Southern provide rail services for large parts of south-east of England. They manage 156 stations including London Victoria and London Bridge. They employ around 4,000 members of staff, mostly working on their 300 trains or at the stations across the region.

The Challenge

Create synergy and alignment in the HR team

The HR team at Southern had become somewhat fragmented and unaligned and needed some work in order to be more collaborative and efficient.

After some restructuring, the department made some improvements, however, it was evident that they would benefit from a deeper level of intervention. They needed help to synergise and align the individual team members to work together, with the ultimate aim of delivering the strategy, ‘making every journey better’.

The Approach

Creation and implementation of a series of team development workshops

We conducted diagnostics with individual team members to understand the team dynamics and challenges that were impacting how they worked together as a collective.

We co created a Team Development Programme that consisted of a number of Team Away Days that were bespoke and responsive to their ongoing needs and challenges as well as those of the business.

These workshops focused on addressing the issues and challenges standing in the way of business progress. They also provided team members with practical ways of overcoming communication barriers and improving team dynamics.

Through these, we aligned the team to deliver their strategic People Plan and be a high-performing team.

Results

Improved unity and collective HR team working, focused on delivery of the business strategy

Following the workshops much greater unity and an improved team dynamic within the HR department has been achieved. This has contributed to Southern earning its best ever ‘Passenger Focus’ results for performance reliability and customer satisfaction.

Matt Watson, HR Director says, ‘Through working with TLC, we have managed to create a dynamic, cooperative and motivated HR team. It’s no coincidence that we are closer now than we have ever been to reaching the ‘Passenger Focus’ target for delivering performance and customer service. TLC has fulfilled a vital role in aligning and focusing our HR department so that it is now highly effective in supporting the 4,000 Southern employees who are dedicated to making every journey better.’