Over £15,000 raised by Klarius for Staffordshire Hospice
Published: 28 January, 2021
The Klarius Group of Companies raised over £15,491 in support of Douglas Macmillan Hospice, a.k.a Dougie Mac in 2020.
The funds will help the hospice to continue to provide specialised care to support people with life-limiting illnesses in Stoke-on-Trent, North Staffordshire and the surrounding area.
Commenting on the effort, Klarius CEO Mark Brickhill said: “We have undertaken a number of fund-raising initiatives throughout 2020 in support of Dougie Mac, so I am overjoyed that we have reached this level of donations. I would like to personally thank everyone who has donated and helped champion this most worthy of causes.”
Before lockdown, employees from Klarius Products, Emissco, AutoLogistiks and KM Tools took part in a sponsored exercise bike ride to Wembley, with staff from a number of departments taking turns to complete the full distance. Over-shooting the target of 143 miles, the team ended up doing 443 miles, effectively completing a return trip to Cheadle.
Klarius also sold Dougie Mac raffle tickets and scratch cards when possible, while signing up to the charity’s weekly lottery and taking part in its Christmas Jumper day. Along with the fundraising, employees provided a large amount of clothes and goods to be sold in the Dougie Mac charity stores.
Donna Adams, Head of Fundraising and Lottery at Dougie Mac, added: “We can’t thank the fantastic Klarius team enough for their support during 2020. In what has been an incredibly challenging year for everyone, Klarius has continued to go above and beyond to help raise funds for Dougie Mac and support their local community.”
Meanwhile, until October 2021 any Emissco hand sanitiser dispenser or hand sanitiser purchase is eligible for a 5% donation to Dougie Mac. Quote DougieMac5 when purchasing via the https://emissco.co.uk/shop/
- Coaching essentials
There are four main types of support and development that can be provided to employees. Each has a different purpose, different benefits, and should be used for different situations and objectives. These are counselling, mentoring, coaching, and training.
Counselling is a form of consulting and often is part of a measurement outcome or employee evaluation. Counselling suggests therapeutic outcomes and focuses on the past. Coaching does not do this. Coaching may occur before counselling, instead of counselling, or in addition to counselling.
People with an expertise conduct mentoring. This expertise enables them to advise new or inexperienced employees. Mentoring is a process that helps people with their career development. Mentors provide guidance to help people attain the kind of professional achievement they seek. Mentoring differs from coaching in that it is a long-term process and mentors have no responsibility to their mentees for personal and professional development. Mentors provide motivation, connections, and advice, but they do not directly enable mentees to improve their performance. Coaching is a conversation focused on helping other people (the clients) move forward relative to their goals, hopes, and curiosities. Goals are accomplishments yet to be achieved; hopes and curiosities are the rough material of future goals. For coaching to be helpful, it needs to tie to something the client wants to accomplish. Many people confuse coaching with advice. When people give advice, it may not be welcome. Coaches focus on clients and the goals they want to achieve.
The aim of training is to develop the knowledge and skills of the learner. This is the only time it should be used. Training may also raise the levels of motivation, attitude, or commitment.
I want to use this article to focus on the understanding of coaching. The International Coach Federation defines the practice as:
“A professional partnership between a qualified coach and an individual or team that supports the achievement of extraordinary results, based on goals set by the individual or team. Through the process of coaching, individuals focus on the skills and actions needed to successfully produce their personally relevant results."
Over the years, coaching has become an increasingly popular tool for supporting employee development. Research from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development shows that the technique is very popular and an important skill for managers to have. Although coaching is now widespread among employers, there are continuing issues about how best to manage and deliver coaching arrangements in an organisational setting.
One key action in coaching is establishing trust and openness with employees. This may involve creating a comfortable environment to have conversations in; making agreements about how to handle sensitive or confidential topics and sticking to those agreements; clearly stating the purpose of coaching discussions; and enabling the client to take ownership of changes that he or she needs to make to improve performance. Another key action is asking powerful questions. A good coach listens more than he or she talks and uses questions well to make the coaching relationship more productive.
When to Coach
Developing key workplace skills - Coaching is a quick and direct method of growing key skills of individuals in the workplace, our garage environments. When carried out effectively, coaching helps ensure that employees receive development as and when it is required, and this ‘on-the-job’ development helps ensure they have the skills to do the job.
Preparing for a key task or project - Where there is a key task or project that a person needs to undertake, it is useful to provide them with coaching to ensure they have a clear understanding of not only how to perform the task, but also the goals and actions required to get there. Coaching also provides an opportunity to review and monitor progress.
Having a difficult conversation with a colleague – Using a coaching approach can help avoid confrontation and will ensure your conversation is target driven rather than just a series of complaints.
Receiving unhelpful feedback - Where we receive negative feedback, it can be made to be much more constructive if we take a coaching approach. This means that the unhelpful feedback can be turned into something that is constructive and useful.
Preparing for an important meeting - Coaching will help ensure the important meeting is structured and has useful outcomes, giving the participants a clear understanding of the objectives and goals.
When there is a personality clash or conflict - Much like when you receive unhelpful feedback, it is useful to turn unstructured, negative discussions into more constructive and goal-oriented conversations.
Why Coach?
Aside from the question of when to coach, we should also consider why it is important that we do so. There are many good reasons and here are just a few.
- Coronavirus: Klarius, Ring Carnation and Schaeffler all doing their bit
Businesses operating in the aftermarket are continuing to do their bit for the fight against COVID-19.
- Breakout for Ben raises £159k on the road to £1million
Ben’s 10-day virtual active challenge, Breakout for Ben, has raised just under £159,000. With the Breakout total included, just under £737,000 has now been raised to help address Ben’s £1million fundraising shortfall following its rallying cry last year asking for urgent support.
- “Reasons to be cheerful?” Garage market continues to react to Budget 2021
The automotive sector has continued to give its views on the potential impact of the March 2021 budget.
- UK Automotive looks to ex-military to upskill industry towards electrification
The SMMT has signed an Armed Forces Covenant, pledging its commitment to advocate for recruitment and retention of ex-military personnel across the automotive industry. 55 SMMT member businesses already working towards this end, with interest rising as companies look to secure staff.
