Driving Results Case Study: Investing in Early Career Professionals with BWI

This summer, Success Labs consultants spent time with the fantastic employees of BWI Companies, Inc. – a large distributor of landscape, agriculture, pest management, and animal health supplies, among other products.As a team with offices and territories across the south, communication and relationship building is paramount. BWI knows that investing in its people strategy through development planning is vital for the long term success of the organization. They brought in Success Labs to jump start the career development planning process, with the goal of building teamwork and leadership skills through virtual workshops and in-person coaching sessions.Every organization has unique goals based on their team needs and people capacity. However, at the end of the day, investing in people and growing their capacity to perform at a high level is what we’re all aiming for. Read on to learn more about the process we engaged in with BWI to grow leaders and drive the results they seek as a company.

Goal:

Career development of early and mid-career employees.

BWI senior leadership sought to invest in a group of high potential employees and obtain the following results:

• Help them learn about career development, teamwork, and leadership best practices
• Give them the opportunity to build a personal career/leadership development plan to help them grow
• Develop their skills to be more effective in the workplace

Success Labs developed a process that put targets on these goals, giving supervisors and employees the ability to measure and take ownership of completing their individual plans.

Solution:

Invest in the development planning process for employees through a combination of virtual workshops and in person development planning.

Success Labs developed a six-part virtual series to teach the leadership competencies that BWI identified as key to their overall people strategy. These competencies included:

• Resilient Leadership
• Personality style and teamwork
• Personal brand
• Effective communication
• Building relationships for success
• Giving and receiving feedback
• Career development

These 2-hour “small-bite” trainings laid the foundation for our consultants to then travel to the BWI offices in Arkansas and Texas to host development discussions where participants shared their personalized development plans with their supervisors. These development and alignment discussions provided the opportunity to discuss their career development plans, ensure alignment of goals, receive feedback, and get buy-in and support from all parties.

Outcome:

Employees and supervisors now have an actionable road map to achieving their individual and organizational goals.

The hybrid program that Success Labs developed gave BWI employees dedicated time to invest in this process without taking up too much calendar time, and allowed more team members the opportunity to participate virtually. In-person meetings also ensured that development planning had full buy-in from employees and supervisors. The first step is the most important, but ultimately, it’s now up to the individual BWI employees to work their plans and put their skills to practice. After meeting with the dedicated workforce and emerging leaders of BWI, we’re confident that this team has the building blocks in place to build a resilient, agile, industry-leading future.BWI believes in their team members. As a family-owned, fast-growing, dynamic company, they know that investing in their people is the best way to build a strong foundation for the future of their business. This process has created alignment throughout their teams, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and pointing in the same direction. Our consultants enjoyed partnering with this engaged and forward-looking organization – the road trip was pretty fun too!Success Labs is a leadership development and management consulting firm in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. For more than 25 years, our expert team of consultants has worked with hundreds of companies to grow leaders, build teams and drive results through great people strategy. Contact us to get proactive about expanding your company’s potential, and stay up-to-date with our latest news and leadership development updates here.