Forvia-Hella case study
Developing talent in the automotive industry
Since the beginning of February 2022, HELLA and Faurecia have been operating under the umbrella brand of FORVIA. Together they form the seventh largest automotive supplier worldwide.
Forvia now has over 150,000 highly skilled employees around the world, working in 125 global locations. Forvia-Hella is a leader in automotive lighting, electronics, interiors and clean mobility. One in two of all vehicles worldwide are equipped with FORVIA products.
Hella was founded in 1899 as a family business and as Forvia-Hella still continues to be guided by strong convictions and values. With over 8,233 employees working worldwide in research and development, to innovate and design cutting-edge solutions to inspire the future of mobility, Forvia-Hella is committed to making journeys safer and more sustainable, reducing the impact of mobility on the world we live in.
Forvia-Hella invests heavily in ensuring all of their people have world-leading skills, running the LEAD program for top managers and the LEAD Summer School for future leaders; in 2014-2015 it was announced that a new leadership program for middle managers would begin the following year. The new program was called L.E.A.D Compass, the name deriving from the guiding principle that our ‘Values are our compass’.
iOpener was delighted to be chosen to partner Forvia-Hella to co-create and help to deliver L.E.A.D Compass. The program now operates in Europe, Asia Pacific and the NAFTA region. iOpener delivers the program in Europe and Asia Pacific and in multiple languages. Participants attend two webinars and three 3-day in person modules during a year, supported by 1-1 executive coaching and working in small learning groups, each with a facilitator that will stay with them throughout the program.
When we began our relationship with Forvia-Hella, we could only dream that it would become an ongoing project even throughout the pandemic - through great collaboration with Forvia-Hella’s brilliant HR and Talent and Development teams, we found hybrid and remote learning solutions to enable L.E.A.D compass to continue.
Over the last 10 years we have worked with over 500 amazing and talented Hella employees and this year we have a total of 77 engaged and committed participants.
Why do we love working and collaborating with Forvia-Hella and value our partnership so much?
Forvia-Hella share our belief and passion for developing incredible and talented leaders, who are willing to challenge themselves both personally and professionally to complete a meaningful change topic during the programme, embrace the concept of positive leadership and recognize the importance of happiness at work.
“I am delighted to share my heartfelt appreciation for the LEAD Compass Program in the Asia Pacific region, delivered by iOpener. For over ten years the program has been a major success, thanks to the outstanding facilitators from iOpener, who worked in parallel to deliver to the same standards in both APAC and Europe."
Priscilla Guan, Vice President of Human Resources, Asia Pacific, FORVIA-HELLA
Read Priscilla's full testimonial here.
The participants we work with are all professionals with world leading skills; working with them and getting to know them and help guide their leadership journey is an incredible privilege.
The Forvia-Hella people and teams we work with have great vision and commitment to ensuring that L.E.A.D Compass is successful and that each year we innovate and build on this success. This year we will hold a new session bringing together participants in APAC and Europe to focus on collaborating and working successfully across cultures.
Forvia-Hella and iOpener are united in the belief that our values are our compass.
- 77 participants in 2023
- Facilitation in English and Chinese
- Cohorts in Europe and Asia Pacific
- Participants from 10 countries this year
- 7 expert facilitators from 6 countries
- 3 three-day modules in person
- Three online sessions
- Executive Coaching
- Over 500 global participants to date
About Hella
HELLA is a listed, internationally positioned automotive supplier operating under the umbrella brand FORVIA. Within this de facto group, HELLA stands for high-performance lighting technology and automotive electronics. At the same time, the company covers a broad service and product portfolio for the spare parts and workshop business as well as for manufacturers of special vehicles with its Lifecycle Solutions business group. HELLA has around 36,000 employees at more than 125 locations worldwide.
About Forvia
FORVIA combines the technological and industrial strengths of Faurecia and HELLA, which complement each other perfectly. With over 300 industrial sites and 76 R&D centres, 157,000 employees, including more than 15,000 R&D engineers, in over 40 countries, FORVIA offers a unique and comprehensive approach to the automotive challenges of today and tomorrow. FORVIA consists of six business groups with 24 product lines and a strong portfolio with over 14,000 patents. FORVIA strives to become the preferred innovation and integration partner for OEMs worldwide. FORVIA has set itself the goal of recognising the change in mobility at an early stage and putting it into practice.
iOpener Institute for People and Performance
For Over 20 years, iOpener has delivered to over 90,000 participants across the world. We learn from every workshop. And with more than 12 years of data collected from the iOpener Happiness at Work Survey (the iPPQ) we have a good idea about what leaders need to do and how to develop them. iOpener work with many of the world's leading business schools.
Whether you are seeking 1-1 coaching, wanting to strengthen your leadership team, or designing and implementing a global leadership academy programme, we can deliver.
Our clients are so happy that 95% of them come back to us for more.
Our team includes some of the world’s best executive coaches and facilitators across five continents. We speak sixteen languages and consider ourselves truly intercultural.
Pharma industry case study
Learning before, during and after a global pandemic
A leading European integrated healthcare organization asked iOpener to build a leadership program for their high-potential middle managers. Its aims were threefold:
- Establish a common understanding of leadership culture
- Nurture the talent pipeline - identify, retain and promote
- Equip participants with the right leadership tools for multiple situations
They needed their leaders to cover, amongst other things:
- Exploring their own authentic leadership style
- Examining how their own strengths and values fit with the organisation’s
- Coaching others using active listening
- Managing difficult conversations and conflict
- Creating strategies to work across country and internal framework boundaries
- Facilitating workshops to cascade knowledge
The program as a whole needed to fit with the organisational culture of striving for constant learning and achieving sustainable growth through promoting its talented employees.
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Working closely with the client, we co-created a three-module program to take the participants on a journey to discover how they:
- Steer themselves
- Influence and lead others
- Scan the horizon for themselves, their teams and the organization
We took a blended approach, equipping the participants with frameworks and toolkits, and through practice and 1:1 feedback, the skills and experience to use them effectively in their roles.
Originally conceived as a face-to-face program for three cohorts, but the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted those plans. It broke out during the second cohort, meaning that each of the three iterations were delivered in different ways.
- Cohort 1: 100% face-to-face delivered in 2019
- Cohort 2: Hybrid: face-to-face then online delivered in 2020
- Cohort 3: 100% online delivered in 2021
Our challenges now were to deliver the content in a different medium, maintain the same outcomes for participants, and to try to retain as much of the spontaneity and serendipity that face-to-face sessions allow.
Those on the middle cohort reflected on the mid-program switch from face-to-face to online.
"First of all, I was happy that the program wasn't cancelled because of the situation. So, I highly appreciate that you were able to transfer most of the things you would have done in the physical environment to a virtual environment.”
Others were inspired and energised by the interactive sessions, especially those run by actors.
“I loved, loved, loved, loved and hated it in equal measure the acting sessions: loved how interactive they were. And I loved how it pushed us out of our comfort zone a fair bit. And I think there's nothing wrong with that feeling even though at the time it's awful. And I loved that the working session led us to develop our own workshop, and to partner with someone to deliver that. I thought that was brilliant.”
