When Allianz Cornhill discovered staff were uncertain about how to develop their careers, it embarked on a coaching exercise that would transform the company both at home and abroad.
Allianz Cornhill is grooming managers in locations ranging from Tunbridge Wells to Trivandrum, India, to act as career development coaches.
“For us, career coaching is about opening up conversations, building trust, and getting people to feel comfortable about sharing their thoughts and aspirations. It is quite specific, but similar to everyday coaching,” says Judith Bufton, head of learning and development.
The move to offer career coaching followed the realisation that many of the insurance firm’s people managers felt ill-equipped to tackle career discussions. In 2004, the company began including questions on career opportunities in its bi-annual employee survey, carried out by Mori. The survey was followed up with in-house research to establish what the key issues were around career development. This showed people managers “were not always sure how to handle discussions about career issues, such as how to get promoted and whether it was okay to move sideways”, according to Bufton.
Between September 2005 and January 2006, training and coaching firm Stuart Mitchell Associates ran a one-day career coaching workshop for 365 team leaders, with around 15 in each group, in locations including Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester, Guildford and Tunbridge Wells. The workshop was later rolled out to the 55 or so team leaders based at the firm’s offshore office in Trivandrum.
Bufton says: “It was a major exercise but very worthwhile. When you roll out such a major programme you’re not sure what the response will be, but we have been overwhelmed by the enthusiasm. People left the workshop feeling much more confident – it really took the fear factor out of career development.
Having these discussions also demonstrated that managers and the company as a whole were taking an interest in individuals.”
Stuart Mitchell, founder of Stuart Mitchell Associates, says: “Coaching can help people to think creatively about where opportunities are and to look for projects that will help them meet their career aspirations.”
Of the roll-out in India, he says very little adaptation was needed. “Although I did have to be more aware of cultural sensibilities, such as the emphasis on family values,” he says.
Mitchell adds that the participants in India were “highly receptive, with a real hunger to learn as
much as they could without the degree of cynicism you might find in the UK”.
Allianz Cornhill’s research also highlighted the fact that individuals were not sure whether their personal development plans (PDPs) were about planning future careers or improving performance in their existing jobs.
As a result, the company has developed a career statement that it now includes in PDPs, underlining its commitment to developing and supporting employees in their career development. PDPs also now include the question: “What are your personal and career ambitions?”
Bufton says staff have welcomed the new approach. “We got workshop participants to think about the different ways they could help people to develop their careers. This was a valuable exercise because career development is not just about promotion – it can be about thinking laterally and doing something completely different.”
In January, Allianz Cornhill introduced a Stuart Mitchell Associates software tool, Career Horizons
(www.careerhorizons.net), which was customised for the company. “This is available to all our employees and supports our belief that people should take responsibility for their own career development,” says Bufton.
The tool includes a personality pro. le and a series of self-awareness exercises. “These are designed to help people think about where they want to be and what is the best fit for their skills, and help them identify their next steps,” she says.
Within two months of the tool becoming available, 10 per cent of the company’s 4,000-strong workforce were using it, and the take-up has come from all levels.
Bufton says “coaching is seen in the company as a crucial part of managers’ roles”. But career coaching is not the only coaching initiative to have been introduced by the company. Coaching skills workshops have been run for all team leaders for many years and in September the firm introduced an optional two-day workshop, Business Coaching, for middle managers upwards. The workshops are run by external coach Caroline Montague, who also offers executive one-to-one coaching when required. This year, the company plans to run four business coaching workshops, which offer managers plenty of opportunity to practise coaching and to explore the Grow model (Goal, Reality, Options, Wrap-up) favoured by the company.
“The Grow model is simple; it is something people can hold in their minds. It has a natural flow to it and is userfriendly,” says Bufton.
At the beginning of last year, Allianz Cornhill also launched its New Leaders Development Programme, which incorporates a two-hour seminar on coaching.
As part of the programme, participants receive a copy of emotional intelligence proponent Daniel Goleman’s paper, “Leadership that gets results” (Harvard Business Review, 2000), which identifies coaching as one of six effective leadership styles. So far, 12 people have attended a coaching workshop, with another 48 expected to do so this year.
A one-day workshop on coaching is also available for all leaders. “The first people to go on this included the chief executive and the management board,” says Bufton.
She insists that the proof is in the pudding, emphasising the importance of evaluation. “We will be looking out for the impact of the introduction of coaching on careers, including the 360-degree appraisal all managers use and the Mori surveys,” she says.
She also stresses the importance of putting coaching in context: “This is why we found the Goleman article so helpful, because it shows coaching has a useful role to play in getting the best out of people, but that different styles need to be adopted at different times.”
Bufton is optimistic that the company is very much on the way to embracing coaching as part of its organisational culture. “We’ve put coaching on the map and are hopeful that we are moving towards embedding a coaching culture,” she concludes.
Career coaching content
Participants were given pre-course material to encourage them to think about issues
such as the psychological contract; job satisfaction; work-life balance; pressure and
stress; personality and relationships; and confidence development.
They also took part in a workshop, focusing on areas such as:
- the need for companies to be proactive and reactive and for individuals to be proactive;
- how to provide career opportunities and career paths;
- how to set goals;
- how to carry out development planning;
- how to engage in career dialogue with active and upward listening;
- how to do the “3As” – being accessible, approachable and accountable;
- how to use the Career Horizons software.