To equip managers across the organisation to deal with people management and development, in an effective and consistent manner, leading to better business outcomes.
Brief
Client: Retail organisation
Size: Over 1,000 employees
Challenge: To equip managers across the organisation to deal with people management and development, in an effective and consistent manner, leading to better business outcomes.
Aims of Program
1. Give managers the skills and confidence to effectively deal with performance issues and grievances.
2. Ensure all managers assign tasks clearly and can skill their people to complete them.
3. Develop consistently good sales and service skills amongst staff in retail outlets.
Deliverables
Training Modules:
Communication skills - to enable managers to have clear, rational and honest performance discussions with their staff.
Performance management skills - to enable managers to set clear expectations, analyse performance, give constructive feedback and effectively manage performance issues.
Skills coaching - to give retail store managers the capability to coach staff in effective sales and service skills.
Approach
A top down approach was taken to ensure that a clear message was sent about the importance of the development program and to ensure consistent application of the skills and behaviours throughout the company.
The executive team undertook the three training modules first and then the program was cascaded down to the managers and key specialists in Head Office, and the Regional Managers who manage the Retail Store Managers.
All workshops and coaching were delivered by Development in Practice. In addition, initiatives were put into place to provide ongoing re-inforcement to fully embed the training.
In order to cost effectively develop its hundreds of Retail Store Managers, the organisation entered into a License Agreement with Development in Practice, to deliver the key behaviours and skills in performance management and coaching, using its own facilitators. Development in Practice trained and accredited two of the organisation's facilitators to deliver the workshops.
Outcomes
Post program evaluation showed:
1. Store Managers are confident and able to deal with the performance issues and grievances that arise in their stores.
2. They are able to clearly assign tasks, clarifying responsibilities, reducing rework and improving productivity.
3. They are able to give constructive feedback to staff which improved subsequent performance.
4. Sales and service skills amongst staff are now more effectively and consistently applied, leading to improved sales and better results in ‘mystery shopper' evaluations.
Savings in rework due to clear task assignment has already been conservatively estimated at over $600k per annum. Other impacts identified are:
* Improved sales and service performance
* Time saved by managers in dealing with performance issues
* Reduced grievances
* Reduced time to train new staff
* Reduced time to complete tasks
* Improved task quality
* Improved job satisfaction