Lead | Culture change in a complex project

Client

Large business unit in a multinational project engineering company

Focus

The business was the prime contractor responsible for designing and building major equipment for the UK Government. The project was running behind schedule and over budget. There had been rapid turnover of Directors and customer relationships were at an all time low. The new Board instigated a raft of operational and cultural interventions to get the project back on track.  We were brought in to partner the business in the cultural turnaround.

Formulation

Initial work involved detailed data collection to understand the issues underpinning the poor performance. Using interviews, focus groups and employee opinion survey data the key issues identified were:

• Lack of trust and perceived blame culture across the business
• 50% of the workforce saw their managers as ineffective
• 40% of employees believed the business was going to fold
• Work systems were not implemented effectively because of functional silos

Intervention

Over a three year period partnering the OD function, a programme was completed to improve working practices across the business, repair damaged relationships and embed better cross functional working. The key components of the programme were:

• Executive team development – monthly Board meetings were facilitated to improve team behaviours and decision making
• Natural work teams – key strategic teams on the site (20 in all) came together to build mutual understanding of each other and increase efficiency of work practices
• Partnership working – managers and unions addressed the blame and trust issues and worked on their common approach to the workforce
• Development Centres – used as a basis for targeted skills training and for succession planning

Outcomes

Three years down the line there are significant improvements in working practices in the business:

• Integrated work teams are the norm with an emphasis on joint problem solving
• The most recent employee opinion survey had return of 77% and showed a much improved level of job satisfaction combined with increased trust across the organisation
• Staff absence has dropped by two thirds
• Performance on schedule and cost is vastly improved
• The customer is much happier

A review of the business by the Audit Commission concluded our joint work to be “the most constructive use of industrial psychologists [it had] seen in industry”.