Case Study
Maximising Individual Potential to Drive Team Success
Deliverables
Introduction to Strengths Team Workshop
Strengths Clinics monthly
The Customer: Saongroup Customer Success & Services
Saongroup is a leading global e-recruitment company with a strong footprint in Ireland, operating the popular job search portals irishjobs.ie, nijobs.com, and jobs.ie. The company’s Customer Success and Service team, led by its newly appointed head Heather Thompson, works on building and strengthening relationships with its customers and providing them with proactive support. The team has separate units in Saongroup’s offices in Dublin, Belfast, and Cork.
The Challenge: Building a cohesive, proactive & thriving team
As the Customer Success and Service team lead, Heather is on a mission to build a cohesive, proactive, and thriving team. She took over a team that had just gone through major restructuring, which brought opportunities for growth and improvement, centering around three key areas:
Building confidence of the team to widen their focus from one to multiple brands.
Design a cohesive onboarding framework to facilitate an effective ramp-up of new starters.
Create a framework of continuous professional development for tenured team members to maintain engagement and help them thrive in their roles.
Heather Thompson | Head of Customer Success and Services | Saongroup Ireland
"Claudia has worked in tech and in customer-facing roles like ours, so I’m confident that she understands us and the challenges we face. There’s a credibility aspect to her experience. Her focus on Positive Psychology, and fun and engaging workshop series helped my team identify what they’re good at and contribute to our goals."
The Solution: An interactive team workshop series
Saongroup is in the business of talent acquisition and career development. So it’s only natural to build an innovative learning and development framework that offers professional growth through creative workshops, blending coaching with active learning approaches.
Together, Heather and I designed an interactive workshop series for her fifteen team members and three leaders that were tailored to build team cohesion, boost individual performance, and empower new and established team members alike.
“I want to advocate coaching. I want to bring that into the business and encourage new ways of thinking among my team.”
Creating a learning culture based on psychological safety
The Outcomes
Improved team cohesion
Positive behavioural change
Boost in employee confidence
Team Cohesion.
Team cohesion serves as the foundation of team success. To be cohesive, members must know what their team’s goals are and proactively work towards them. The Strengths Workshop helped members of the Customer Success and Service team realise their strengths and use them to achieve their goals. All participants shared that the strengths intervention was instrumental in their team’s bond. After completing the initiative, the vast majority of team members scored 5 out of 5 points on their comfort level within the team.
Positive Behavioural Change.
Positive behavioural change is intrinsically motivated. These employee-led changes drive productivity, job satisfaction and overall wellbeing. All participants implemented at least one behaviour change based on their strengths. More than 60% said this change positively impacted their performance.
Confidence.
Employee self-efficacy measures the belief in one’s skills and talents and is a corner stone for flourishing teams. All participants reported a positive change in confidence, with 80% saying their confidence has improved significantly.
Workshop Participants report higher confidence and self-belief:
“I feel that between us we have all the superpowers to make a great team. We share similar strengths and weaknesses, however, we all have unique profiles that make us work well as a team.”
Customer Success and Services, Saongroup Ireland
“I believe in my abilities more. I have more self-belief than I actually thought!”
Strengths in action
Two members of the team put their strengths in action and undertook writing a best practices handbook for the team. Another team member created an onboarding framework and a knowledge resource for new joiners. All these tools, which are now being used, and will be used by future joiners, were developed because of the Strengths Workshop.
Strengths intervention
“Everyone has different skills and strengths. And within the team we can all lean on each other.”
Delivery.
Two interactive workshops were delivered on-site in the Saongroup headquarters in the Docklands in Dublin, Ireland. The groups learned about their strengths, identified their energisers and drainers, and explored in small groups what it means to be at their best. Each participant was encouraged to set a goal for themselves and for the team to bring the new learning into practice.To further promote individual learning and build group cohesion, two strength clinics were delivered in a remote format.
The first clinic centred around the exploration of how strengths can support individual goal setting and quota attainment. Mapping strengths to goals is an evidence-based practice to increase motivation and goal attainment. Team members also shared their individual wins and celebrated each other. The second clinic focused on using the connection between strengths and energy to rethink time management. The team explored how they can use their energising strengths to rethink their productivity and time management, as well as understand how their draining learned behaviours can be managed in a more energy-efficient manner.
All team members completed the Cappfinity Expert Strengths Profile, which gives them a comprehensive view of their 60 realised strengths, unrealised strengths, learned behaviours, and weaknesses. The Strengths Profile is a popular choice for modern teams as its language is easy to apply to the workplace and its connection between effort and performance offers a motivating framework for behavioural change.
Team Members are inspired to optimise their performance:
“I have been focusing on three of my unrealised strengths, which are Connector, Growth and Curiosity. I am connecting with clients more now than I was previously. Similarly, I connect more with other colleagues at work and as a result, feel I am growing and learning all the time.”
Working from strengths improves employee confidence:
“It was good to see all my strengths listed in one place. It helps to build confidence and allows you to focus on the areas you know you can be good in”
Driving towards team success
After the Strengths Workshop series, Saongroup’s Customer Success and Service team is working more confidently and cohesively towards their goals. Together, we were able to show how Positive Psychology helps organisations support their people in realising their potential and achieving their individual and team objectives at the same time.