to be unstructured, taken quickly off the point and often causing conflict between individuals. This resulted in the group feeling they were unclear on the impact of its efforts, little action seemed to result and meetings began to drift.In addition, there has been recruitment for the first time for some years of young people on Modern Apprentice schemes. Each apprentice was allocated a mentor to oversee their learning whilst rotating through a range on internal placements. It was identified that some performance managers also required skills in coaching and mentoring skills.
The client had a range of people, engineers and managers, who are responsible for making client presentations as part of project meetings or tender proposals. In addition, the management team have a monthly financial summary statement for their area or project.
Skills for the HR & Training Professionals
UKAS have a stipulation that approximately 20 people within CAS, who have responsibility for instructing others in work processes, are accredited with appropriate training. Organisational constraints dictate that this training needs to be delivered in a one-day format.
Standards of service, customer focus and operating efficiency are perhaps more critical in the highly competitive world of aviation than in any other service business. Recognising that people skills are as vital as technological innovation, Virgin Atlantic Airways asked Woodland Grange to recommend, design and deliver a programme that would lead to a professional qualification for its own training staff, and thus help ensure that employee standards would contribute directly to the continuing success of the business.
Sales & Customer Service
With over 1200 companies in membership the Engineering Employers Federation West Midlands are the largest employers’ association in the region for engineering, manufacturing and technology-based industries. They support and advise member organisations on all aspects of human resource management and health, safety and environment issues. Regionally and nationally they also represent member interests to those determining the economic and social conditions in which business operates.
Project Management
Infast had identified the need to develop a group of approximately 15 Project Management Champions capable of taking on and scoping projects from the outset, monitoring and controlling both progress and risk through to a successful conclusion.