Primeast

Client

Financial Outsourcing Company

Project

Supporting the career development of high potential managers

Business, Background & Objectives

HML logoHML, the financial outsourcing subsidiary of Skipton Building Society, approached Primeast to support the career development of its pool of high potential managers. The overall aim was to provide an opportunity for participants to gain a deep understanding of themselves and in each other in order to build a powerful learning and support network to add maximum value to the organisation and to themselves in the form of career development.

A two day workshop was designed and facilitated and during the first half day, participants were able to explore the nature of competence, talent and strength and to define and share their personal talents, ambitions, beliefs, values and commitments. From this base, a close examination was undertaken of each person’s talents including how they played out in the workplace, how this added value and what could be done to develop these talents into clear strengths was undertaken. They were also given personal data on their emotional intelligence using the EQi diagnostic and the opportunity to understand and manage personal improvement as a result.

As a finale to this work, each person was able to commit to a career development plan, including specific actions to add more value to the business.

Our role

Each participant was able to make a significant commitment to adding value and gained powerful insights into how better use of their talents could achieve this. Participants worked in small groups and pairs to achieve these insights and before doing so, one volunteer offered to have one of their talents “valued” by the group. The talent she offered in was “helping people through change” and the group explored an example of where she had used it. She described how she had sat down for a total of about twenty hours over a few weeks with an individual who was not fully participating in a change programme. Over this time she secured this person’s commitment. The group agreed that as a result, the change programme delivered three months earlier than would otherwise have been the case. The conclusion was that this manager had added £2.5m to the bottom line of the business from twenty hours use of one of her talents. Her reaction to the insight was “gobsmacked” and forced her to think of many more ways of bringing this talent to the organisation. Other participants gained similar insights and without exception made significant commitments to the business.

Results

Jen McLean, who manages Talent for HML was delighted with the workshop:

“The event fulfilled three objectives for us. It helped our high potentials understand their own talents so they could leverage them more often; define how they personally add-value to the bottom line through their talents and to value each others contributions as a group. This positioned them perfectly for the strategic challenge they were set by our Board of Directors on completion of this event.”