Testing the Success Stories

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Prestera FX is a consultancy that supports HR and business leaders who are transforming their workforce, making big changes to how they engage, manage and develop their people.

FEATURED SUCCESS STORIES

Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Description :

We designed and built a Career Development Toolkit: interactive PDF’s that guided and supported this sales team in their pursuit to promote, retain, and develop their workforce, as well as assessing and selecting top candidates for hire. After developing skills guides and career ladders across 4 roles, we conducted a workshop with re-enforcement games to help the organization become fluent with the skills. Once we had defined “what good looked like,” we developed skills-based interview guides, a Manager’s Guide to Interviewing, and conducted a workshop to introduce Directors to these new tools.

Organizational Change Communication
Organizational Change Communication
Description :

After assessing employee engagement and identifying the need for consistent application of their core values, we worked with this client to develop materials and support a multi-year campaign of organizational change. Knowing that communication is what drives momentum in a change initiative, we worked hand-in-hand to formulate value-based quarterly communication plans, develop materials to support live and virtual Speaker Series events, create a signage campaign to ensure events were seen across all available comms channels, translating of all materials into French, and providing ad-hoc comms support like creating puzzle giveaways of values posters for employee recognition gifts. After a year, the organization tripled the number of people enrolled in development programs and the organization was a finalist for LTEN’s Learning for Change award.

Prestera FX is a consultancy that supports HR and business leaders who are transforming their workforce, making big changes to how they engage, manage and develop their people.

FEATURED SUCCESS STORIES

Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Description :

We designed and built a Career Development Toolkit: interactive PDF’s that guided and supported this sales team in their pursuit to promote, retain, and develop their workforce, as well as assessing and selecting top candidates for hire. After developing skills guides and career ladders across 4 roles, we conducted a workshop with re-enforcement games to help the organization become fluent with the skills. Once we had defined “what good looked like,” we developed skills-based interview guides, a Manager’s Guide to Interviewing, and conducted a workshop to introduce Directors to these new tools.

Organizational Change Communication
Organizational Change Communication
Description :

After assessing employee engagement and identifying the need for consistent application of their core values, we worked with this client to develop materials and support a multi-year campaign of organizational change. Knowing that communication is what drives momentum in a change initiative, we worked hand-in-hand to formulate value-based quarterly communication plans, develop materials to support live and virtual Speaker Series events, create a signage campaign to ensure events were seen across all available comms channels, translating of all materials into French, and providing ad-hoc comms support like creating puzzle giveaways of values posters for employee recognition gifts. After a year, the organization tripled the number of people enrolled in development programs and the organization was a finalist for LTEN’s Learning for Change award.

Engagement Survey
Engagement Survey
Description :

Senior leadership at a division within a mid-sized pharmaceutical company became aware of morale and turnover issues in the wake of a major re-structuring. They wanted to conduct an engagement survey to find out the extent of the issues and gain insight into how best to address them, but they wanted it to be something quick and compact, not a lengthy process with cumbersome surveys and reports. We customized a streamlined survey for them and designed a compact report that was organized in layers, enabling them to start with a high-level dashboard, then drill down as needed. We also provided recommendations for how to address the gaps uncovered by the survey.

TRAINING & CERTIFICATION

Example of Single-Focus SS Display (Training & Cert)

Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Description :

We designed and built a Career Development Toolkit: interactive PDF’s that guided and supported this sales team in their pursuit to promote, retain, and develop their workforce, as well as assessing and selecting top candidates for hire. After developing skills guides and career ladders across 4 roles, we conducted a workshop with re-enforcement games to help the organization become fluent with the skills. Once we had defined “what good looked like,” we developed skills-based interview guides, a Manager’s Guide to Interviewing, and conducted a workshop to introduce Directors to these new tools.

Mentoring for Peer Coaches
Mentoring for Peer Coaches
Description :

This program leverages our Mentoring competencies to teach peer coaches, like sales field trainers, how to be more effective in supporting their team. My Mentor Legacy is a 2-hour vILT program that introduces the competency model, best practices, and how to self-assess using our interactive PDF. We’ve also created 360 surveys to gather and assess team feedback on an individual’s strengths and and areas of growth with mentoring competencies.

