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Community learning for emerging leaders at Sainsbury's

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Industry
Retail
Solution
Emerging Talent
Talent Management
About

Sainsbury's is the second-largest chain of supermarkets in the United Kingdom. Impact worked with Sainsbury's to create a graduate programme that would bring to life Sainsbury's leadership behaviours using community action learning.

Sainsbury’s wanted to develop their graduates’ awareness of their personal impact and to increase their understanding of the interpersonal skills needed for working in a team environment whilst bringing to life Sainsbury's leadership behaviours

 

Impact designed a Community Action Learning project based at a primary school. The graduates were challenged to develop a green theme across the school and thus bring sustainability to life. It was a complex and consequential project to elicit real behaviours to explore and experiment with.

A half-day induction prior to the project framed the whole programme effectively, developing strategies and agreeing on outcomes without the risk of getting swallowed up in the task.

Innovative project design was required to meet the dual objectives of building leadership capacity and delivering a successful project for the community partner. The graduates worked in project teams to complete a healthy eating allotment, green team activities, an aromatic border and fence murals. Alongside the projects, a Learning Pod was designed to direct participants to explore and observe Leadership in Action.

"This is the first project we have undertaken with Impact. Our graduate induction programme has been traditionally very corporate - lots of slides and senior speakers. We strongly felt we wanted to provide an experience for these valuable new colleagues that better reflected the direction we are moving in as a business. The project delivered on every level; we were able to make a difference at the school in a way that was aligned with our different values and bring our behavioural framework alive for our graduates as they prepared to leap into the world of work. Their takeaways were very much about increased self-awareness and a great sense of camaraderie amongst the cohort, an experience we shall definitely repeat."

Sue Round, Head of Leadership Development

Testimonials
See what our customers say about us
Nicola Pozatti
HR Director
EMC
“For us, the first important result is that 20% of the programme participants had achieved a Top Management position within six months. Furthermore all participants have developed a new cooperative way of working thus helping the company to overcome interdepartmental barriers. We really appreciate Impact’s flexibility as well as their ability to manage a complex programme following both individual and organisational needs.”
Steve Hill
CEO
Dara
Our change programme shows that empowerment and employee involvement are indeed key features of a high performing business. The results speak for themselves and have exceeded our greatest expectations – we couldn’t have done it without Impact.
Julita Rudolf
Transformation Director
Ringier Axel Springer Polska
“In the course of this set of workshops we got into the shoes of our competitors and looked at our company through their eyes. It gave us all an opportunity to go beyond our business as usual, to discuss with and learn from internal experts, and finally, to think more strategically. I also found the meetings with external experts very inspiring. It was very insightful to look at the market from their perspective.”