William A Lewis
“Profile gave us the quantifiable feedback we were looking for”
Christine Lunt, Human resources Manager, William A. Lewis Cars Ltd
The Business
- Vehicle distribution
- 220 people
William A. Lewis is a well-established regional motor vehicle distribution group based in Shropshire with seven outlets in Telford and Shrewsbury. Employing about 220 people the business is divided into four operations – sales, service, parts, accounts and administration (IT, marketing etc.). As a leading supplier in its field it is committed to quality and uses a number of quality standards including ISO9000. Much of the staff training is provided by the manufacturer who has integrated into its processes the principles underlying Investors in People.
Involvement with Investors in People
The company was first recognised as an Investor in People in 2001. At that stage the main motive was the need to put in place human resource systems and procedures at a time when the business had grown rapidly but staff turnover was also increasing.
Achievement of recognition against the Standard helped to ensure that ‘good practice’ was being followed across all the people management issues as well as in development.
The Background
- Rapid growth
- Management development
By 2004, when the company was coming up for assessment, the Human Resource Manager Christine Lunt was keen to get more from Investors in People than continued ‘recognition’. As a company driven by metrics (sales figures, productivity and so on) it wanted to see quantitative measures emerging from the assessment process. In particular, operational managers (of whom there are 35) needed a process that was measurable and offered the chance of showing year-on-year improvement. The launch of Profile seemed ideally tailored to meet this gap.
The business recognised that its expected rapid growth, by some 40%, would put pressure on management both current and new. Management development was identified as being critical. "Investors in People was selected as the framework within which the development process could be conducted", says Christine Lunt." This would allow measurement to take place by an outside Assessor and feedback to be constructive. The option to assess against it in the future would measure ongoing progress and identify direction changes required."
Approaching Profile
A preliminary meeting with the two Investors in People Assessors helped to clarify the aims of the assessment and the resources and time involved. It was understood that there would be a need for greater management involvement than when originally assessed and this was accepted as worthwhile in order to gain the benefits of Profile. The company provided the timetable by which the Assessors would work.
In advance of the Assessors’ arrival Christine and managers undertook a review of the likely performance of the business against the Profile evidence requirements and felt pretty confident regarding about half of them. She was interested in what the findings would be for the remainder.
Working with Profile
The Assessors interviewed about twenty-five of the total staff over a period of two days. They showed great sensitivity to the staff and undertook the process patiently and thoroughly. They enjoyed the full support of management. A couple of days after the assessment the Assessors came back with verbal feedback. This was followed a fortnight later by the detailed written report. In general the findings confirmed the original expectations about the priority areas for staff development particularly of managers and coaching staff. Guidance on further stretch and continuous improvement was given in these priority areas. In particular the results confirmed the need to embed good habits throughout the management structure.
Feedback and results
Arising out of the Profile assessment the company is introducing various management development initiatives. It is now looking forward to the next Profile assessment to see whether these have borne fruit.
Christine was looking for ways to make these development initiatives as effective as possible and then measure the results over time. She believes that Profile is the best business improvement framework to help her achieve this.