Monthly Webinars for Field Trainers
Monthly Webinars for Field Trainers
Description :

We created a program for sales field trainers to sharpen their coaching and training skills, including a series of monthly webinars covering an array of topics like: Leading Without Authority, Supporting Change, Delivering Feedback, Adapting to Your Learners. Flexing Your Style, Courageous Conversations, and Turning Stories into STARS. These webinars had supporting Participant Guides and worksheets, pre- and post-work, and activities designed to offer quick practice of the skills introduced in each session.

Empowering Learning Ambassadors
Empowering Learning Ambassadors
Description :

Peer trainers can have a big impact on adoption of best practices at a local level in organizations. In preparation for a big org change initiative, we helped a client create a Learning Ambassador Program, training individual contributors to take informal leadership roles as change agents supporting local pull-through efforts within their teams. Leveraging information guides, onboarding webinars, Ambassador toolkits, and scheduled feedback loops, these top contributors developed monthly plans, organized pull-through activities, guided people leaders as they engaged with their teams in developing discussions, providing ongoing program feedback/recommendations, and monitoring progress.

Flipped, Blended Learning & Certification
Flipped, Blended Learning & Certification
Description :

We designed and built a blended curriculum involving a series of elearning modules, online assessments, and an instructor-led workshop to train HR professionals worldwide on how to support their businesses through a merger or acquisition. We flipped the training by putting all of the knowledge content into the self-paced elearning modules, which participants completed in advance of attending the workshop. After completing the modules and passing the online assessments, participants were eligible to attend the live workshop, where they engaged in hands-on practice activities, review games, case-based exercises, and group discussion.

Presentation and Persuasion Skills with Practice
Presentation and Persuasion Skills with Practice
Description :

The first of this pair of workshops gives learners the confidence that comes with knowing the fundamentals of good presentations…from preparing materials, setting up the room, and organizing content to handling questions and managing discussion. Building on that confidence, the second workshop focuses on building and delivering a compelling presentation, one that persuades the audience. In both workshops, there is frequent, hands-on practice as well as a final activity that involves the learner presenting, then reviewing the video recording with the instructor, who provides feedback and coaching.

Consultative Selling Skills with Practice
Consultative Selling Skills with Practice
Description :

This series of e-learning tutorials was built with HTML and Javascript, incorporating frequent scenario-based practice exercises. In one module, where learners are learning how to ask for referrals, the learner listens to a character doing it, evaluates her performance, using the slider scales, then gets feedback from the expert on how he would have assessed it.

Troubleshooting and Customer Service
Troubleshooting and Customer Service
Description :

We designed and developed a blended curriculum (ILT, e-learning, coaching) that was organized around ability level. With new hires, we focused on basic troubleshooting processes and tools. As they certified at each level and advanced, the training focused less on the technical troubleshooting aspects of the job and more on the inter-personal customer service skills, such as handling an irate customer. The highest level help desk personnel are taught how to mentor and coach the more junior personnel.

Systems Training for Key Business Process
Systems Training for Key Business Process
Description :

When an organization builds or installs an enterprise system to support its key business process, the training cannot just focus on the keystrokes and mouse clicks. In this series of systems training courses, we articulated the business process and helped learners understand how the system fits into that process as well as how their role in the process drives business success downstream. Because there are several audiences, with different levels and types of involvement with the process and system, we built several variations of the training to suit each audience’s needs. With one audience, in fact, we scaled back the training to reference cards only, because of how they typically interact with the system.

Skills Model Training
Skills Model Training
Description :

It’s not enough to build a skills model. In order for it to have an impact on the organization, people need to understand what good looks like in the context of their day-to-day jobs. To help a global manufacturer gain adoption of their skills model, we developed a series of video-based elearning modules. Each module contained videos explaining a skill in detail, discussing each success factor and describing what good looks like in the context of different day-to-day work situations. The modules also included video interviews conducted with senior leaders, where they explained what those success factors meant to them and provided real-world examples to demonstrate them.

