E.ON is an international energy company providing residential and business electricity and gas solutions. With over 9400 employees in the UK they are the 2nd largest energy provider.
The Challenge
Develop the HR Executive team to enable them to deliver E.ON’s strategic plan
With a shift in the strategic direction of E.ON, the HR Executive Team were facing significant changes within HR to reduce headcount and serve their customers better. They needed support to improve how they worked together, in order to deliver their ambitious change programme, become role model leaders and deliver a challenging HR strategic agenda.
For this they turned to us, with Stephen King, Head of Global Learning, Central and Southern Europe saying, “TLC are specialists in this area. Their psychology backgrounds combined with operational OD experience and systemic thinking brings another layer to the conversation which helps us better understand what we’re about, the ways in which we’re behaving and the impact we have on each other. They are good coaches and well experienced at working at Board and Senior Exec level.’
The Approach
Diagnostic interviews facilitated away days, observation of meetings, workshop delivery and 1:1 coaching
Our experienced team coach worked with the team in a number of ways, designing and facilitating quarterly away days and undertaking diagnostic calls with each team member in advance of these so that the away days were bespoke and responsive to their ongoing needs and challenges.
Our team coach worked as an observer at meetings and offered real-time feedback to the team on their behaviours and their team dynamics In addition, they facilitated workshops on topics including resilience, multicultural working, emotional intelligence and impact and influence, bringing in other experts from our wider team, as appropriate.
Stephen commented, ‘We’re really impressed by TLC’s willingness to go with different ideas and help us find solutions; rigour and quality are part of TLC’s DNA’.
The Results
The impact of our coaching on the HR Executive Team has been significant. Stephen comments, ‘Our colleagues say we understand and are getting closer to the business and the business closer to HR. We’ve been on a challenging journey and as a consequence we’re much better valued by the business than two years ago. We are more unified, and substantially more aligned, despite our different global roles and remits. Accountability is much clearer.’
‘Relationships amongst the team have improved exponentially. We are much more confident in the business and have a stronger voice at Board level’, continues Stephen.
Dave Newborough, HR Director, agrees. ‘The coaching has been ground breaking for us. It helped us bring focus to the work and the team has been able to deliver some really challenging and important projects, such as completely reshaping the 90-day plan in just one day. And the feedback from our CEO was brilliant. We are much more aligned now and really feel like a team. We’d have never got there without TLC’s input’