O2, the principal commercial brand of Telefónica UK is a mobile network operator with over 32 million connections to the national network. With around 6700 employees and over 450 retail stores, it runs 2G, 3G and 4G services across the UK, and operates a nationwide O2 Wi-Fi service.

The Challenge

To improve the leadership and management capability of 02’s workforce

O2 takes the individual and collaborative development of its staff exceptionally seriously and with this in mind the organisation looked to improve the leadership and management capability of its workforce.

The Approach

Tailored workshops to develop core leadership and management behaviours

To achieve this, O2 engaged with us to design and deliver a series of bespoke leadership and management development workshops as part of their Leadership Development curriculum to employees based in its offices in Slough, Preston Brook, Leeds and Ireland.

A set of core capabilities imperative for O2 leaders was identified and workshops designed that covered effective communications, impact and influencing, collaborative team working and 1:1 coaching to support sustaining and embedding of learning. The workshops were arranged and attended on a needs basis and employees were encouraged to self-select these through O2’s intranet system.

Results

Feedback surpassed O2’s expectations in a number of areas with 93% of attendees stating it would improve their performance

Feedback from workshop attendees was collated and it demonstrated that 93% of them stated the management and leadership programmes would improve their performance – a figure that exceeded O2’s benchmark. Employees felt more confident with their communication, influencing and working as a team.

Charlotte Drake, Senior Talent Development Business Partner at O2, says: ‘We have very high expectations when it comes to measuring the effectiveness of our leadership and development programmes, so we are pleased to see the TLC workshops generate such consistently high feedback.’

“Employees have stated that the intervention has changed their business relationships and working lives. We put this down to TLC coming up with a winning formula, through blending their expertise in psychology, facilitation and business acumen. It’s a unique offering that sets them apart from the competition and is one from which we have benefitted enormously.”