CASE STUDY DETAILS

Wespine – Improving productivity through a ‘one team’ and ‘people first’ approach

Situation

Wespine Industries (a Wesfarmers company) is the leading softwood timber processor in WA. A workplace review highlighted that the organisation produced quality products and well skilled employees with the right intent. However it also revealed:

The company was not well known in the community and by customers.
Was reactive rather than proactive in communications with customers and employees.
Silos existed negatively impacting productivity
There was a gap in marketing their products to the construction/building industry.
There was an opportunity to more effectively assist the industry to promote timber and grow market share in the face of competition from steel.

Wespine management identified opportunities to significantly improve the performance of the operation through improved leadership and work culture. It was agreed that a comprehensive plan required development that focused on both “the head” and “the heart”. This was to include identifying a set of values, measuring workplace culture, improvement in leadership skills, improvement in diversity and gender balance, and improved communication processes. To assist the management team, MODAL was engaged for the leadership and culture change process. A comprehensive solution was developed by MODAL that integrated with other core system improvements that was aligned with a communication plan.

The Approach

The extended Wespine Leadership Team undertook a high performing team development process. The aim was to have all the leaders doing ‘enterprise first’ thinking and develop their ability to prioritise the needs and alignment of the ‘primary team’ over the needs of any one of the teams they lead.

A small change lead team was developed to guide the process.
Wespine management agreed on the development of supervisors.
Wespine measured their current culture
Wespine’s new organisation values were created with input from a broader group of employees and launched across the business.
A culture report, presented to the Leadership Team highlighted the initial key focuses needed for performance improvement were: Alignment to a ‘One Team’ Orientation, Capability Development and embedding the Core Values.
Projects were identified that aligned with the three priorities
A list of team and personal actions was developed. The team actions were reviewed at the monthly management meetings with the personal actions forming the basis of individual goals in the annual goal setting and review process. The performance reviews were redesigned to ensure focus on the key individual actions was included and an assessment of the values initiated. These reviews are tied to annual bonus reviews.
Communication plan developed.
Regular employee engagement sessions.
Supervisor Development Program introduced in 2018. The focus of the program was to provide coaching and development opportunities to the participants in their leadership roles, and to enable them to put their learnings into real time situations/projects at Wespine.
Emerging leader program established.
Introduction of cross-training in the operational departments.

Services Provided

The first Denison Organisational Culture Survey (DOCS) was conducted in May 2018 with the help of MODAL. The DOCS measures specific aspects of an organisation’s culture in each of four areas: Mission, Adaptability, Involvement and Consistency. Individual surveys are collectively tabulated into a graphic profile that compares Wespine to a database of 1,000+ other organisations. This provided Wespine with a measure of their progress toward achieving a high-performance business culture.
Forcefield interviews were also conducted by MODAL, with 20 employees across the business, to ensure a deeper understanding of Wespine’s culture.
Employee Culture and Engagement Workshops were run with 97% employee attendance. These focused on communicating the existing culture, embedding the values through an experiential learning activity, and discussing the role of managers and the role of employees in improving the organisation.
All Leadership Team members participated in 360 degree feedback, including leader development coaching sessions with MODAL coaches.
Change management program established and training provided for the extended Leadership Team.

Over an 18-month period the extended leadership team attended a number of workshops with MODAL. These days were aimed at building leadership and team capability within the group, in particular:

A small change lead team was developed to guide the process.
Wespine management agreed on the development of supervisors.
Wespine measured their current culture.
Wespine’s new organisation values were created with input from a broader group of employees and launched across the business.
A culture report, presented to the Leadership Team, highlighted the initial key focuses needed for performance improvement: Alignment to a ‘One Team’ Orientation, Capability Development and embedding the Core Values.
Projects were identified that aligned with the three priorities.
A list of team and personal actions was developed. The team actions were reviewed at the monthly management meetings, with the personal actions forming the basis of individual goals in the annual goal setting and review process. The performance reviews were redesigned to ensure focus on the key individual actions was included and an assessment of the values initiated. These reviews are tied to annual bonus reviews.
Communication plan developed.
Regular employee engagement sessions.
Supervisor Development Program introduced in 2018. The focus of the program was to provide coaching and development opportunities to the participants in their leadership roles, and to enable them to put their learnings into real time situations and projects at Wespine.
Emerging leader program established.
Introduction of cross-training in the operational departments.

Outcomes

A second employee culture survey (DOCS) was undertaken 18 months after the original to assess progress of the implementation of the previous actions and measure the changes.

The results comparison indicated substantial culture improvement. All 12 categories of the survey saw improvements, particularly high increases in the three focus indices that had been identified for improvement (Capability Development, Team Orientation and Core Values).

Silos were broken down and cross functional collaboration and ultimately productivity improved substantially.

Over successive years Wespine increased profits despite the headwinds of a substantial industry downturn.