Case Study
Vale Europe

As part of equipping their people with the skills, knowledge and behaviours to deliver their vision, Vale Europe wanted to embed their desired culture throughout the organisation.  This is based on trust, openness and honesty, a desire to achieve everyone’s full potential and to support their significant corporate and social responsibility.  All staff needed to work in and establish a trusting, safe and enjoyable work environment with an awareness of the need for openness, honesty and resilience.  Vale Europe wanted a programme that would develop these behaviours and equip and enable their managers to fully understand, appreciate and apply their responsibilities to:

• Support the corporate vision
• Understand their role in the management structure
• Support positive and enabling behaviour
• Support all staff appropriately
• Understand the needs, aspirations of the business and the individual
• Develop self, individual and team performance

Eliesha was awarded a contract to design and deliver a Management Development Programme to 3 cohorts of managers over a 3 year period.

The aim was to design and deliver a bespoke accredited Management Development Programme for Vale Europe and their Middle Management team.

The following individual modules were identified:

• Leadership/Managing People
• Coaching/Mentoring Skills
• Managing a Budget/Elementary Finance
• Interpersonal Skills
• Building the Team
• HR Internal Processes
• Change Management

Following detailed discussion with Vale Europe, Eliesha designed and developed a blended accredited programme consisting of four face to face workshops and assessment in the form of formal assignments. The programme incorporated:

• MBTI for each participant
• MTQ 48 Mental Toughness questionnaire for each participant
• Face to Face Workshops (four x 2-day workshops - including use of role play actors):
  • You as a Leader and Manager
  • Communication and the Coach
  • Leading a Team in a Changing Environment
  • Managing the Person (HR Procedures)
• Accreditation with the Institute of Leadership and Management (completion of assignments) to achieve an Level 5 Award in Leadership and Management
• Face to Face meetings with individual delegates and line managers
• Support during and post-workshops
• Management and administration service for the programme
• Final presentation ceremony by the Chief Executive Officer

The programme design embedded Vale Europe’s behavioural expectations, values, objectives, policies and the requirements of ILM.

The relationship with the client was very much one of partnership working, with learning and knowledge transfer both ways.  Design and delivery of the programme was undertaken by Eliesha L&D Consultants.

There is compelling evidence about the effectiveness of positive manager engagement within the implementation and delivery of training programmes. In terms of impact, managers can substantially influence learner attitudes prior to training and the work environment after training in order to increase performance post training. To support this process, Eliesha provided a guide so that Line Managers understood the programme intent, content and timings.  Vale Europe asked their Line Managers to commit to releasing their staff to this programme and to act as mentors in supporting the opportunities to embed the learning.  This included:

• Agreeing and communicating the learning objectives for members of staff ahead of the programme and at key intervals between workshops.  The objectives were focused on what the individual should expect to gain from the learning, how they would apply that learning immediately in the work place and how you would know that this had been achieved
• Releasing staff and encouraging their attendance at every workshop and to take a full and active part in the two professional discussions that were planned throughout the programme
• Providing meaningful opportunities, in line with individual Career and Succession Planning, to embed and practice new skills
• Supporting staff in completing their assignments
• Acting as a mentor and coach to staff by actively discussing the programme outcomes and methods to apply the learning
• Ensuring that the code of conduct is followed

Vale Europe’s own internal evaluations were completed by all delegates after each course and analysed internally, the results of the analysis were provided to Eliesha.  In summary, the first cohort of delegates all successfully completed their ILM Level 5 Award in Leadership and Management and all the evaluation results averaged across all workshops were excellent. 

Corporate feedback at the presentation event and at a full project review with the Management Board was extremely positive with clear indications that the desired skills and behaviours were manifestly being shown in the workplace.  The organisation were very successful in achieving recognition through the Shingo award on continuous improvement and the programme has been further developed in support of this.