Supporting colleagues to review talent at various levels of the organisation led to the formation of regional businesses and a mechanism for effectively reviewing the performance of our managers and nurturing their development.

Alongside the formal review of functional structures, a proactive yet fluid approach to the management and development of management capability has evolved across the UK.

In turn, this collaborative technique has offered career opportunities, promotion and the ability for Managers to mentor others. It has also provided a simplistic and effective way of succession planning.

 
The biggest impact that has been achieved through this collaborative approach is twofold; the nurturing of talented managers through more challenging projects and promotion; and investment from Operations and the Workforce Development Team to routinely review management capability across the business.

This is a journey for our organisation and one which begun by needing to ensure we had the most capable people in critical roles. To do this we not only reviewed capability, we also reviewed our expectations of Managers and their remuneration. In turn, this enabled us to improve management capability and to encourage Managers to mentor others.

 
Reviewing functional structures and talent matrices is well established in many organisations yet what’s innovative about our approach is the investment made by our Regional Operations Directors, to jointly review management capability on a bi-weekly basis, facilitated by Workforce Development.

This involvement from the senior leaders in our business, has engaged people that were once disengaged, opened doors for those who have shown potential and enabled us to manage under-performance in a respectful and supportive way.

 
Effective support and development of people in any business can be achieved. What makes our approach work is the combined and continued investment of our Directors, all of whom want to provide positive outcomes for employees and customers.

What we have done differently is to focus less on formal processes and procedures to nurture talent, and instead invested time to speak regularly, listen and support one another to take action and then review again.

By doing this as a team, and not in silos, we have encouraged staff to share best practice and to create a culture of supportive accountability.