A Hands-on Approach to Developing Managers

The recognition that human capital is a company's best asset has never been so strong. With this has come a renewed emphasis on retaining employees through excellent pay and benefits packages, flexible working, and innovative staff development and training programmes.

In addition, more research is being undertaken which gives employers a real understanding of what happy and motivated staff can bring to the bottom line.

Alongside this there has been a growth in corporate social responsibility and the recognition that investing in the local community is more than just an obligation, but that it also brings positive feelings for the staff of the company doing the investing and well-recognised business benefits.

Strangely, not many companies have taken these trends and considered what the outcome would be if staff development and training could somehow be tied in with CSR, providing leadership, management and team development in a community environment.

TRAINING FADS

Over the years, training and development programmes have seen their fair share of fads and fashions.

Many employees will have experienced an outward bound course in the more desolate parts of the Scottish Highlands, or spent a couple of days at a hotel taking part in a bit of role playing and team games. And to really put staff to the test, some have even walked over hot coals.

However, one company got its fingers burned when a member of its staff literally got their feet burned – and that particular form of development seems to have cooled off.

One of just a small number of consultants in the UK working in this field is Three Hands, which is pioneering the concept of Socially Responsible Development (SRD). Established in 1998, it aims to bring business, people and communities together, and can count Pfizer, Motorola, RBS, and the UK Department of Works and Pensions among its clients.

The USP of SRD is that it will not only develop employees and benefit business, but also help people and communities in need. And because the development programme is a real-life situation, not role play, it is more powerful.

NEW CHALLENGES FOR MANAGERS

Motorola saw the benefits of this approach in 2004 when it sent 20 of its senior executives from across Europe to Malawi as part of its 'emerging leaders' programme.

Over three days, they worked alongside the local community to renovate three derelict buildings, turning them into two houses for teachers and a resource centre for local people.

The programme was devised by Three Hands in conjunction with the charity SOS Children's Villages and took the Motorola team to a local community devastated by HIV/Aids and poverty.

TESTING EXPERIENCES

The brief was to take the Motorola team 'to the edge', to test their resilience, decision-making, risk taking, team building and creative thinking. They succeeded in the task, and for many it was a life-changing experience.

"I can use a lot of these experiences as a team leader at Motorola; I cannot imagine anything more effective for personal and team development," commented one Motorola senior executive after the experience.

"We thought that our managers lacked what we call edge: the ability to take risks, move outside their comfort zone, make decisions and make them stick," explains Motorola's director of talent, Vanessa Loughlin.

"We were looking for something that would involve both individual and collective challenges and that would shift their assumptions about themselves and how they work."

MAKING A DIFFERENCE

The idea is simple. If companies are doing leadership, team and personal development anyway, why not get them to do something that benefits the community at the same time?

If you find the right community vehicle and facilitators and trainers, you can provide all the training and development the team wants - but you also do something that matters, leaving behind something which has made a difference.

Each project requires a lot of pre-planning and organisation, and involves facilitators to make sure everything runs smoothly, and also to ensure that learning and development needs are being met. Finding the right balance between the task and the learning is key to success.

Facilitators will work with the team before, during and after the event with the participants, their line managers and HR. This really helps take the learning back into the workplace.

CHALLENGING PERCEPTIONS

Closer to home, the Appeals Service of the Benefits Agency (part of the UK Department of Work and Pensions) sent 12 senior managers on an SRD programme to Macclesfield to renovate a garden and organise an event for Mind, the mental health charity.

The idea was to challenge the perceptions of the senior managers and remind them of the difficulties faced by those who make appeals against decisions affecting state benefits, many of whom have mental health problems.

This project involved the senior managers working with people with mental health problems in order to complete the project.

A Three Hands facilitator was on hand to examine interactions and to challenge the team and individual performances to see if they could be improved through different approaches and behaviours.

One Appeals Service participant said: "I was surprised how effective this method was as a team-building exercise. It illustrated team dynamics in a different setting while directly benefiting a vulnerable group in society.'

FURTHER BENEFITS

Another outcome of SRD is that companies can use it as an opportunity to further embed an existing relationship with a community investment partner. The Royal Bank of Scotland Group is in the fourth year of a multi-million-pound partnership with the Prince's Trust.

This provided the ideal background for a development programme in which ten corporate and commercial bankers spent five days working alongside a team of the Trust's young clients to both create a wheelchair-accessible outdoor space in Dunfermline in Fife and put on a fundraising event at the end of the week.

This brought the bank staff into contact with young people from challenging backgrounds, something they enjoyed and were highly motivated by, but which threw up a whole set of new challenges and learning experiences for the bankers themselves. Many preconceptions were broken down on both sides.

SRD BENEFITS

Potential community partners are available throughout the UK and around the world, and the benefits to them are obvious. A good training company will find one which fits with the company's core values where there is a synergy with the products and services offered by the company.

For the company, SRD is showing immediate and lasting benefits for both employees and management, significantly improving motivation because people have achieved tasks of real value.

CSR needs are also met and there can be PR, brand and reputation spin-offs for the company. It is not unreasonable to assume that any shareholders or customers who hear about their company's training programmes are likely to be a lot happier that their investment and custom is going towards something which benefits those in need and not just suppliers of hot coals and luxury hotels.

"A team will connect with the community, working face to face with human need at home or abroad," says Simon Hamilton, director of Three Hands.

"Participants will find their attitudes and perspectives challenged, draw on untapped resources within themselves, and find they are building lasting relationships within their group, in the community and with the business." In short, it ticks all the boxes.