Anthony Nolan transforms L&D provision with a dynamic programme designed and delivered by qpeople.
Ensuring that corporate learning programmes keep pace with organisational change can be tricky. For Anthony Nolan, establishing a consistent, harmonised approach to management development was a key part of their plan to equip and empower leaders to thrive in a shifting third sector landscape. By partnering with qpeople, the charity now has a flexible and sustainable L&D strategy delivering immediate operational benefits.
Anthony Nolan are a UK-based registered charity employing approximately 450 people. Over the last 50 years, the organisation has transformed the way potential stem cell donors can connect with patients through an international register that has, to date, helped more than 20,000 people receive a lifesaving transplant.
In 2022, the charity’s leadership team recognised the need for a new management development strategy that would build both capacity and capability within the organisation’s management population.
The purpose of the programme was to enable managers to adopt a strengths-based approach to leading their teams and to achieve empowerment, motivation, ownership and energy by creating psychologically safe team cultures.
Aligning learning provision with operational goals
A collaboration with qpeople saw the launch of a bespoke programme for 60 existing man-agers.
With managers ultimately accountable for their team’s activities and tasks, it was imperative that they had the tools needed to increase efficiency and effectiveness and to better sup-port the aims of the organisation.
Head of Talent, Andrew Marrins, particularly wanted a programme that would cement a common understanding of the role of managers within the context of Anthony Nolan’s organisational culture and values.
‘We began with a few key principles that were crucially important to us – including focusing on how managers could leverage their strengths, applying them practically to meet personal, professional and organisational aspirations.’
‘At the outset of our conversations, qpeople helped us to gain clarity in terms of what the business actually needed and challenged our thinking on the approach we initially had in mind. The result being a bespoke, highly sustainable programme to take onward and for-ward.’
The ultimate aim was to build a bespoke development pro-gramme for Anthony Nolan’s entire management population, including managers who had had little or no development in their career, or time in role, so far.
Driving change through new behaviours
qpeople rooted their approach in Gallup Strengths theory, using half-day workshops (blending in-person and online learning sessions) to take candidates on a journey of discovery be-ginning with self-management before moving on to managing others and performance.
Starting from a position of positive psychology, the programme encouraged managers to adopt and adapt successful managerial habits, to create a high-performance workplace that champions psychological safety and values emotional intelligence.
Programme elements included an all-important introduction to coaching for managers, as well as an introduction to the concept of ALS (Action Learning Sets) – focussed, local problem-solving groups that bring a multitude of benefits.
The solution comprised a mixture of virtual delivery, face-to-face and action learning – a formula that Andrew Marrins believes has been a good fit for Anthony Nolan’s broader vision.
‘The programme was the catalyst for behavioural change. Based on feedback from participants, managers have found learning from colleagues in workshops and ALS sessions to be of tremendous value; indeed some groups intend to continue ALS in the future.
‘Crucially, the personal and professional networks that have been created between manag-ers who participated in the L&D programme now act as an informal, cross-organisational re-source for peer support.’
Preparing managers to work with teams more productively – re-solving conflict, maintaining motivation and mitigating the im-pact of change – in an increasingly challenging hybrid environ-ment underpinned the rationale behind the learning process.
Gaining a fresh perspective
qpeople’s ‘How to’ guides and ALS followed each workshop and module respectively, creat-ing a golden thread from workshop content to real-world practice.
These consolidation activities ensured there was an opportunity for each participant to ap-ply workshop learning to the real work-related challenges they were experiencing, maximis-ing the training transference and learning.
With a focus on accountability, ownership, self-belief and resilience, qpeople’s L&D pro-gramme helped to bring clarity to managers’ understanding of their roles and responsibili-ties at Anthony Nolan.
Andrew Marrins: ‘The learner journey aligns to our new people strategy, supporting our or-ganisational goals and future vision. Collaborating with the team at qpeople has been en-gaging, thought provoking, pacey, focussed and immensely enjoyable. The learning being practical, experiential and action oriented.’
Managers were encouraged to understand how to recognise and use their strengths to optimum effect when managing their teams consistently and collegiately. And, because participants attended from across the organisation, the positive impact has been felt throughout.