“We designed and launched a bespoke 6-month leadership programme in just 8-weeks.”

In the Summer of 2020, Sopra Steria UK underwent a significant business transformation, sparked by Covid-19. The organisation needed to rapidly empower their middle & senior leadership teams to tackle a series of new challenges around hybrid-work, diversity, wellbeing & resilience

This is the story of how we designed and launched a bespoke 6-month leadership programme in just 8-weeks, which has now become Sopra Steria’s flagship leadership training programme.

Sopra Steria needed to get their leaders equipped to take the business forward into the next chapter of work. This meant addressing challenges around individual and collective wellbeing, remote work, progressing diversity & inclusivity virtually, and building resilience to change and uncertainty.

This all needed to happen fast; with only 8-weeks to launch, engaging both middle managers and guiding leaders in a way that would bring the leadership team together during a time when everybody was working remotely.

Executive-sponsored ‘Celebrating Success’: live monthly panel discussions & positive role modelling by executive leaders.

We started with designing a bespoke leadership programme from the ground-up. This consisted of qualitative research, pre and post programme wellbeing & resilience surveys, fortnightly live webinars, on-demand learning, and monthly Q&A panels with the senior leadership team to explore shared challenges and celebrate success.

We then partnered with an e-learning platform and gamified the journey; creating a live leaderboard that was used by the executive team to celebrate inspiring learners every month, as well as add a competitive edge to the experience.

The monthly ‘Celebrating Success’ live executive panels have been a powerful vehicle to build camaraderie & positive role modelling across their entire leadership team during Covid-19 and have become a monthly staple on the internal communication calendar.