UKRL worked with Learning Partners to embed professional skills and effective people processes within its technically talented workforce and deliver sustainable growth in capability.
UKRL has been proudly serving the rail industry since 2013. Initially established as a leasing company, the business has evolved to support a growing customer base across the entire maintenance, repair, and overhaul lifecycle.
The company has achieved impressive growth over the last 10 years and has an ambitious target for growth for the years to come. But how does Gareth Roberts, managing director of UKRL, plan to grow the business when growth in the rail industry can prove elusive?
“I see a lack of capability owing to a race to the bottom on price, an ageing workforce, and shortage of skills,” says Gareth. “There isn’t consistent trust within the supply chain because of poor delivery, project overruns, or unrealistic estimates of cost.”
But Gareth has a vision and strategy to address these challenges.
“In my experience revenue growth follows on from growth in three areas: individual capability, team effectiveness, and organisation culture and capability. Focusing on these areas will develop our in-house capability, increase our capacity to deliver a wider range of services, and build trust in the way UKRL responds to our customers. This means not just what UKRL do, but how we do it.”
Gareth continues, “‘What you do’ x ‘how you do it’ can either enhance or diminish the customer experience of working with you. For example, your organisation could be technically the best and have all the required technical skills (what you do), but if your team doesn’t work well together, doesn’t communicate with the customer, or is continually late (how you do it), then the overall service suffers and investing in more technical capability won’t fix the main issue.”
He adds, “Conversely, if the customer experience is a very positive one (how you do it), then this acts as a powerful multiplier to enhance your value proposition.”
A joint approach
Gareth sought help from Learning Partners, a consultancy with over 30 years’ experience in business improvement combined with learning and development expertise. Having worked successfully with Learning Partners during his tenures at Bombardier and Hitachi Rail, Gareth trusted its team to deliver Leadership Development and Team Effectiveness programmes in UKRL. The programmes are phased over the next three years to embed professional skills and effective people processes within the technically talented workforce, thereby delivering sustainable growth in capability.
Mandy Geal, director of Learning Partners, explains the joint approach: “We started the first phase with the senior leadership team (SLT), helping them align all functions within the business around common goals and priorities, i.e. what UKRL aims to achieve. Then we took the SLT through a process to define UKRL values, i.e. how UKRL people work with customers, suppliers, and colleagues. The values differentiate UKRL from other businesses, underpin their goals and priorities, and address the problems of capability, skills, and trust in the rail industry outlined above.”
The WHAT
Using her 30 years’ experience and her own unique methodology, Jacqy Munro, director of Learning Partners, led the next phase to facilitate clear roles and responsibilities across UKRL. Her methodology enables people to know what is expected of them and of others, and where their responsibilities fit into end-to-end business processes across functions. It flushes out gaps, overlaps, and bottlenecks in workflow to improve efficiency and effectiveness. By reducing wasted time, effort, and confusion, people have the capacity to deliver more output with less effort.
Gareth explains, “UKRL staff are currently working through this phase to minimise escalations and enable the SLT to have more time focusing on long term, strategic growth. Another aim is to improve staff retention by providing career paths and succession plans.”
Clarifying roles and responsibilities has enabled UKRL to create teams focused on specific work areas to share and expand expertise. These teams have started to take on more responsibility for growth, improvement, and diversification of services offered, thereby increasing UKRL’s capability and capacity.
The HOW
The foundations of the Leadership Development programme are Learning Partners’ behavioural competencies, its training, coaching, facilitation skills, and its online learning platform the Train Station. Mandy explains:
“The competencies are people-related, like communication, and task-related, like delivering results, and comprise specific skills and behaviours, which can be used to set targets and provide measures of success for increasing levels of expertise. There are specific tools and techniques for every skill in the competency framework.
“Our team delivered training to all leaders and managers in UKRL. Our coaches are providing one-to-one sessions to identify people’s strengths, pinpoint their development needs, and write a tailored development plan for each person. The plan recommends resources from the Train Station for self-directed learning and includes advice for on-the-job practice. If people need more support to change unhelpful behaviours, we coach them.
“The Train Station has videos, notes, exercises, webinars, and tips explaining how to use the tools and techniques for every skill. All our combined years of experience are embedded in this learning platform.”
The results
What results has UKRL seen from implementing the programme? John Steeples, director of operations at UKRL reflects:
“The leadership capability of staff has improved. Team leaders understand their role and take ownership of their responsibilities. They have taken the initiative to rewrite/improve critical risk assessments with their teams and as a result people are taking more responsibility for safety and quality day-to-day.
“Team leaders produce realistic capacity plans every day, which give us a firm base to work from when changes occur. We see less firefighting and fewer escalations, and we are more efficient at distributing workload and allocating tasks. All of this improves motivation and wellbeing. People are feeling more confident knowing their strengths, and what to do to develop. They are more communicative and engaged, so productivity has increased!”
Gareth concludes: “We have achieved our growth target of 25% in Q1 this year. It’s personally rewarding to watch individuals grow and see teams functioning more effectively. The rhythm of our business is benefitting as a result, and it will no doubt act as a solid foundation for our plan to grow further.”
UKRL values
- We have skilled and talented people that care.
- We offer a unique capability, delivered with pride that is value for money.
- We do what we say.
- We are easy to work with.
