National Training Awards - Rock The Boat Consulting a winner for the second year!

On the back of winning a National Training Award last year for excellence for their Coaching Programmes, Rock The Boat has again been honoured with a prestigious National Training Award in recognition of their outstanding contribution to Leadership Development within the workplace.

Richard Giles was presented with a Regional Training Award at the South West Regional Ceremony. Rock The Boat Consulting were recognised in the Partnership and Collaboration Award category for their joint approach with Steps Drama and Flybe in helping the airline transform its’ leadership culture resulting in exceptional bottom line results. Flybe’s challenge was to integrate two cultures when it doubled its’ size with the acquisition of BA Connect in 2007.

With many managers lacking the skills to run their teams Senior Management were soon overloaded. Flybe decided to invest in training and so teamed up with Rock The Boat Consulting and Steps Drama to create the highly innovative “Flybe Leader”, a 12 month programme to empower middle managers with effective team leadership skills and created a their ideal leadership culture to drive the dramatic growth of their company. With new skills middle managers have been able to release the pressure on their senior colleagues, allowing them to focus their time on more strategic rather than day to day business.

Andrew Strong (Flybe’s chief operating officer) said “the Flybe Leader programme invigorated the middle management team, by increasing their confidence, competence and overall performance. Over the last three years we have seen a steady and significant increase in staff engagement and satisfaction levels, as well as a reduction in sickness absence, grievances and staff turnover. Also emerging talent has been identified which is fundamental to our succession planning for the future”. On winning the award Andrew commented, “Whilst it’s nice to gain recognition for our achievements, the real benefit to Flybe isn’t the award itself, more the benefits we gained within the business as a result of our investment in the training”.

Run on behalf of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) by UK Skills, the National Training Awards inspires and encourages UK industry to invest in training and development as a route to achieving outstanding organisational and individual success. Winning an Award is recognition of best practice and provides a benchmark for standards of excellence in training in the UK.