Six years ago, Westfield Group was reporting less-than-acceptable bottom-line results.
Bob Joyce, chairman and CEO of the insurance, banking and financial services firm, realized that a string of early retirements
had pushed several employees into high-level positions for which they were not prepared.
“Our culture had evolved to on-the-job training,” Joyce says. “We had retired those folks in a very demanding environment, and
we had not invested in our people. Once we realized the need and what we hadn’t done, we created these programs to fill some
of that void.”
What he created is Westfield University, a skills enhancement program to keep employees up-to-date with the training
and technology they need to perform at a high level. That program is paired with a leadership development program for
the company’s emerging leaders.
The programs have been in place for about five years, and are starting to bear fruit — just in time. Joyce says the next
four years will see a number of retirements, and this time around, he will have well-trained employees ready to step in.
Creating a leadership program
The first step in a creating a leadership succession program is finding out which employees have the potential to be the
leaders of tomorrow.
For senior management and executives, Westfield has a collaboration project in place to identify those with leadership
potential. From there, a discussion starts with the current senior-level executives about the next generation to lead the
2,500 employees of the firm and control its $3.4 billion in consolidated assets and $1.5 billion in written premiums — the
closest thing to revenue in the insurance industry.
“We sit down and talk about these folks and where we would position them in one of nine categories in the organization,” Joyce says. “Out of that emerges our high performers, our top stars, our diamonds in the rough.”
If an employee isn’t on the fast track to the corner office, that doesn’t mean he or she can’t improve. That’s where the
skills and technology training of Westfield University come in.
Joyce says it is the manager’s job to have a candid dialogue with his or her employees about their desired level of effort
toward improvement. That personal growth presents one side of the training and is something Joyce says his employees
should want.
“I tell them constantly, this is not something to be afraid of — this is something to seize,” he says. “When you start
down the path of differentiation, the natural response of a manager is, ‘What about the people who aren’t going to make
it?’ as opposed to the ones who are. Let’s focus on the ones we need to invest in first, because they are the ones who
will make us all more successful in the long run.”
The other side of training is the expectation of high job performance. Joyce says it’s only fair to expect high performance from his employees, and when changes happen, they need to keep up.
“When we roll out new technology, it’s a mandate,” Joyce says. “Everybody’s going to have to learn it in order to perform. There, it is really not optional; it’s a demand. You’re going to have to learn the new technology to perform at a higher level. If you can’t do that, or you don’t have a desire to do that, that’s going to impact performance, and other choices
will have to be made.”
Joyce says employees must be in the right situation to be successful in their jobs, and he tries to find the right role for
each person. If employees aren’t happy in their current role with the company, they won’t be nearly as receptive to training initiatives.
Joyce says the work of getting the right person in the right role starts with a definition of what each job is. Then management needs to find out the competencies and skills sets needed to fill that job, then find the right person to fill it.
“Oftentimes, we’ve found the person’s not happy coming to work every day,” Joyce says. “When you can help them get
into a role where they feel like they can contribute again, and they’re happy, it’s a win-win.”
That can only happen if the employee-manager relationship is able to sustain robust dialogue. Communication is the key to
finding the right roles for your people.
“You need managers who are comfortable with dialogue,” Joyce says. “They can create an environment with no retaliation, where they can say what’s on their mind. They’ll come to the realization that you’re not going to agree on everything,
but a realization that there’s a whole lot more common ground than not, and you’re going to be able to build on that.”
Getting feedback
Subpar results may have driven Joyce’s thoughts to training programs, but the employees themselves have helped with the
implementation. Joyce says a survey of employees showed Westfield management how to improve the fledgling training system
every step of the way.
One of the top concerns of employees was finding time to fit skills and leadership training in around their normal, day-to-day
responsibilities.
“Both on skills training and leadership, our employees are frustrated that they don’t have time to practice,” Joyce says. “It’s a
real issue. Every organization can spend a lot of money on it. You go away for a week for a retreat and come back pumped up
with all the things you learned. Then reality sets in, and you’re in the day-to-day grind.”
He says the secret is making managers aware that they need to create the time and capacity for employees to work on that.
Employees need to be willing to make some sacrifices, as well.
“It also takes an understanding from the employee standpoint that it’s not necessarily in the 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. part of their job
that they’re going to learn and develop this,” he says.
Setting goals is another important part of employee training programs at Westfield. Joyce says employees are asked what they
want to get out of the training.
“You need attention to detail, dialogue and measurement on a short-term basis,” he says. “If you’re going to send someone off
where they are going to develop leadership or technical skills, you don’t wait until next year to do evaluations.”
Joyce says by measuring their accomplishments, it’s easier to show how far they have come toward achieving their goals.
Battlefield lessons
Joyce’s commitment to leadership training doesn’t begin and end with a book or two. In fact, Westfield’s leaders-in-training benefit from what Joyce calls “The Battlefield Experience.”
It started five years ago, when Joyce took a group of his senior leaders to Gettysburg, Pa., the site of one of the Civil War’s
bloodiest battles. A retired Army general took the executives through the strategy of the battle.
“Bringing leadership and strategy out of the military into the business world — I could connect to that,” says Joyce, who served
in the Navy for 26 years. “So as a leader, if I could help others see it, that would be helpful.”
The battlefield experience is good for developing better managers and executives because it shows in no uncertain terms the
importance of vision, execution and communication. Joyce says those are all traits a leader should have, or should be working
to develop.
The strategy training next moved to the beaches of Normandy, site of the largest amphibious invasion of World War II. The group studied the strategies used by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower for the invasion.
What became clear was how Eisenhower created a vision and a plan, then stayed committed to it. Joyce says that type of commitment
is what managers and CEOs need to embrace.
“A lot of times, companies have a vision for a while, and when it doesn’t work out, they start over,” he says. “One of the kernels
Eisenhower provides is that strategy is long-term, and once you commit yourself to a strategy, you’ve got to stick with it.”
Joyce has had to apply those lessons himself with Westfield’s training program.
“You’ve got to have patience,” Joyce says. “It takes a lot more time than what you think at the outset. This is not something where you
stand up and say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ and the whole world follows. This is not something that’s easy to do.
“I’m happy with our progress, but it’s been five or six years.”
The program may not have reached its full potential yet, but its success is vital to continued growth at Westfield Group.
“If you look at our core business, we’re only as good as our people are,” Joyce says. “Our product is delivering on a promise of peace
of mind. That’s all done by people, faces, human beings who’ve got to perform. If we don’t have those capable people, we’re going to
lose.”
HOW TO REACH: Westfield Group, (800) 243-0210 or www.westfieldgrp.com