Example of Filtered SS Display (All Services)

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  • Featured
  • Leadership Development
  • Organizational Change
  • Training & Certification
Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Skills-driven Hiring & Development Training
Description :

We designed and built a Career Development Toolkit: interactive PDF’s that guided and supported this sales team in their pursuit to promote, retain, and develop their workforce, as well as assessing and selecting top candidates for hire. After developing skills guides and career ladders across 4 roles, we conducted a workshop with re-enforcement games to help the organization become fluent with the skills. Once we had defined “what good looked like,” we developed skills-based interview guides, a Manager’s Guide to Interviewing, and conducted a workshop to introduce Directors to these new tools.

Mentoring for Peer Coaches
Mentoring for Peer Coaches
Description :

This program leverages our Mentoring competencies to teach peer coaches, like sales field trainers, how to be more effective in supporting their team. My Mentor Legacy is a 2-hour vILT program that introduces the competency model, best practices, and how to self-assess using our interactive PDF. We’ve also created 360 surveys to gather and assess team feedback on an individual’s strengths and and areas of growth with mentoring competencies.

Monthly Webinars for Field Trainers
Monthly Webinars for Field Trainers
Description :

We created a program for sales field trainers to sharpen their coaching and training skills, including a series of monthly webinars covering an array of topics like: Leading Without Authority, Supporting Change, Delivering Feedback, Adapting to Your Learners. Flexing Your Style, Courageous Conversations, and Turning Stories into STARS. These webinars had supporting Participant Guides and worksheets, pre- and post-work, and activities designed to offer quick practice of the skills introduced in each session.

Empowering Learning Ambassadors
Empowering Learning Ambassadors
Description :

Peer trainers can have a big impact on adoption of best practices at a local level in organizations. In preparation for a big org change initiative, we helped a client create a Learning Ambassador Program, training individual contributors to take informal leadership roles as change agents supporting local pull-through efforts within their teams. Leveraging information guides, onboarding webinars, Ambassador toolkits, and scheduled feedback loops, these top contributors developed monthly plans, organized pull-through activities, guided people leaders as they engaged with their teams in developing discussions, providing ongoing program feedback/recommendations, and monitoring progress.

Flipped, Blended Learning & Certification
Flipped, Blended Learning & Certification
Description :

We designed and built a blended curriculum involving a series of elearning modules, online assessments, and an instructor-led workshop to train HR professionals worldwide on how to support their businesses through a merger or acquisition. We flipped the training by putting all of the knowledge content into the self-paced elearning modules, which participants completed in advance of attending the workshop. After completing the modules and passing the online assessments, participants were eligible to attend the live workshop, where they engaged in hands-on practice activities, review games, case-based exercises, and group discussion.

Presentation and Persuasion Skills with Practice
Presentation and Persuasion Skills with Practice
Description :

The first of this pair of workshops gives learners the confidence that comes with knowing the fundamentals of good presentations…from preparing materials, setting up the room, and organizing content to handling questions and managing discussion. Building on that confidence, the second workshop focuses on building and delivering a compelling presentation, one that persuades the audience. In both workshops, there is frequent, hands-on practice as well as a final activity that involves the learner presenting, then reviewing the video recording with the instructor, who provides feedback and coaching.

Consultative Selling Skills with Practice
Consultative Selling Skills with Practice
Description :

This series of e-learning tutorials was built with HTML and Javascript, incorporating frequent scenario-based practice exercises. In one module, where learners are learning how to ask for referrals, the learner listens to a character doing it, evaluates her performance, using the slider scales, then gets feedback from the expert on how he would have assessed it.

Troubleshooting and Customer Service
Troubleshooting and Customer Service
Description :

We designed and developed a blended curriculum (ILT, e-learning, coaching) that was organized around ability level. With new hires, we focused on basic troubleshooting processes and tools. As they certified at each level and advanced, the training focused less on the technical troubleshooting aspects of the job and more on the inter-personal customer service skills, such as handling an irate customer. The highest level help desk personnel are taught how to mentor and coach the more junior personnel.

