VA Consultants have worked systemically with National Highways since 2016, supporting the organisation’s development from being a civil service organisation to becoming a government-owned company that has greater autonomy for its budget and performance.

This organisational transformation created significant turbulence and performance pressure across National Highways. Leaders faced new demands around performance, resilience and wellbeing, which in turn directly affected the organisation’s culture. VA Consultants partnered with National Highways to design and deliver solutions that empowered leaders and teams. This work supported the organisation’s ongoing organisational transformation and helped embed a new way of operating and performing.

Importantly, National Highways focuses on three core imperatives: Safety, Delivery and Customer. A clear values framework underpins these priorities and shapes a culture that drives higher individual and collective performance.

VA Consultants have been working with the organisation across three core strands:

• Executive Team Development: The team effectiveness programme helped the Executive Team clarify its vision and purpose. Leaders brought the organisation’s values to life by role-modelling authentic behaviours and establishing them as cultural norms.
• Management Development: This programme equipped managers with the mindset and skills to empower their teams. Through a series of two-day workshops, managers learned how to embed the organisation’s values and build a high-performance culture.
• Organisation Culture Change: This initiative aligned employees around a shared purpose. It helped people connect their roles to the organisation’s ‘why’, ‘how’ and ‘what’, and, as a result, understand how their work directly impacts performance.

Key statistics…

• 99% of participants agreed that they enjoyed the programme experience
• 99% of people benefitted from the blend of experiences, theory and discussions
• 100% of people are committed to having more performance conversations
• 100% of people agreed that the consultant added value to their learning experience

Key Results…

There has been a dramatic impact on the culture at a critical time. Within one year, the foundations for the organisation to progress with a common language on values and performance were established. In addition, wider benefits have also been delivered;

• Performance issues are now more effectively managed, with the average number of grievances halved
• People leaving the business reduced by 40%, resulting in reduced recruitment costs of more than £500,000 to-date
• Staff engagement increased by eight percentage points and enablement increased by 3 percentage points
• 81% agreed or strongly agreed that managers now better role-model the organisation’s values and effective behaviours
• 81% agreed or strongly agreed that they feel more confident in enabling high performance in others, while 78% have more frequent conversations with their direct reports about wellbeing
• Improved delivery of targets and KPI performance
• Cost reductions due to more effective use of time with suppliers
• Increased engagement with supply chain, which now better understands the organisation’s values and imperatives

National Highways commented: ‘The MDP has created a buzz within the organisation, the way people approach performance conversations has changed, the language people are using is different and in due course we will be able to highlight the tangible business benefits that have been linked to the success of the MDP.’

San Johal, HR Director, commented: ‘A key benefit of the Exec team development work has been our ability as a team to start to recognise different types of problems and the deploy the most effective strategy for solving them…Another has been the articulation and recognition of the Exec team as each of our ‘A team’ rather than maybe our functional teams…Overall, the Exec team development work has left us in a better place than where we started, particularly in relation to trust, alignment, respect for one another, cohesion and effectiveness.’

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