Case study: elevating a HR Consulting Project with a tailored learning solutions
The client
Meliora Learning and Development was approached by an independent HR consultancy based in Surrey. The consultancy provides HR and recruitment services to SMEs across a variety of different sectors.
The challenge
The consultancy was supporting an independent school with their HR projects. One of the things the school was seeking to implement was an annual ‘contribution review’ process whereby all staff would have their contribution to the school assessed against a given framework of competencies and behaviours. This meant that all staff involved in the contribution assessment process needed to know how to set goals. More fundamentally, the school also needed to create a framework of behaviours and competencies to assess people against.
Delivering training on goal setting was be crucial to the successful implementation of the contribution review process for two reasons:
- To ensure a consistent approach across the school to setting contribution goals.
- To give people involved in goal setting an opportunity to practice setting goals in a safe space and with developmental feedback from their peers.
The approach
Meliora Learning and Development was bought on board as the HR consultancy’s outsourced learning and development partner to work on the design and development of this piece of staff training. The HR team know how to show people how to set coals, but they sought further expertise in terms of structuring the training and devising activities to enable participants to explore new ideas, discuss and share experience and practice utilising new skills to improve their performance. Rather than just showing the participants WHAT they need to do to set effective goals, there also needed to be a focus on HOW to do it and giving people the confidence to be able to do it after the training session.
Meliora Learning and Development worked with the HR consultancy team to develop a training solution, starting by gathering the following information:
- Background about the client and why the need for training had arisen.
- The goal for the training.
- What people needed to be able to do in order to achieve the goal.
- What could be stopping them from achieving the goal.
The solution
It was decided that a 90-minute workshop covering goal setting and starting the work on developing a competency and behaviour framework would be delivered to the school leadership team by a member of the HR consultancy team. The leadership team members would then share the goal setting approach with their individual teams.
The workshop would cover the following topics:
- Appreciation of and sharing previous experience of setting goals.
- Group understanding of what makes an effective goal.
- Goal setting practice with feedback.
- Exploration into the competencies and behaviours needed for different roles at different levels (it was intended that this work be continued in further team meetings)
Meliora Learning and Development designed the workshop, devised the practical activities, created the accompanying slides, and provided full facilitation instructions for the workshop lead to follow.
The benefit and impact
Following the training session, Meliora Learning and Development held a debrief call with the HR consultancy. The consultant stated that the session was engaging and proved the required clarity and confidence in setting goals. They also commented on how involved the participants were with the competencies and behaviours activity, and how this really elevated the session. They stated that they would not have thought to extend the work on setting goals by asking participants to explore what competencies and behaviours they would expect to see in order to achieve a particular goal. So engaged where the participants with this particular task, the session actually went on longer than the scheduled 90 minutes, lasting 3 hours in total!
The reflection of the HR consultant on what made the session go well shows the benefit of working with a consultancy such as Meliora Learning and Development on these projects. Meliora Learning and Development brings a different perspective, an understanding of how people learn, and knowledge of how to help develop skills, moving the training away from an ‘information dump’ so something that is engaging and impactful.
In summary
By working in partnership with Meliora Learning and Development, the HR consultancy was able to deliver a training solution that:
- Met the needs of their client
- Provided the participants with the skills and knowledge to set goals and assess individuals’ contribution against them.
Outsourcing this project bought specific benefits to the HR consultancy including:
- Being able to focus on delivering HR expertise to their clients.
- Saving time by not having to research, plan, design and develop the training.
- Confidence that they would be delivering a quality training session to their client.
Supporting you to support your clients
If you need support with your clients’ learning and development projects, or would like to find out more about our services, get in touch or take a look at our services.
You can also keep up to date with our thoughts and musings by following us on social media