Amcor Front-Line Leadership Training

Amcor is one of the world’s largest suppliers of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) packaging along with containers and closures using other plastic resins. The business provides bottles and jars to some of the most well-known brands in the food, beverage, spirits, personal care, home care and healthcare industries. Amcor employs 6,337 employees in 69 locations operating in 12 countries.

Situation

Amcor wanted to have a culture-changing impact on the ability of front-line leaders to drive both safety and high performance at the company’s nearly 60 plants in North America and Latin America. It realized the key to create the desired culture would be influenced by approximately 600 front-line leaders, many of whom were first-time supervisors.

Amcor also decided to focus on the specific responsibilities of leaders at the plant level that were connected closely to the four key metrics used to determine operational effectiveness. Those leaders often need to make important decisions on their own as the only formal authority in the plant who has a direct impact on overall results.

Solution

Amcor needed a best-in-class learning experience for front-line leaders to prepare them for their role, while recognizing time off the job for training was a limitation. Therefore, off-the-shelf leadership programs couldn’t deliver the focus needed on the key metrics and also fit within the time constraint. As such, Amcor approached Innovative Learning Group (ILG) to design a two-day workshop that would be facilitated by internal senior leaders. In addition, four critical preparation activities were introduced in the weeks leading up to the training to set the stage for success.

The overall objectives of the training were to:

• Align the front-line leader’s responsibility, authority, and accountability.
• Develop a culture of safety and high performance.
• Achieve operational excellence in safety, productivity, quality, profitability, and engagement.
• ILG designed the workshop to include the following features:
• Provide ample amounts of active learning, including simulations, role plays, breakout group discussions, and self-reflection.
• Balance the need for consistency across operations with options to address the different work being done at each plant location.
• Address a wide target audience of leaders with diverse age, ethnic, and gender characteristics across North American and Latin American geographies.

Results

Participants have provided overwhelmingly positive feedback with 76% indicating they expect to apply at least one skill learned from the course. A longer-term assessment of leader application and impact is planned. Amcor also found the decentralized rollout and train-the-trainer approach saved them approximately $1M compared with the alternative implementation strategy, which would have offered training at a single location.

To learn more about how Innovative Learning Group can create custom learning solutions to help improve your business results, contact us at info@innovativeLG.com.