Case Study

Papastratos - Philip Morris affiliate in Greece

Papastratos - Philip Morris affiliate in Greece

Coaching Training for Culture Change after an Acquisition

Challenge

The Greek affiliate Papastratos had been recently acquired by the leading international company Philip Morris Int'l.

Prior to the acquisition, the Greek affiliate was quite profitable and successful but management practices in manufacturing were quite traditional.

As the Greek company would now make part of an international company with operation in 160 countries, there should be a culture change, incorporating more formal people management practices in development and performance review.

Solution

70 Managers, Supervisors and Foremen worked towards acquiring coaching & feedback skills, in order to run performance appraisal meetings for the first time. The project entailed a combination of steps in a period of 9 months:

  • Participants’ focus groups to discuss their views & get their "buy?in" on the programme.
  • Pre training video sessions to identify their current skills level
  • Gap identification, program design & tailoring based on pre-training data
  • Training of five days in two modules on Coaching & Feedback techniques
  • Four coaching sessions, one per month, in between the classroom days.
  • Practice application i.e. giving formal feedback to all of their team members
  • End Program evaluation meeting (with both trainees & project sponsors participating)

Results

The participants followed successfully the performance review process by giving at least twice a year concrete and specific feedback, and incorporated coaching questions in their discussions with their team.

There was a 100% positive evaluation with 81% of the participants rated the program as Most Effective and 19% as Very Effective and 97% of them would recommend them to others.

Within a couple months after the program completion, the plant was scheduled to move to a new 100 million investment location. This was achieved so seamlessly that production did not stop for a single hour.

What Participants said

"I now work more productively with my team and achieve my goals"

"My team has become more positive after initiating team meetings"

"Our company has supported us to face future challenges"

WHAT WE DO

What clients said....

”Highly interactive program delivered with structure and impact. Equips individuals with solid techniques/ skills that can be applied immediately to increase personal and organisational effectiveness. The program materials are of the highest quality and the best practices takeaways are useful resources that our people can quickly add to their toolkits.”

Natasha SPIROU,
Group Human Resources Director Fourlis Holdings S.A.

“Exceptional development program. ...the program contributes to increased business results like sales increase, better team collaboration, trust building and more effective delegation, and better time management.”

Niki KANELLOPOULOU
Training and Development Deputy Director ALPHA BANK

"The S&B Mentoring program we co-designed with Atom Wave has been running successfully since 2007. [...] The professionalism, the client focus and the trust relationship between us, have been successful criteria for our collaboration."

Maria DRAPANIOTI
Management Development Manager S&B Industrial Minerals