ICF Prism Awards 2009
Glass replacement and installation expert Solaglas has won an award for a coaching initiative for frontline managers that reaped a 490 per cent return on investment (ROI).
The award-winning initiative also saved the business £797,000 in performance improvement, subcontracting, materials and recruitment costs and in absenteeism.
It was the second time a UK organisation has been honoured with the International Coach Federation (ICF) Prism Award – last year the BBC received it. Past winners include SYSCO Food Services of Canada, MCI, University of Texas at Dallas, Verizon Business, NASA and Deloitte.
Solaglas was presented with the award, along with ibm.com of North America, on 4 December, at the ICF’s annual conference in Orlando, Florida. IBM also won the award in 2005.
Despite the current global economic climate, ibm.com continues to see coaching as being critical to its success. It is witnessing compounded returns on both expectation and investment, with a 563 per cent ROI, according to a spokesperson from the ICF.
Presenting the award, 2009 ICF president Karen Tweedie said: “The award is granted to those who invest time, energy and finances into coaching to achieve specific business goals and then realise a positive contribution and ROI. Both organisations have experienced significant ROI through their exemplary coaching programs and we are privileged to honour their success.”
Since the implementation of its coaching initiative for field managers, Saint-Gobain-owned Solaglas has seen significant improvements in communication and collaboration; decision-making and ownership among engineers; and the enhancement of new potential.
In addition to improvements in employee sickness, performance and the cost of subcontracting, materials, and recruitment, Solaglas has seen higher customer satisfaction and confidence, as well as improved industry standing, claims the business.
Its ROI of 490 per cent has enabled it to double its profitability. Company executives believe these gains are small compared to the long-term impact coaching will have. The initiative was designed and implemented by Stewart Twinn, who the company agreed to train as a coach. Twinn is an ICF Professional Certified Coach. He has now set up his own business, Coaching4development, but will continue to work for Solaglas.
Part of the impetus behind Twinn suggesting the approach was to show what can be achieved through coaching with even the most inexperienced managers in one of the most challenging environments.
He said: “There was a coercive management style and lots of the managers were from a self-employed background. Many were scared to make decisions because they thought they’d get their money stopped.”
Culture change
The 400-strong company kicked off the initiative in July 2007, following a review of its leadership strategy within its operations division. The review identified a need for massive cultural change over the next five years, moving from a directive to a more empowering management style.
HR director Patrick Kent said: “We needed a total culture change. We needed frontline managers to be more engaged.” He stressed the importance of customer service – it would take only one customer complaint to a major insurer for the insurer to potentially refuse to work with the organisation.
The coaching initiative fast-tracked 15 frontline managers whose responsibilities needed to expand significantly after the removal of a layer of senior management. The managers had had little or no training. Requiring them to take up new responsibilities from day one was highly risky.
“This was quite an undertaking. These guys were engineers and had forgotten any ambitions they may have held about being managers,” said Kent. A coaching-based 18-month programme was rolled out through six modules including company process and systems knowledge.
Kent said: “Coaching provided the spine of the programme. As they’d been brought up in a more directive style, these people needed a more empowering coaching style of management so they could empower their guys to make decisions on the job. So we saw coaching as a key action.” Kent joined the organisation from Dixons Store Group, where he was regional HR manager. Throughout the Solaglas programme, evidence from managers was benchmarked against specifically designed competencies which became harder throughout the 18 months.
Aside from training (with Penna Consulting Group), managers were offered unlimited coaching with Twinn. Penna rolled out the coach training through a two-day workshop, followed by four practice sessions over six months to “avoid any learning decay”. The TGROW (Topic, goal, reality, options and wrap-up/will) model was used.
Evaluations
The main aim of the coaching was to support competency development by enhancing managers’ self and team awareness. Topics included critical incident reviews; 360-degree feedback reviews; training event learning reviews and competency reflection.
At the end of the programme, Solaglas called in Sheffield Hallam University to carry out a qualitative evaluation using the Kirkpatrick Model1, looking at any movement in style among field managers through focus groups, interviews and surveys.
In addition, Twinn carried out a quantitative evaluation. Kent said Solaglas had an advantage here as it had spent 90 per cent of the total management budget on this initiative. “So we could say that nothing else had changed apart from the coaching.”
Another saleable asset was that repair work went up from 52 per cent of jobs to 61 per cent. Plus the completion rate – in one visit – shot up from 87 per cent to 93 per cent. It meant £450,000 added to Solaglas’ coffers: 25 per cent of profits.
This was a prime example of how coaching was helping people on the frontline use their own initiative and come up with solutions in the moment, explained Kent.
He said the biggest risk the organisation took was in the “what about me?” factor. “Although we expected this, we didn’t really understand what a risk it was. If you’re going to roll this out to frontline managers and they’re using a new language, we didn’t know what that would create.”
At the start, this fostered uncertainty but it drove participants’ managers to focus on their own development.
Solaglas is now rolling out a programme to develop management potential in the same format. The first cohort will consist of eight potential managers, the target being 27.
A four-level framework devised by Donald Kirkpatrick to evaluate training programmes.
How Solaglas saw off the competition
- Company profit increased by 250 per cent with no significant increase in sales or job losses.
- Operational workmanship quality doubled.
- Operational staff turnover reduced from 19 per cent to 5 per cent, eliminating the cost of equipping and training 23 fewer staff than in the previous period. Staff turnover within the rest of the business remained at 19 per cent.
- Operational related letters from satisfied customers doubled.
- Operational employee sickness fell by 20 per cent, saving over 321 lost days.
- 73 per cent of staff reported an improvement in communication following the coach training.
- Subcontracting costs fell by 21 per cent.
- Material costs fell by 5 per cent.
- Initiative ROI was proven to be 490 per cent.
Volume 5, Issue 2