Macphie of Glenbervie & Stewart Milne are today (9th August 2013) jointly celebrating a graduation ceremony for 12 employees, six from Macphie and six from Stewart Milne, who have successfully completed an eight month course on Managing People for Growth (MPFG).
The jointly-run course was designed and run by Derek Peacock of future factory ltd and was partially funded by Scottish Enterprise. Its aim is to help employees increase and develop their leadership skills such as team motivation, assertiveness, communication and conflict management. The trainees, nominated by their line managers, were both long serving and recent recruits. This graduation consists of each participant making a short presentation on what they have learned and how it will help them develop their roles within their companies.
This training consortium brought together two of the North East’s largest family run independent businesses, sharing resources and best practice.
Karen Catto, Group HR Director of Stewart Milne said, “MPFG is an integral part of our skills academy as it’s too easy to focus on the quality of technical expertise and neglect developing leaders, vital for succession management. Working with Macphie has given our team the insight that there are issues common to other organisations. We are confident that this course will develop our peoples’ skills, resilience and drive to maximise new business opportunities now and in the future.”
Neil Freckingham, Operations Director, Macphie said, “This excellent course was identified as answering some key business needs for us and working with Stewart Milne, Scottish Enterprise and the Future Factory has made this possible. We at Macphie felt that it was vital to ensure that our Team Leaders have the necessary skills required to manage and drive change in the business, which in turn will support our future growth ambitions.
Derek Peacock, General Factotum, of future factory ltd. said, “Managing people for growth provides managers and leaders with practical tools to ‘get more from less’, more profitably. It specifically illustrates the 10% behaviour change a Manager needs to make in order to create the best performance climate, leading to a significant increase in productivity.”
Also present at the graduation were Ian Findlay, from Scottish Enterprise, Alastair Macphie, Chief Executive of Macphie and Susan Hudson Learning & Development Manager, Stewart Milne Group.