SACO
Project ‘20/20 Vision’ - a company-wide training programme

SACO is a market leading worldwide serviced apartment company, both operating their own portfolio of over 600 apartments, and with a global network of over 12,000 apartments in over 100 destinations. They are independently owned and employ 140 staff.

For the last three years SACO has been one of the Sunday Times' 100 Best companies to work for.

Towards the end of 2010 SACO approached MG to review their company-wide management development programme. They wanted to put personal development at the forefront of their business model and to help realise their ambitious growth plans - a project they called '20/20 Vision'.

Starting at the top

After an in-depth look at the business, we agreed that the areas of employee engagement and leadership needed to be focused on before a management training programme could be built.

Management behaviour is considered to be the most important influence on employee engagement. With that in mind, our approach was to define what high employee engagement should look like in SACO through a series of face to face and telephone interviews with senior managers.

An inspirational retreat.

The next stage was to take the senior managers on a two and a half day Inspirational Leadership workshop at a rural retreat in Somerset. During this time they were encouraged to understand what creates high employee engagement, helped by:

• MBTI personality profiling to aid self-awareness, so people were in the right frame of mind to give and receive personal feedback about each other's style and approach.
• Using exercises that gave the managers first hand experience of modelling the actions, values and behaviours that create high employee engagement.
• A carefully selected self-catering venue where the relaxed environment encouraged openness and disclosure amongst colleagues.

Many of the managers described the retreat as a life changing and exhilarating experience.

Laying the foundations

We then developed a SACO Competency Framework. This communicates to the business and team members the areas and levels of performance required to achieve results.

Representatives from each business area came together in a series of workshops to help define the SACO core competencies. From this we developed a framework to:

• Help each employee be clear about their role and what is expected of them.
• Put in place a strategy for personal growth.
• Provide a more accurate way to measure the teams' performance and for use in the appraisal process.
• Help identify the 'capability gap'.
• Create more effective recruitment and succession planning.

The team members then assessed themselves against the Competency Framework to identify any capability gaps. This provided a valuable insight into existing skills, behaviours and attitudes, which could be used for planning ongoing development.
Managers were given training to use the framework for measuring and developing capability.
Planning for the future
We also developed a series of training modules for junior managers so SACO can sustain a planned programme of growth. Modules include 'Managing the SACO Way', Managing Performance the SACO Way, Time Management, Appraisal, Delegation, Motivation and Coaching.
Maintaining the momentum
MG is also providing post-training support and coaching through:

1. REVIEW - the business looks at the everyday behaviour of managers. This is discussed at team meetings to identify the changes brought about by the Inspirational Leadership programme.
2. PREVIEW - where the business looks forward at the application of the '20/20 vision'. Various exercises, team activities and follow up events are taking place to keep things alive. These include telephone coaching; sharing success stories that individuals have done themselves or have seen in the workplace; using the feedback tool; meetings/diners for the senior team to focus on the progress towards 20/20 behaviour.

Outstanding results

"MG Sales Performance have worked with SACO as our training partner since 2007. During this time the partnership has grown from strength to strength as MG have taken time to develop a deep understanding of SACO's core objectives and strategic direction. This has enabled SACO to run training programmes that are an exact fit for our business, helping us deliver our key critical success factors which are based around customer service, people, innovation, brand and revenue. MG has provided us with coaching and training programmes to develop our sales teams, central reservation and front desk teams, management and senior management teams. Each time our requirements and objectives have been discussed and fully understood and then a training programme developed to match the requirements. Delivery methods and styles are hugely varied, innovative and engaging – which is always reflected in the positive feedback from all delegates and how well the learning from the training is sustained back in the work place. Specifically our reservations mystery customer experience scores have improved from an average rating of 'acceptable' to an average rating of 'good'. Following our leadership programme we hear our managers approaching conversations differently, there is improved communication across all departments and there is a really positive buzz in the air."
Jo Redman, Sales & Marketing Director, SACO

Increasing sales through customer service

For over four year, MG has also provided training and coaching for SACO's sales reservation team.

Team members attend a half day module that provides the basics of Reservations Enquiry Handling. MG then make Mystery Shopper calls to the team members. Following on from this we provide one-to-one tele-coaching focused on what we've learnt about the individual's needs.

The programme has had a positive impact on the team. Motivation and morale is high in the department with team members looking forward to their next tele-coaching call.