ISSUE 23 - Summer 2009

Harnessing the Power of 360°Feedback

How can organisations ensure recipients of 360°Feedback, and the teams in which they operate, derive maximum benefit from the powerful learning that this development tool can provide?
 
Following 360° Feedback, it is important that ‘follow through’ activities effectively encourage, empower and support employees to act on the information. It is more likely that people will be motivated to take action on the feedback if they know what resources are available to‘tap into’. Often the most powerful learning resources we have is the support, knowledge and experience of our work colleagues! Therefore, by placing personal development within a team development framework, this can create opportunities for enhanced teamwork and team effectiveness.
 

Ken Gray from The Keil Centre worked with The North British Distillery’s Senior Management Team to design and deliver a 360° Feedback programme that culminated in participants sharing and exploring the learning from the data.

Activities that build on the initial enthusiasm that well managed 360° Feedback programmes generate, greatly increases the likelihood that subsequent development and growth will be meaningful and sustained.

The programme involved:

  • Using The Keil Centre’s Leadership Profiling System ‘JobCraft’ to establish the main forthcoming challenges, and produce the ‘CREATE’ Framework of Leadership Behaviours
  • Programming The Keil Centre’s web-based 360° system to administer a suite of questionnaires based on the framework
  • Feeding back the resul ts of the CREATE questionnaires in conjunction with the results of a personality questionnaire to the individual, and helping them to ‘delve deeper’ and achieve an even fuller understanding of the factors that drive their behaviours
  • Running a structured workshop that facilitates the collective development of a Charter of Values and provides a ‘safe’ environment to exchange frankly the key learning points from their individual feedback discussions and reports

The key ingredient to the success of the programme was the opportunity it provided to build an increased collective understanding of colleagues’ strengths, values and aspirations. In turn, this helped build commitment to challenge and support one another to achieve their personal development goals as well as an action plan that would take team effectiveness to the next level.

To discuss 360° feedback for individual or team development, contact Ken Gray.

ISO Certification

The Keil Centre is proud to announce that it is now certified as an ISO 9001:2008 compliant company. This certification recognizes independently that the policies, practices and procedures of our company are designed to ensure consistent quality in the services and products we provide our clients. We don’t expect clients to notice much difference, as we have done things this way for a long time. The difference is that an independent body now agrees with us. With this certification, our clients can be confident that The Keil Centre is dedicated to maintaining the highest efficiency and responsiveness in providing guaranteed levels of client satisfaction.

Building resilience to survive the recession

With unemployment having risen above 2m for the first time since 1997, the recession is clearly starting to bite. Organisations across a wide range of sectors are feeling the effects of the global economic downturn and responding by cutting jobs. According to the Economist, what differentiates this recession from previous ones is its impact across sectors, regions and occupational level.

It would seem that few organisations will be able to escape feeling the pinch. And there’s more to come, with unemployment redicted to continue to rise well into 2010 taking the total beyond 3m. Even before the recession, one in six employees at any one time was experiencing mental health problems relating to stress, but this is only likely to increase in the current climate. As organisations look to reduce costs, job insecurity and its related anxieties are on the increase. The resulting strain is not confined to those whose jobs
may be cut, but also affects those who remain, who often face increased workload and significant changes to their role. A recent Health and Safety Executive (HSE) report also highlights the potential impact such strains can have on safety performance. 
 
So what can employers do to support their employees and manage effectively through the recession?
Provide support for those experiencing difficulties: The Keil Centre’s clinical services offer focused and effective treatment programmes for stress-related conditions such as anxiety and depression. Our psychologists also provide short briefing sessions or workshops to help individuals and their managers recognise signs of strain and learn techniques to manage or reduce its impact.
 
Develop employee resilience, maintain their engagement and strengthen management capability: This may be particularly important for those remaining, if the organisation is making redundancies. The Keil ® 7 Steps to Optimal Performance programme incorporates personal resilience skills and is run in a workshop format. We also offer a Building Career Resilience programme, which equips participants with the skills to take control of their career development in turbulent times. Ensure your organisation’s managers are well equipped to manage change and its potential fall-out. Managers have a key role to play in engaging and sustaining staff through change, so this is a time to check your people management skills training is robust and comprehensive. Leaders in the organisation often need support too, though this may be more effectively delivered on an individually tailored basis. The Keil Centre’s coaching programmes can provide a combination of the personal support that leaders often particularly value when their organisations are facing challenging times, integrated with more "traditional" business-focused coach.
 
