Client Overview
The University of Sunderland had not previously had a strategic or holistic learning
and development offering for staff. Rather, it had been providing solutions on an ad
hoc basis when requests came in from individuals, teams and/or departments. The
University appointed a brand new Associate Director of Organisational
Development, who was tasked with creating a new OD strategy.
Their first focus was on hiring a number of new OD colleagues to lead and manage the strategy. Whilst they focused on hiring new colleagues, however, they realised that they rapidly needed to provide a more strategic L&D offering, catering to the different developmental needs of varying seniority levels of staff across the institution. They didn’t have the internal resources to do this and needed an expert external partner to support them.
Creation of a Coaching Strategy
The Plan
Upwrd partnered with the University of Sunderland’s OD team, working on their brief to design and develop highly interactive and impactful leadership development workshops
that could easily be facilitated by newly-appointed internal staff and/or by Upwrd as required - both at the main campus in Sunderland, but also at the University of Sunderland in London campus.
We designed and developed three leadership development workshops:
- Introduction to People Management
- Leading Change & Improvement
- Build & Lead a High-Performing Team
It was important to ensure that the sessions could engage both Academic and Professional Service staff audiences - so, finding the right blend of evidence-based theory and practical application was key.
The Outcome
Such was the quality of the content designed and delivered, but also the client’s delight at the customer service received, that they quickly commissioned Upwrd to design, develop and deliver three further bespoke workshops as part of a new ‘Wellbeing Series’ programme.
This need was identified following internal survey feedback that there was an opportunity to enhance staff knowledge and skills on how to effectively manage wellbeing - both their own wellbeing, and that of their colleagues and team members.
Upwrd diagnosed that a ‘one size fits all’ wellbeing workshop would not be an optimum solution, as different levels of staff had different learning and development needs on the topic. So, we designed and developed one workshop for managers, one
for wellbeing champions, and a third for all staff.
At A Glance
- Coaching strategy consulting
- Design and development of leadership and wellbeing workshops
- 1-2-1 management coaching
- 1-2-1 leadership coaching