Many people become responsible for others because they were good at their own work. Few have been prepared for what leading people involves: how feedback is heard, how resistance forms, how pressure changes judgement, how trust is built and lost. This is the ground on which work and organisational psychology has most to offer.

What leaving costs

When someone leaves, the visible costs are recruitment, selection and induction. A review of thirty case studies found that replacing an employee typically costs about one fifth of their annual salary, and considerably more for executives and other highly specialised roles (Boushey & Glynn, 2012).

The less visible costs are harder to measure: knowledge that was never written down, working relationships that have to be rebuilt, and the extra load on colleagues who stay. A meta-analysis drawing on more than three hundred correlations found that higher turnover is associated with lower organisational performance (Park & Shaw, 2013). The association is modest on average, and stronger in some areas, such as customer service and quality (Hancock et al., 2013).

How we work together

• IInitial conversationTo understand the situation, the people involved and what the organisation wants to change.
• IIWritten proposalScope, format, timing and fee for one complete programme.
• IIIIn-person programmeHeld at your premises or in a university setting, and adapted to your context.
• IVFollow-upA session some weeks later to review what has changed in practice.

Experience

Since 1990 Walter M. Fontanini has worked in training, in companies and public institutions as well as at university, in Italy and Hungary. Organisations he has worked for include:

• Fiat, Fiat Aviazione and Fiat ISVOR
• Sony
• ExecuTrain
• Istituto nazionale per il Commercio Estero (ICE), Rome
• CEIDA – Scuola Superiore di Pubblica Amministrazione e degli Enti Locali, RomeTraining of newly appointed public administrators
• Banco di RomaTraining of trainers
• Italian Air Force and Italian Army
• Villanova Trasporti e Logistica (VTL)
• Italian Chamber of Commerce in Hungary (Olasz Kereskedelmi Kamara)

as well as other public and private organisations.

He has also led organisations himself: from 1999 to 2009 he was CEO and Board President of an international logistics group with some 1,600 employees in Italy, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Egypt and the United States, and he has been a board member of the Italian-Hungarian Chamber of Commerce since 1996.

References are available on request.

Approach

The programmes are commissioned by directors, senior leaders and heads of HR, and delivered to leadership teams and managers, including the senior team itself. They draw on research in work and organisational psychology and in sociology, and are led by a university lecturer who also works with organisations. They are delivered in English and in person, for one organisation at a time, in Hungary and abroad.

Questions

• In which language are programmes delivered?In English.
• Where?At your premises or in a university setting, in Hungary and internationally. Each programme is run for a single organisation.
• How large are the groups?From a small senior team to larger groups of managers. The format is agreed in the proposal.
• Can a programme be adapted?Every programme is adapted to the organisation that commissions it, and new programmes can be designed for specific needs.
• How are programmes priced?Each programme is quoted as a whole, in a written proposal following the initial conversation.