Case study
How Custom Fleet strengthened its emerging female leadership pipeline by powering up on self awareness, strengths & resilience.
25 employees
over 9 weeks
Over 27% average participant increase in self awareness
NPS of 76
Client overview
Custom Fleet, part of Element Fleet Management (TSX:EFN), is Australia and New Zealand’s premier fleet management organisation – we’ve been using our smarts to make the complex simple for over 40 years. Teamed with our expertise, our next-generation analytics and fleet service tools make leasing and fleet management less complicated and more efficient.
Explore the case study
The challenge
Why did you come to Maxme, and how did you hear about its products/programs?
“We heard about Maxme through one of our own Directors at Custom Fleet who had worked with Maxme’s Founder Renata Sguario many moons ago and developed a long-term friendship.
To us, when we know two awesome humans have a relationship, power is multiplied! It was a no-brainer to meet with Maxme and understand what they stood for and where we aligned in our thinking and approach to people development.
We were super impressed with the focus on human skill development that Maxme offers. None of it is presented in the ‘fluffy’ way the old school term ‘soft-skills’ is when referring to human skills. Rather, human skills are what we all need to build in order to be more successful in business, and Maxme brings the data and research to prove it!”
What challenges were you seeking to proactively mitigate through this Maxme human skills program?
“We reached out to Maxme with a particular challenge – to help us build the next generation of emerging women leaders at Custom Fleet.
Like a lot of organisations, and as reported by Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) data in Australia each year, we have a gender pay gap that exists - not because we pay men and women differently, but because we have less females in mid-level and senior leadership positions. Building an internal pipeline of female talent is critical for us to improve in this area and also creates a strong retention play and sense of belonging for those on the program we developed with Maxme, which we call GreenLight.”
How would you describe the human skills proficiency of your people before they started the Maxme program?
“The emerging women leaders we identified for GreenLight were already rated as strong talent in our business, so we knew they had the essence of what it takes to be a great leader at Custom Fleet. What wasn’t clear was the collective strengths of our women.
We wanted this cohort to have a deep understanding of their unique strengths and how they can leverage them more often every day at work. We also wanted to build their human skills to a level where they felt ready to tackle their next career challenge with gusto and confidence (and to be frank, in a way that men who are often less skilled, do).
We have now built a strong community of women who are committed to supporting each other on their ongoing career journeys.”
The process
After a comprehensive initial meeting with Custom Fleet to learn about its Green Light Program (GLP) - an emerging leadership program for women, Maxme was armed with a clear understanding of the GLP cohort, its goals, and place within the broader organisational strategy. Analysing this, we identified Maxme’s Lead and Succeed Pro (9 weeks) as an ideal match for Custom Fleet’s needs.
With a focus on foundational leadership qualities and skills such as self and individual strengths awareness, effective communication, delegation and influence, Lead & Succeed Pro - delivered in a 100% virtual format - allowed participants from all across ANZ to take part. With participants from multiple business units and locations, we also recommended running team leaderboard challenges to facilitate networking and community-building throughout the Maxme program.
In order for GLP to sit smoothly within Custom Fleet’s existing suite of L&D Leadership Programs, we worked closely with the client lead to ensure the Maxme program was clearly communicated internally, and set up for seamless delivery in the flow of existing frameworks.
As an optional add-on, Maxme managed all in-program engagement activities via Teams Chat; freeing up the Custom Fleet team to deliver on additional priorities.
Over the course of the program, Maxme closely monitored cohort engagement and tweaked the learning design to increase contribution and collaboration from all participants as required.
Core to this program’s success was the strong working partnership between Maxme and Custom Fleet. Throughout the program, timely and transparent feedback was shared, and a collaborative approach taken to achieving key outcomes - all underpinned by a shared commitment to learning experience excellence.
Results at a glance
This is a summary of change in participants’ confidence levels, abilities and behaviours relating to the high-level skill areas in the program.
Self Awareness Levels
Excellence Together (partner mini-quests)
Developing life skills (General mini-quests)
Client-approved extract from Custom Fleet’s Human Skills Program - Emerging Leaders Final Program Report (FPR).
A Maxme FPR is prepared for every client on conclusion of the engagement and features:
Program results summary
Formal documentation of changes in participants’ confidence and ability in key areas relating to the program
Detailed breakdowns of levels of Hodie in-app engagement over the program topics
Recommendations for next steps.
The feedback
“Great content & topics, the Hodie app was easy to navigate and had excellent visual appeal. The gamification of the modules was clear and motivating.”
“I’m much more self-aware, and am starting to use the learnings not only at work, but in my personal life. I still have a way to go to develop and build on my skills & strengths, and use my lesser strengths to my advantage, however with the tools provided I feel much better equipped.”
“As a result of this program, I’ve been able to focus on my strengths, which has led me to presenting an idea to my manager that I previously would have been too nervous to do!”
I feel more confident about how I can apply my strengths to get the best out of myself.
I feel better equipped to have effective conversations with team members, peers and managers.
The overall program experience was engaging (i.e. structure of learning, facilitated sessions, Hodie app, leaderboard, weekly emails).
Humans behind it
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