Home / Newsletters / ISSUE 13 - November 2003 - download pdf

Highly motivated people……………

Are key to business success

But how can leaders find the magic key to unlock the untapped potential of their people? That was the puzzle facing Standard Life IS Division Training & Development Consultant, Peter Dunn. 'The ability to motivate and inspire people is fundamental to our Leadership vision, but we were struggling to find the right means of developing this capability in our managers. We came to The Keil Centre because we felt they could help us to both understand better what people's sources of motivation are - but also turn that understanding into practical actions that make a difference.'

The Keil Centre's approach was to build the bridge between theory and practice by applying analytical techniques to identify those factors that were actually having the greatest influence on people's motivation within the IS Division - and what could be done to enhance the positive and minimise the negative. This resulted in the creation of a Motivation Map which was used as part of a workshop designed to develop leaders' skill in identifying and responding to the motivational needs of their people.

"it gave us a fresh perspective, with workable techniques"

"they put over the content very well but also provided many other insights which added to the value and interest"

Standard Life course participants

For further information, contact Louise Clarkson or Alicia Peña at our Edinburgh office.

Measuring Safety Culture in the UK Rail Industry

The Rail Safety and Standards Board (RSSB) have a strong belief that improving safety culture is paramount to maintaining a safe railway system. To this end, they have recommended that all railway companies in the UK conduct safety culture assessments. To help companies achieve this, RSSB identified a need to provide guidance on how to conduct a safety culture assessment, and asked The Keil Centre to help them to do this.

Comprehensive guidance has been developed based upon a review of a range of assessment methods from a range of industry sectors, incorporating an independent evaluation by The Keil Centre supplemented by user viewpoints from the UK rail industry.

One of the main difficulties encountered in the conduct of safety culture assessments is the lack of guidance available on turning the results of an assessment into practical improvement actions. To address this, the lessons learned from the development and implementation of improvement actions in the UK rail industry were turned into guidance by The Keil Centre.

The completed guidance document will be distributed by RSSB to all companies working in the UK rail industry. The guide includes:

- How to conduct a safety culture assessment from start to finish, including the development of improvement actions;

- A 'Which?' guide to safety culture assessment methods, to help selection of the most appropriate form of assessment.

For further information please contact Richard Scaife at our Edinburgh office.

Stress prevention is desirable - but how?

Stress management standards

Preventing stress in the workplace is key to maintaining employee wellbeing as well as enhancing safety, creativity and productivity. But how to do it?

Working for BP, the Health and Safety Executive and Scottish Water, The Keil Centre and Birkbeck College have combined their theoretical and practical expertise, with academic knowledge and industry understanding to produce a set of internal stress management standards. These standards outline the key steps to the prevention and management of 14 common work stressors.

The standards contain information on the stressor as well as practical examples for preventative action from senior management level to team members. Standards are available for: workload, communication, teamworking and many other topics.

These standards are not the same as those currently being developed by the Health and Safety Executive for 6 broad risk factors. They do however share the same underlying aim to provide clear and explicit steps to stress prevention.

These internal stress management standards are available as part of StressTools, a stress risk assessment package developed by The Keil Centre, and in the project report published by the Health and Safety Executive.

For more details, contact Chiara Amati at our Edinburgh office.

onTrack for success

onTrack, our one to one management coaching programme, has been up and running for the last 18 months. The programme aims to help key people improve their performance and resilience, so they can get the best out of themselves and their teams.

We have found that senior people appreciate the opportunity to discuss and progress their development objectives in a relaxed and confidential setting, while their employers value the way we seek to align individual objectives with wider organisational objectives. This is achieved through involving a trusted senior colleague or HR specialist at key stages of the coaching process.

We recognise that coaching is still largely unfamiliar territory to many individuals and organisations. onTrack demystifies the process, providing input in a way that is transparent, jargon-free and practical. Above all, onTrack is designed to make a real difference:

"After a thorough discussion of the outcomes that we were looking for, we began working with Craig Simpson on the onTrack programme.

Craig provided a tremendous amount of support to both the individual and the company and we genuinely felt that he wanted the process to succeed as much as we did. I'm delighted to say that everyone now agrees that it was a most worthwhile investment with all parties demonstrating that they have learned alternative methods of dealing with stressful or difficult situations. I would have no hesitation in recommending this programme".

Lynda McComb, UK Human Resources Manager, Rosti Ltd

For more information about onTrack, contact Craig at our Edinburgh office.