For more information about The Keil Centre’s services in building resilience contact Louise Clarkson.
 

Innovative Professional Developement Programme launched

The Keil Centre, in partnership with the Institution of Chemical Engineers, has launched a two-year modular professional development programme on human factors in health and safety. This novel programme alternates between Schiphol, The Netherlands, and Edinburgh, UK.

This event is specifically designed for and will be of interest to internal human factors advisors/focal points, operations managers, HSE advisors and specialists, and industry regulators. The programme provides a thorough grounding in the subject matter, access to practical research-based tools and approaches, and discussion in small groups with acknowledged industry experts.

For more information on this programme, contact Ronny Lardner. 
 

Testing the Pressure Temperature

StressTools® is The Keil Centre’s on-line Stress Risk Assessment program for identifying and prioritising action to improve health and safety at work. In response to demand for this powerful but practical tool, it is now available in 7 languages, English, Dutch, German, Norwegian and Malay, with latest additions being Portuguese and Spanish.

What distinguishes StressTools ® from other Stress Risk Assessment surveys is that not only does it identify the presence or absence of work related stressors, but it provides an indication of the perceived level of harm a stressor may be having. It also offers practical guidance on how the situation can be managed. This ensures remedial action is prioritised, and resources applied to the area of greatest risk.
 
As an example, one client capitalised on StressTools®’ flexibility by simultaneously assessing levels of stress in four of its business units across three continents. Interestingly, the data indicated that the pressure ‘pinchpoints’ for employees were similar across all geographical and cultural boundaries, but were only reported to be a potential source of harm in three of them. This ‘intelligence’ was key to the organisation being able to target specific remedial action.
 
The Keil Centre’s psychologists recognise the importance of supporting clients in the use of StressTools® by not only guiding them through the implementation stages of a Stress Risk Assessment, but also ensuring that the data is interpreted correctly and practical actions introduced.
 
For more information on StressTools®, please contact Ken Gray or Johnny Mitchell.
 

Unlocking Safety Culture Excellence - Our Behaviour is the Key

Ronny Lardner, Director of The Keil Centre, was recently announced as winner of the Health and Wellbeing Project Award at the British Psychological Society's Occupational Psychology 2008 Practitioner Awards.

The project involved three international companies – Wood Group; GlaxoSmithKline and Woodside Energy – who embarked on a series of linked projects to strengthen their existing safety culture, thus reducing the risk of industrial accidents. These unique projects developed and deployed a simple user-friendly method which acknowledged that good safety performance depends on safe thinking style and behaviour at all levels of the organisation. The method integrated existing external knowledge with companyspecific
examples.
 
The method was designed by Ronny Lardner, in conjunction with each company, and was almost entirely delivered by in-company personnel, thus enhancing credibility and internal capacity. This was achieved whilst working with clients possessing varying
levels of behavioural science knowledge and skills.
 
Benefits included:
  • a measurable improvement in safety leadership behaviours and safety culture
  • a reduction in incident rates & severity;
  • three company or industry safety awards
  • strong backing from workforce and unions
  • strengthening of each company’s external reputation
  • recognition and uptake of this approach by many other international companies.
For more information on this award, contact Ronny Lardner. 
 

Healthy Working Lives

The Keil Centre is currently working towards achieving The Healthy Working Lives ‘Silver’ Award. As one of the activities staff have recently been taking part in a “Walk Around Scotland” – a virtual race starting at Gretna, taking in the major towns and cities in between and finishing up at Berwick upon Tweed. Team members submitted weekly totals of the exercise they’d done each week and the progress of both teams was posted on a map in the office. In eight weeks the teams managed to cover over 1000 miles each, culminating in a nail biting finish! Plans are now being made for a second challenge – we just need to decide which country to walk around!

For more information on this initiative, contact Johnny Mitchell