The customer management outsourcing company

The client: the client has over 40 years experience in outsourcing, employing in excess of 8000 staff across 5 centres in the UK (plus offshore presence) and handling over 80 million contacts for their 25 blue chip clients per year.

The need: the client had delivered a cultural change and management development programme in the preceding year. Whilst the change had been generally well adopted there were some concerns that, in certain parts of the business, the transition to the new working culture had not been made so well.

What we did: we reviewed the training that had been delivered, interviewed managers at all levels in the business and surveyed staff to form a view regarding the effectiveness of the change programme.

Our research suggested that –

• more work was needed to embed the concepts of the change at the lower levels in the management structure
• further general management skills training would be useful for 1st and 2nd line managers
• there was a degree of scepticism on the part of some managers that the change was ‘here to stay’. We suggested implementing a programme of mentoring and coaching by senior managers that would reflect and emphasise their commitment to the change initiative.

Our recommendations were accepted and we were asked to design and deliver the necessary programmes and to provide support and guidance to the Senior Management team with regard to their coaching & mentoring interventions. Training was delivered to over 150 managers with the result that the change became more firmly and effectively embedded in the organisation.