The Challenge: Develop a ‘Culture of Empowerment’ throughout SCA Personal Care, enabling individuals to realise ambitions and maximise contributions made to the company.

The Solution: Provide leaders and individuals with the tools they need to agree on clear and aligned goals and on how to work together to achieve them.

The Results: Introduce and implement The Ken Blanchard Companies^® Situational Leadership^® II across the whole company—from top management to frontline leaders.

Developing a culture of empowerment within SCA Personal Care is key to the company,” says Simone Wenserski from the Head Office in Munich. “The management team looked at SLII^® and recognised a perfect partner in this aim. The model encourages close working relationships between people to build competence and commitment, enabling leaders to provide the direction and support people need to succeed and grow.”

“Key in the training roll-out was having a top-down cascading approach to create momentum,” she adds. “The concept was to deliver the first phase of the training in English, then local language training and implementation followed, allowing for international networking, coordination, and best practices.”

Marga de Bruyn was responsible for rolling out SLII in one of SCA’s plants in The Netherlands and says this cascading approach paid dividends.

“Originally, people were sceptical about a new leadership development process being introduced,” she admits, “but their scepticism quickly dissolved once they realised how practical the model was. Now, all managers are trained in SLII and are working on embedding the model in company life. For instance, we have a manager responsible for a large group of people. When he is assigning a new task to someone, he is using the SLII Model. This structured approach helps him to also think about what is required from him as a leader.”

“We’re well on track on our journey,” she emphasizes. “The training roll-out has been finalised and we are now working on sustainability. You can see people are using the tool and you can measure the impact for individuals in different parts of the organisation already. SLII is working—we just need to keep implementing it.”

Results

“Managers are now so much more aware of the needs of the people they work with,” concludes Marga de Bruyn. “SLII has proven to be a good instrument. People tend to use one leadership style and the model was a real eye-opener for them. Now we understand each other much better.” Simone Wenserski agrees that SLII has had a positive impact on SCA Personal Care. “The model works very well in the cross-cultural context, undoubtedly establishing a common leadership language throughout our organisation.

Marga de Bruyn has worked as an HR Consultant for over fifteen years, working with SCA in The Netherlands since 2001.
Simone Wenserski joined the company in 2001 as HR Project Manager. She is responsible for the roll-out of SLII internationally.
SCA Personal Care develops, manufactures, and markets baby, feminine, and incontinence care products. Among their well-known brands are Libero, Libresse, and Tena. In 2004 their 4,500 employees generated net sales of 1.6 billion euros. SCA Personal Care is part of the Swedish SCA Group.