CIPD Wales Award 2017
31.10.2017
We are absolutely delighted to have won the first ever CIPD Wales Award for Best HR / L&D Consultancy for our work with senior leaders in partnership with Dwr Cymru Welsh Water!
It was a great evening and lovely to see the HR community at its very best. A huge thank you to Lesley, her team and all the judges for putting the evening together.
We are very pleased to share the award with Welsh Water. We have been working with their senior leaders for the past two years on a highly bespoke and personalised leadership development programme.
This project encapsulates our sense of what makes great leaders, how as consultants we can support the development of leaders and also the impact of working true collaboration between consultants and clients.
We believe that leadership comes from within – as Blaire Palmer says “Leadership is who you are, not what you do”. It requires high levels of self-awareness, openness to personal change and genuinely listening to those around you. The Welsh Water participants have really embraced this approach and we have seen some remarkable changes at both an individual and team level.
The programme has asked participants to look in-depth at their own beliefs, values, behaviours and expectations. We have encouraged them to challenge unhelpful behaviours and barriers to effective collaboration and to understand and harness their strengths in order to inspire change.
Over the twelve months of the programme we have seen the following changes:
- Improvements on 37 out of 38 questions of the Team Effectiveness Questionnaire
- More space and fluidity in team meetings leading to greater team ownership; shared influence; greater buy in; and better understanding of ‘why’
- More ‘adult-adult’ conversations leading to increased openness; greater motivation; better debate; and less anxiety.
- More emotional connection and humanity leading to ‘real’ conversations, better relationships and deeper trust.
- Mutual empathy and increased sense of being valued leading to an increased sense of safety; greater loyalty; enhanced commitment and dedication.
- Joined up working; a single team plan; coherent messages
- More ‘fronting up’ and ownership of the team plan leading to greater confidence across the wider team that we believe in it and they can follow.
- Resiliently managing extreme operational challenges in 2016 due to high rainfall levels and other factors was noted to be a product of the team and individual development process.
- Supporting internal promotions, personnel changes and succession planning
And although we can’t directly relate our work to external measures, Welsh Water has performed excellently in the following measures:
Ofwat (September 2017): Welsh Water’s Clean Water Team ranked 1st in England and Wales for Customer Experience
Drinking Water Inspectorate (2017): Welsh Water: top quartile performance on all six water safety measures
Consumer Council for Water (2016): Welsh Water =Industry-leading for:
- Household and Business Customer Satisfaction
- Value for Money, and
- Trust in a Water Company.
Customer Satisfaction: Welsh Water often scores high levels of customer satisfaction among customers – around 90% – and complaints are now at their lowest level in a number of years
We have also valued the partnership we have built with Welsh Water. This has happened by ensuring that we build relationships across the levels of the business, with regular review calls and meetings. This helps us to gain a deep understanding of the organisation’s objectives so we can ensure our work is aligned and that activities are planned in the most effective way.
Our passion is making a difference in organisations, helping them and the people that work in them to reach their potential. Our work at Welsh Water has been a real reflection of that and the CIPD Wales Award has been the ‘cherry on the cake’.
A huge thank you to all the Insight team members who have been involved and, of course, to Welsh Water who had the vision for such an innovative and in-depth programme.