Standard Life Aberdeen
“I would be delighted to recommend Open Arena to any business who wants development that sticks. I have worked with the team on a number of occasions and their insight and challenge pushes the boundaries for organisations to deliver sustainable results. Open Arena have a scalable solution to support any size of organisation and their attention to detail and project management enable them to deliver on time and to budget whether it is an 800 manager development programme or consultancy and programme delivery through to senior teams.”
Head of Learning, Standard Life
Their Challenge
With the introduction of a new performance management framework and reward system there was a need to upskill and develop the skills for every manager within Standard Life. With stretching strategic goals there was a need to set team members clear performance and development goals and gain commitment from every manager to have ongoing conversations. Upskilling the managers to role model, to give and receive feedback and coach on strengths and areas of development was key, as was having the positive mindset and energy to manage variance in performance amongst the team.
The Solution
Over two years Open Arena designed and delivered a number of training courses to upskill leaders and managers and their teams in getting the most from one-to-one conversations and the performance appraisal. This change was an important step in continuing to create the best possible environment for Standard Life to ensure their people were able to take on the tough challenges ahead and make the right things happen.
With a focus to ‘push ourselves to improve and continually challenge ourselves’ and ‘think and behave as one team’, Open Arena delivered – ‘Great Performance Conversations’, ‘Real People. Real Goals’, ‘Good to Great’ for leaders and managers and ‘Performance Conversations’ for team members across specific areas of the business.
The Outcome
‘Great Performance Conversations’ was delivered to over 800 managers.
Real People. Real Goals’ delivered over 70 sessions and touched circa 95% of managers across the business.
Techniques and messages helped the management team to understand not only that there is a new framework and system in place but that they’ve got a crucial role to play in performance and development of their teams.
100% of delegates rated positively – ‘I have the ability to prepare, structure and conduct a performance review and follow-up’.
98% rated positively – ‘I have a clear understanding of what a good performance discussion looks like’.
To build momentum and improve the performance management capability and make the learning stick, Performance Network meetings were introduced within the business. A review 12 months later showed that those departments who had set up the groups successfully, every person had clear goals and were having effective regular performance conversations.
The feedback from our evaluation showed that performance management was driving better business results and 93% said the quality of their conversations had improved on last year.