Systems Training for Key Business Process
Systems Training for Key Business Process
Description :

When an organization builds or installs an enterprise system to support its key business process, the training cannot just focus on the keystrokes and mouse clicks. In this series of systems training courses, we articulated the business process and helped learners understand how the system fits into that process as well as how their role in the process drives business success downstream. Because there are several audiences, with different levels and types of involvement with the process and system, we built several variations of the training to suit each audience’s needs. With one audience, in fact, we scaled back the training to reference cards only, because of how they typically interact with the system.

Skills Model Training
Skills Model Training
Description :

It’s not enough to build a skills model. In order for it to have an impact on the organization, people need to understand what good looks like in the context of their day-to-day jobs. To help a global manufacturer gain adoption of their skills model, we developed a series of video-based elearning modules. Each module contained videos explaining a skill in detail, discussing each success factor and describing what good looks like in the context of different day-to-day work situations. The modules also included video interviews conducted with senior leaders, where they explained what those success factors meant to them and provided real-world examples to demonstrate them.

Driving Culturally Sensitive Change
Driving Culturally Sensitive Change
Description :

As companies increase focus on diversity and inclusion, HR professionals have faced a challenge: how do you foster open dialog about potentially sensitive topics? We partnered with a client in the medical field – where collaborative stakes are especially high – to do just that. We started with a series of 8 e-learning modules, creating a shared pool of understanding, outlining best practices & tools, and leveraging leader videos to connect these concepts to the company culture. Then we created a workshop that leveraged scenario-based activities to practice conversations, applying approaches introduced in the e-learning, and articulating the words needed to navigate their roles. Workshops were intentionally small, pairing 20-25 employees with senior leaders who were trained and certified to moderate these sensitive conversations.

Organizational Change Communication
Organizational Change Communication
Description :

After assessing employee engagement and identifying the need for consistent application of their core values, we worked with this client to develop materials and support a multi-year campaign of organizational change. Knowing that communication is what drives momentum in a change initiative, we worked hand-in-hand to formulate value-based quarterly communication plans, develop materials to support live and virtual Speaker Series events, create a signage campaign to ensure events were seen across all available comms channels, translating of all materials into French, and providing ad-hoc comms support like creating puzzle giveaways of values posters for employee recognition gifts. After a year, the organization tripled the number of people enrolled in development programs and the organization was a finalist for LTEN’s Learning for Change award.

Organizational Assessment
Organizational Assessment
Description :

When one of the world’s leading consumer healthcare companies underwent a consent decree due to quality issues within its supply chain, Gus Prestera worked with its senior leaders within manufacturing, technical operations, and quality as well as various regulatory compliance organizations and hundreds of external quality consultants to implement an organizational assessment process. He advised dozens of quality teams and their HR business partners at multiple sites as they learned and used his process and tools to define the future state organization in terms of competencies, resource capacity, headcount, and organizational structure. Through this work, they established a sustainable supply chain organization and laid the groundwork for competency-based hiring and training.

Engagement Survey
Engagement Survey
Description :

Senior leadership at a division within a mid-sized pharmaceutical company became aware of morale and turnover issues in the wake of a major re-structuring. They wanted to conduct an engagement survey to find out the extent of the issues and gain insight into how best to address them, but they wanted it to be something quick and compact, not a lengthy process with cumbersome surveys and reports. We customized a streamlined survey for them and designed a compact report that was organized in layers, enabling them to start with a high-level dashboard, then drill down as needed. We also provided recommendations for how to address the gaps uncovered by the survey.

Values-Driven Cultural Change
Values-Driven Cultural Change
Description :

The CEO brought in to effect a turn-around of a global manufacturer recognized the need to change not only its business strategy but also its organizational culture. Building on the new core values and core competencies that the Executive Committee established, we designed a change implementation process and built a variety of change communication pieces to support it. We produced online courses to teach people how to live into the values and managers how to promote change adoption; facilitated a leader workshop to kick things off; and facilitated quarterly sync-up calls to keep the conversation going.

Team Facilitation
Team Facilitation
Description :

In support of a CEO who was looking to drive a cultural transformation, we designed and facilitated a series of workshops with his Executive Committee and the extended leadership team. All of the workshops included elements of team building as well as hands-on activities to help them learn new ways of collaborating and implementing their business strategy. These workshops were coupled with one-on-one executive coaching, change management initiatives, and specific performance improvement interventions, so that the workshops were “plugged into” and complementary to the broader transformation efforts, amplifying their effects.

