Premier Farnell
One Extra Degree
Premier Farnell plc is a leading multi-channel, high service distributor supporting millions of engineers and purchasing professionals globally. They market and distribute a range of products and services throughout Europe, North America and Asia Pacific, with approximately 4,100 employees worldwide.
Overview
In 2007, Premier Farnell began a partnership with Impact International to develop leadership capability and capacity within the business. Premier Farnell were responding to a review of their 2007 ‘Your Voice’ employee survey that highlighted areas of opportunity and improvement around building an inspirational leadership culture within the business. The current CEO has a passion for development of people and a strong desire to provide opportunities for leaders within the business to grow and meet the current and future challenges of the business.
Objective
Impact has worked closely with Premier Farnell to design and deliver a modular suite of experiential learning programmes called One Extra Degree.
One Extra Degree was launched in 2008 with key aims:
- To provide a strong foundation of leadership skills using a consistent approach and language
- To focus on building behaviours aligned with a competency framework
- To emphasise the ‘cultural’ and ‘strategic’ requirements of a leader at Premier Farnell.
Solution
At the heart of each module is the underpinning objective of developing people’s personal capacity for inspiring and engaging leadership, to meet current and future business needs.
In order to do this, Impact operates in partnership with Premier Farnell globally, developing key relationships with regional teams who are able to tailor and mould the programmes for local needs.
The programmes cover important leadership areas such as personal effectiveness, ability to lead teams through change and being effective coaches and developers of others.
The modules provide a mix of real experiential projects – from business simulations to community partner projects such as helping the Food Shelter initiative in downtown Chicago or organising a party at a centre for terminally ill children – together with pragmatic skills workshops.
To date, the One Extra Degree programme has delivered 110 modules, in five different languages to over 400 managers over three levels – First Line Managers, Operational Leaders, and Strategic Leaders.
Return on Investment
Last year Impact and Premier Farnell underook a rigorous evaluation process in order to gauge the return on investment of the project so far. We analysed 96 programmes worth of data and surveyed a sample population of 100 managers.
To date, 87% of managers have stated that the programmes have directly benefited their work.
There has been an average 32% increase in people’s leadership capability in designated areas (determined by key programme objectives).
86% of line managers indicated that they have seen a positive change in their leaders as a result of attending the One Extra Degree programmes.
The evaluation process also indicated areas where the programmes can be even more effective and, as a result, developments are being implemented for 2011. These include an on-line learning centre to support the programmes, increased pace of progressing participants through modules and more frequent reporting and evaluation of the process.
Result
‘Premier Farnell has undertaken a significant business transformation over the last five years. The development of our leaders through the One Extra Degree programme has played a significant role in helping to shape the culture of our organisation, whilst contributing to the realization of our high performance journey and the development of our Trust Agenda.’
Michael Esau
Organisational Development Manager
‘The programme’s combination of personal experiences, the trust with the team, the CSR project, the sense of accomplishment and most of all the feedback in a trusting environment – has helped me to be a better leader.’
Participant feedback
