Developing Your People to Enable the Future of Work

At the UK’s largest automotive manufacturer, high importance is placed on people and their career development, prizing skills such as creativity and innovation as well as core expertise. As the organisation has grown and new technologies have emerged, it has become necessary to transform some of the traditional roles to allow skilled employees to focus on value-add rather than purely transactional level activities. This will enable individuals to progress their careers and make a difference, whilst ensuring that the organisation is getting the most from its talented teams.

Sysdoc worked with our client to deliver a project to improve the organisational structure across Global Purchasing, impacting 2,000 employees globally. There has been a significant spike in the levels of interest around the new career roles, where it is anticipated that attraction and retention will be a key benefit. The programme has also seen an increasing number of women placed into managerial roles (an increase of 21%) – an important step for an industry which considers gender equality a key target.

Our Approach

This was a positive programme of change and Sysdoc was tasked with driving engagement globally. A new future-focused operating model was designed. One global purchasing team was created through a cost-neutral Target Operating Model. Team members were then given the opportunity to express a preference for the roles this new model offered, which were allocated through a series of workshops, based on their preference, skills and competencies.

From the outset, a clear and comprehensive change management strategy was planned, including change, communications and training to deliver a smooth transition for their people. Bringing the new roles to life was essential to the success of the programme, which included developing personas, delivering ‘Day in the Life of’ engagement activities as well as offsite events and mood walls.

Regular drumbeat communications with the teams were vital throughout the lead up to the restructure as well as during the deployment phase. Surveys were issued regularly to enable a consistent, accurate and timely view of the satisfaction of individuals, and to provide them with relevant support if necessary. A forum was established to provide peer-to-peer support and act as a sounding board for ideas, which created a direct channel for those impacted by the transformation.

This was followed by a highly integrated training programme designing and delivering role-based training across the whole organisation that was tailored to the individual needs of the functions.

The Result

The impact of the programme has been seen globally. Work was delivered across the UK, Brazil, China, India and Slovakia and set to continue after go-live, embedding the knowledge delivered from 243 training sessions. These covered a total of 49 courses and 2,500+ training instances taking place.