We have worked with this major high quality fresh food retailer with over 70 Superstores and employing over 10,000 people. Our involvement started in 1985 when the CEO was concerned about changing his very traditional command/control type of organisation. After conducting an audit of the organisation we were commissioned to develop a culture change programme designed to create a participative organisation better able to cope with the increasing competition being experienced in their market. After a period of four years the results were clearly visible in terms of increased sales along with a reduction in costs, thus producing greater profits. Another benefit was the significantly improved retention of effective team members and leaders. Following on from this success we were invited to design and implement a Selling Quality Service Initiative to cover all team leaders and members in the stores. This process was the stimulant for 'continuous improvement' in the stores. Once again the results of this programme showed significant improvement in customer satisfaction indicators coupled with an increase in market share.

Woolworths was committed to developing its leadership talent and to improve their leadership development process and asked us to design and facilitate an improved process. We worked with a number of leaders who had been involved in their leadership development programme to identify the key capabilities required for truly effective leadership of the business in the next 5 years. To make the process appropriate it was decided to conduct the training using a Development Centre approach The first group of business leaders were given the opportunity to evaluate their current capability against those identified and develop action plans for preparing themselves for the challenges ahead. We designed this process with the client and facilitated the workshop. A key feature was the strong support from CEO, Directors and managers many of whom served as coaches and would come back regularly to the centres to hear the feedback participants attending the centres. Over 20 centres have been run to date.

In their very competitive environment a clear focus in all the work Centell has carried out has been on the stores bottom line and overall business performance. To assist Woolworths we have been involved in a range of specific interventions in different parts of the business where special attention was needed to deal with performance issues. Our interventions ranged from conducting focus groups, carrying out performance audits and surveys to facilitating workshops to introduce new working arrangements designed to improve customer service in order to obtain increased customer satisfaction ratings. To provide specific feedback Centell was invited to design a company wide performance survey based on a hard copy questionnaire. Every employee received a copy and could give their feedback anonymously. The survey was started in 1997 and has been conducted annually since then. The survey was integrated into the manager's annual remuneration package though a bonus based on the feedback from individual store feedback.

Additional special projects included:

• The development of a store team colleague recruitment questionnaire based on the capabilities displayed by the more effective team colleagues that showed measurable improvement since its inception by reducing team turnover by nearly 50%.
• Designing and facilitating programmes to assist team leaders deal with bullying and harassment of different types
• Designing and implementing throughout the operational stores a performance review process for all team leaders and managers.

Centell has also provided, both though development workshops and directly, a Personal Capability Profiling Service for Woolworths to assist with the recruitment, promotion and development of business leaders. This is currently an 'online' suite of over 7 questionnaires that explores, through self-perception and 360 degree feedback, how an individual thinks they work and the strengths and limitations that their approach might carry.

Key Achievements

The company have identified these as:

• Development of a cadre of well-informed team leaders prepared to be capable of undertaking greater challenges in the company. This involves thinking more strategically and being more self aware about their current capability and future development needs
• Senior team leaders and Directors more objectively informed about their colleagues who may or may not be part of succession plans for future roles in the business
• A highly credible process for evaluating potential and providing participants and the company with a transparent picture of current potential for matching against current and future needs
• The development of additional training and development support programmes based on the clusters of needs emerging from the Development Centres
• Team leaders working with renewed focus and energy to achieve what they see they are capable of and producing improved results in current roles.
• Greater commitment and motivation by team members through in-store team development workshops resulting in improved retention and increased sales.