• Outplacement Counselling

A large public sector organisation of over 100,000 employees was going through a voluntary redundancy process.  Katrina was involved in the delivery of outplacement counselling sessions with a number of the employees involved.  This was a two stage process.  The first phase was a consultative stage, to help the employees understand what the options were available to them, e.g. the details of various redundancy packages available, or the possibility of new employee contract conditions.

The second phase was more of the traditional outplacement counseling, helping the individuals affected decide how to approach the next phase of their career, what they wanted to work towards and how they were going to get there.  For some individuals this was more of a conversation geared around identifying their wants, for others it was coaching them on how to go about using the money they had received wisely, such as investing in a new qualification or setting up a business, and for others it was to learn more tangible skills such as interview techniques. 

• Psychometric Design

An educational institute wanted to start to look at the business skill potential of school children, as part of a series of efforts to expand the learning offerings at school age.  Katrina designed a psychometric questionnaire to assess this potential.  The questionnaire was based on the format of a situational judgement test, where test-takers are asked to respond to what they think is the most effective answer in a given scenario, using a multiple choice response mechanism.  The questionnaire was then validated and put on-line for the end client.

• Employee Motivation

A medium sized private sector organization was having problems with staff retention and motivation, reflected by high turnover, high absence and general lack of engagement at work.  Katrina was asked to carry out some research amongst the team members to firstly identify any common causes of this, and secondly to put forward some recommendations. 

The qualitative research was carried out two–fold.  Katrina wrote a questionnaire, designed to identify the causes of employee happiness and motivation.  This was then put online and respondents were asked to complete it within a given timeframe.  Katrina then analysed the results statistically, to identify the common variables of work happiness and motivation.  She then wrote a qualitative interview, asking for volunteers who were happy to be interviewed confidentially.  Results were collated and recommendations put forward including a detailed flexible working policy.

• Assessment and Development

A large central government department wanted to recruit a series of high level managers, with a specific technical skill.  Katrina was a key lead in designing the assessment centre exercise, a very transparent exercise that involved the candidates carrying out this technical/managerial skill.  She designed and delivered the full assessment centre, which incorporated videoing the exercises and tasks.  She then prepared for feedback sessions with each of the individuals whether they had been offered the role or not.  For those that were subsequently offered the role, these were also developmental coaching sessions regarding how they could deliver the managerial technical skill in a more effective way. She then analysed the group results regarding group training needs, and made recommendations to their manager as to where the focus should be.

• Training

Katrina has delivered a variety of training programmes, ranging from one day to one week.  These have been other organisations' pre-prepared materials, or designing training programmes as per a client requirement.  Her training delivery experience includes:

- interviewing skills

- assessing skills

- employment law

- feedback skills

- conflict management skills

- psychology of leadership