With a global employee conference coming up in a matter of weeks and no training element in place, Profile Management & Specialist Recruitment had a problem.

 

The Company, who help with the recruitment of senior staff for 5 star hotels across the globe, wanted something to fit a theme of increased cooperation for growth whilst being highly engaging, uplifting, different and fun.

 

“There are natural cultural differences between people working at our offices in London, Paris, New York, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and for the training session we were looking for at our last global conference we wanted to try and breakdown some of these differences in the spirit that better cooperation would promote growth and a healthier working environment for everyone in the Company,” said James Hey, Group Executive Director.

 

With only weeks to go an HR contact suggested that the Company contact Bob Hayward at Be More Effective in Swindon.

 

Bob was able to offer a customised version of Slingshot, a manufacturing business simulation created by Be More Effective.  With this programme, the initial simulation has major flaws designed in and thus it is usual for the first attempt to be unsuccessful.  The team then get the chance to change everything except the customers’ objectives.  For the second run they reinvent how they work together to produce massive improvements in morale, teamwork, quantity and quality of results.

 

“This was certainly demonstrated at our conference,” continued James, “even people who did comparatively well on the first run, improved immeasurably on the second and it was a very effective demonstration to everyone involved that by listening, talking and communicating we can achieve much more as a team than as individuals.” James explained “The demonstration was even more effective as we were bringing people from different cultural backgrounds together and it gave us a great opportunity to learn from one another and understand how different people work.”

 

People involved loved the training session, but the real impact for Profile Management & Specialist Recruitment has been seen since, where it is apparent that relationships between the offices have improved and everyone finds it much easier to pick up the phone and talk to another office. The shared experiences of the Be More Effective training, has cemented the understanding between people working in different countries and has highlighted the importance of communication throughout the business.

 

This was highlighted by a recent project where a hotel in Morocco was looking to recruit senior staff and the enquiry arrived at Profile Management & Specialist Recruitment’s London office.  Because of the French language requirement, Moroccan enquiries are normally handled through their Paris office.  In this instance, staff in London were able to discuss the client’s requirement and then effect a smooth transfer by giving the client confidence in Profile’s Paris based people.

 

James puts it this way “There is no doubt in my mind that this process was made so much simpler through the experiences both groups had shared at the last global conference. The training session delivered exactly what we were looking for and we have seen many examples where the experiences we shared have resulted in improvements for our business.  We would have liked the session to go on for longer but were restricted by our conference schedule and it was disappointing that people from our Shanghai office were not able to attend. Be More Effective were able to fit us in at short notice and proved to be very good at what they do and hence I am looking forward to working with Bob Hayward and the team again in the future.”