Leadership development in Fürst:
- A great potential for change that has been fulfilled
Vibeke C. Reiling is HR Director at Fürst Medisinsk Laboratorium. The company has more than 500 employees, divided between the disciplines of medical biochemistry, clinical pharmacology, medical microbiology and pathology. The main laboratory is located at Furuset in Oslo, but they have sampling units in Oslo, Vestfold and Bergen. In addition, they conduct sampling activities at nursing homes and old people's homes in Oslo, Sandefjord, Skedsmo and Bergen. Vibeke herself has extensive experience in the HR industry before joining Fürst almost ten years ago.
"I started in retail and discovered a lack of structure for management. This inspired me to go into HR and help others with leadership development, including setting up HR functions for companies," she says.
Leadership development has been an important part of her work in HR ever since.
Continuous leadership development
Fürst now wants to carry out leadership development with FRONT Leadership for managers in each specialist area. What Vibeke calls the first "cohort" consisted of eleven managers with personnel management. Now she wants to give managers with specialist management the opportunity.
I strongly believe in slightly smaller groups. In order for this to be continuous and part of our everyday life, I want more meetings with fewer people.
The pandemic was no stopping point
At Fürst, leadership training was held "the old-fashioned way", as Vibeke describes it, with physical meetings. After persuasion from Mats Kristensen, manager partner at FRONT, she decided to take part in digital leadership development just before the pandemic hit.
"It's been a huge success," says Vibeke.
With the pandemic, it was natural to run such a program digitally, which FRONT offered even before the pandemic.
The pandemic has reinforced that this was a very good choice," she says.
In addition, the responsible management developer for Fürst, Stine Melfald, showed that it was unproblematic to change the arrangement when significantly more people were hired in some departments. Fürst has experienced major changes during the pandemic due to the analysis of covid samples.
"Stine threw herself into creating a completely new program that was relevant to us. It's flexible, and we were also able to help change what we needed," says Vibeke.
After receiving suggestions from FRONT for the execution and content of the program, the management team at Fürst - both the managers of those participating and the participants themselves - were able to provide input.
And I think that's a factor for success, the fact that they themselves can provide input," she says.
She has received feedback from both managers and employees that there has been a great potential for change that has been realized after the implementation of the program.
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Follow-up is essential
Upon request, FRONT Leadership offers follow-up approximately four times a year after completion of the program.
We follow up on those who have been through the program now. They are not finished - this is something we will continue with and implement in our everyday life for the future. It's important to us," says the HR director.
It's easier to set aside time for this type of leadership development on a day-to-day basis. You don't set aside a whole day as we used to do with more traditional leadership development. We can do this with our morning coffee, preferably in the peace and quiet of our homes, before we leave for the office.
Why do you want to continue this type of leadership development for more cohorts?
We have great faith in it. That it's done thoroughly and comprehensively, but that it doesn't require a huge amount of work. A critical success criterion is that it's so simple that it becomes part of everyday life, and I believe in that," she says.
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