Helping HR Drive Change
Helping HR Drive Change
Description :

Working with HR business partners at a regional healthcare system, we implemented a talent review and success planning process that incorporated our Three Kingdoms model. We trained these HR professionals on the process and on best practices for facilitating the process with the business leaders they supported and prompting the right conversations to take place between leaders and their employees. We then coached the HR team as they implemented the process within their respective client organizations. Their adoption of the process led to improvements in accountability, employee engagement, performance, and professional development.

Communication & Pull-Through
Communication & Pull-Through
Description :

In support of a company-wide cultural transformation, we develop a change plan and built a variety of communication and pull-through tools. Communications included videos from the leadership team, talking about what the change meant for them personally, as well as posters, signage, and other communication pieces. Pull-through tools included a manager playbook, giving leaders a step-by-step guide for how to facilitate change conversations with their teams. We also created resource lists, containing links to books, articles, videos, and other elements that managers could use in their team discussions.

Management Assessment Center
Management Assessment Center
Description :

A global financial services company needed to improve its branch management bench strength and was looking to develop a leadership pipeline. Rather than putting all management candidates through a leadership development program, and thereby diluting its investment, the firm wanted to screen the top candidates and only admit the top prospects into the program, then invest intensely in those individuals. The firm asked our team to help them design the screening process. If invited to attend the Management Assessment Center, candidates went through a 1½ day live simulation, involving real-world activities that mapped back to the competency model, and afterwards were given feedback by visiting managers and psychometricians.

Developing Healthcare Leaders
Developing Healthcare Leaders
Description :

As the healthcare marketplace and regulatory environment continue to shift dramatically, this regional hospital system also faced a looming leadership vacuum. Many of its leaders were approaching retirement and there were few internal candidates ready to step into those roles. Gus Prestera and his team were hired to implement a process for reviewing the existing leadership talent, identifying development opportunities, and putting development plans in place. As leaders engaged in the process and used the tools, they slowly began to develop a culture of development, where leaders and their employees are continually engaged in conversations around their current competencies and those needed to achieve their career goals.

Leadership Assessment
Leadership Assessment
Description :

To help a pharmaceutical company improve the capabilities of its sales managers, we conducted a 360-degree assessment, surveying the participants, their managers, colleagues, and sales reps. Each participant received a comprehensive report that highlighted strengths and development opportunities. Their managers received a roll-up report as well as coaching on how to debrief the findings with their sales managers. From those debriefing conversations, the sales managers created individual development plans, which their managers help them implement. Sales manager engagement and performance improved.

Executive Coaching
Executive Coaching
Description :

To help a CEO develop his direct reports and their successors, we implemented a tailored executive coaching program. First we conducted 360-degree interviews, talking confidentially with participants, their manager, and a sampling of colleagues and direct reports. Each participant then received a report summarizing the findings and representative interview quotes. Our coaches worked with each participant to debrief the report, prioritize development opportunities, and construct an individual development plan. Once the plan was in place, our coaches followed up with those executives to support implementation.

Mentoring High Potentials
Mentoring High Potentials
Description :

We helped a global financial services company expand leadership development by establishing a framework, tools, and training for one-on-one mentoring. Mentoring can take many forms, for example: informal vs. formal, individual vs. group, and standard vs. reverse mentoring. We architected a flexible framework that allows for the many variations mentoring can take. We then created tools to support the mentoring process, such as job aids and evaluations. Would-be mentors and mentees attend workshops or webinars that we designed to teach them the skills and best practices that best predict mentoring success.

Leadership Sims with Impact
Leadership Sims with Impact
Description :

Leadership decision-making simulations can be costly and time-consuming to build. These examples come from two Flash-based branching sims that were built within a couple of months. The learner is asked questions by his/her District Manager; accesses a management dashboard system (we built a mock system for training purposes); then makes decisions and receives feedback from the boss. It got great reviews from a tough crowd!