The Overview

Background

BASF operate internationally, leading their sector, creating chemistry for a sustainable future. Through science and innovation they enable their customer in nearly every industry to meet the current and future needs of society. Having worked with BASF over a number of years, designing and delivering a range of management and leadership development programmes, Primeast were asked to support the organisation having completed the purchase of another business off-shore to help synthesise cultures and as part of a financial improvement plan for the company.

BASF Callanish

The Brief

What The Client Asked For

BASF bought a manufacturing plant in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland in 2012. After a company-wide pulse survey it was identified that there were some extreme culture issues which were severely impacting on performance.

Primeast were briefed to provide a solution that addressed the cultural issues and design a series of programmes to support the implementation of the required organisational culture change.

An integrated approach with complete programme management would ensure a comprehensive and cohesive response to the cultural challenges uncovered, many of which spread beyond the organisation and into the local community which had previously had a significant influence on the behaviours demonstrated by the workforce.

Primeast were also asked to deliver a number of critical analysis workshops which would give the participants the opportunity to review operational processes.

Outer Hebrides

The Solution

What We Delivered

Primeast engaged in an initial consultation process with the key stakeholders to uncover detail and insight regarding the challenges at play and the impact on the business to inform the resulting solution and provided a project plan to address the findings.

The first stage of the project involved the implementation of a comprehensive Barrett Values Culture Values Assessments to all 80 staff and Individual Values Assessments for the senior leadership team. The Primeast team provided a comprehensive debrief of the results to the programme sponsors and designed a Town Hall event to capture feedback from the wider audience. Insights were analysed and then a series of workshops were designed to provide the agreed support and feedback on the Individual Values Assessments given by accredited practitioners in focused coaching sessions providing developmental and future-focused guidance.

The General Manager was supported through a tailored coaching programme and coaching was provided to the management team to help move forward from the insights gathered. Primeast also designed and delivered a series of skills-based workshops as part of a wider organisation skills development programme. These workshops were focused on areas identified to accelerate the cultural change required. Coaching services were focused on developing emotional intelligence with the use of selected assessments to support the process and an off-site ‘all hands’ workshop was delivered to embed the change by engaging the wider audience.

The outputs of the Incident Analysis workshops were critical to improving processes which resulted in far-reaching improvements in performance.

The Results

What We Achieved

At each point during the process from consultation to design to delivery, outputs were provided as records of findings and to inform the project plan and subsequent design of each intervention. The cultural interventions and workshops were delivered in a sensitive environment and resulted in a significant cultural shift and a transformational change in leadership styles. It was reported that the plant returned to profit within 3 years of the intervention.