Spotlight

Diageo Business Services Budapest continues to unleash the potential of every employee through coaching and leadership development programme

At the core of Diageo's Talent Strategy is the commitment to 'release the potential of every employee'. People are at the heart of the company's success and so they remain the focus in Diageo Business Services Budapest. They see development as a journey for their managers and they believe that through their company values and their leadership development programme including coaching training they can unleash great talent.


Diageo's annual employee feedback survey results and external recognition – Hewitt’s Best SSC Employer in Hungary Award in 2010 - confirm that they are a leader among companies in Hungary in the areas of coaching and leadership development. Coaching trainings have been run successfuly in-house, based on the company's own global model for nearly a decade.


They offer a variety of different interventions for managers to become great coaches. They organise classroom trainings, provide special training on coaching communication tools, and are currently working on a new programme to create "scenarios" for situations such as "new member in the team", "poor performer in the team", or "managing career steps". Beyond these opportunities they encourage their leaders to use their coaching learnings in everyday life, acting as role models both at and outside of work. They also support them with supervision and team coaching sessions where they can share their experiences, difficulties and successes.


Coaching is like running a marathon – it requires training, the process can be very personal for participants, and a coaching period can last for months. It can be challenging to make the outcomes of this process visible. Results are thus measured through Diageo's People Manager Feedback tool, which is rolled out bi-annually to all managers; and they are also made transparent by sharing success stories with employees in the local newsletter.


Coaching is an important element of this leadership development programme; however, it is not the only one. It is embedded into a one-year journey for managers called New Leaders’ Academy. The stages of this journey are:

1. Coaching Essentials Training – has been developed to understand the roles and responsibilities and qualities of both a coach and a coachee and the art of coaching. Participants improve skills in the areas of building relationships, questioning, listening.

2. Breakthrough Performance Coaching (BPC), and the model that underpins it - they are key to accelerating the company's collective and individual leadership to achieve their ambitious business performance. The BPC Strategy goal is to ensure they embed a systemic breakthrough coaching culture that enables their leaders and managers to leverage the talent, commitment and energy of all people in pursuit of the goals around breakthrough performance.

3. Coaching Tools – they support managers with basic communication tools for coaching to become great and effective coaches. It completes knowledge and skills learnt on Coaching Essentials Training and BPC workshops.

4. Managing Self Training – equips managers with basic understanding and leadership knowledge, different leadership styles used with different line reports depending on motivation and skills.

5. Recruitment Skills Training - managers can learn efficient selection and interview techniques.

 
At the end of this one-year journey, managers will have already tried out many of the new tools and techniques in practise, have more experience in leadership and feel more confident when managing teams. And it is not only them who benefit from this, but everyone around them: their line reportees, peers and colleagues as well as the company; making  Diageo Business Services Budapest a unique workplace with great leaders and company culture.

Dreher's sustainability performance
acknowledged with numerous awards

Dreher Breweries, who published its first sustainability report this year, received three important Awards at the end of the year: the Green Frog Award for the best sustainability report in 2010, the Business Ethics Award 2010 in the multinational companies category, and the OzoneNetwork Green Award  2010 for the company's environmental performance.

Green Frog Award
The Central European Environmental Reporting Award (Green Frog Award) was founded by Deloitte Hungary in 2001 in order to it recognise the best annual environmental or sustainability reports of Central European companies. This year, 7 environmental reports and 37 sustainability reports were assessed by an independent jury. Winner of the sustainability report category was Dreher Breweries Ltd., whose report is available here in English, and Audi Hungaria Motor Ltd. won again in the environmental report category. For more details, please click here.


Ethics Award
This year, Dreher Breweries Ltd., Debrecen Heat Supply Ltd., Zalavíz Ltd., Hajdu Hajdúsági Industrial Ltd., and Ronix Ltd. won the Business Ethics Award. The award founded by Mária Demcsák, editor of the Piac és Profit magazine and Professor  Ervin László was given to companies with responsible management. To read more, please click here.


OzoneNetwork
Dreher Breweries Ltd. received a ten-year-old bonsai tree (the OzoneNetwork Green Award 2010) as recognition for its waste management and environment conscious energy investments. The climate council justified its decision by the fact that less than 1% of the brewery’s production waste is delivered to landfills. With its energetical investments, the company managed to save as much energy as the annual average energy consumption of 345 households in 2009. The biological sewage treatment plant and biogas boiler plant, the installation of the absorption cooler and other rationalising actions all had a key role in this. More on the subject is available here.


In addition to winning awards, Dreher Breweries also received the honour of handing out the Hungarian Business Leaders Forum's Media for Society Award to Anna Berecz from Klub Radio, who received special recognition for her “Szerepvállalás” show that airs every Thursday since March 2007. This special award was given over to the popular editor-presenter by Lóránt Kovács Sándor, Corporate Development Director of Dreher Breweries Ltd. For more information, please click here.

An interview with Stefan Fritsch, owner of Elevenpark

Stefan Fritsch, owner of Elevenpark, the biggest indoor playground in Hungary, talks about important leadership qualities in company management and his experiences in Hungary (from the June 2010 issue of Manager Magazine).

Fun, fun, fun – this would be the best way to summarise Stefan Fritsch’s, the managing director of W.E.T Automotive Systems Hungary Ltd., hobby. The top manager created an indoor playground called Elevenpark, where he spends most of his free-time.


How did you come across this particular hobby?
We are from Munich where playgrounds like Elevenpark already exist. My children regularly visit Budapest during the school holidays. One day they asked me why there isn’t such a park in Budapest. So I can thank my children for this idea.

Why did you choose this particular hobby?
I love children and it makes me happy to see how much they enjoy playing in the park, since there is a child in every adult. It feels great to jump around on the bungee trampoline, fire away in the soft shooter or win an air hockey game after a hard day at the office.

Did anyone else “catch on”?
My wife did. She manages the business and puts all her heart into the park day after day.

What sort of abilities does this hobby require?
You need to be keen on playing with children and working with people. However, I think there are numerous other things to success, like working hard, being a good organiser, devising a good negotiation strategy, creativity, coming up with ideas, flexibility and the ability to develop continuously.

Do you have any abilities that came to the surface because of your hobby?
I learned how to establish a company adapted to this concept, find business partners, establish co-operation, plough through complicated contracts, make these more advantageous for us, devise concepts for our equipment, obtain permits and various authorisation and a great deal more. “Selling a product” was something completely new to me, whilst acquiring business skills and dealing with partners and employees in a performance-oriented way was a challenge for my wife.

Please click here to read the full article.

Healthy employees make good business sense

With more than 10 years’ experience providing premium outpatient medical services, FirstMed has launched its new Occupational Health service for the benefit of businesses and their most important assets: their employees.

In order for businesses to increase their productivity and efficiency and to ensure that they are meeting government targets for health and well-being at work, it is vital that organisations have access to skilled, qualified and experienced Occupational Health professionals.

All employees in Europe have, by Law, Occupational Health coverage. Under the Hungarian Occupational Health Act, employers are required to arrange, at their own expense, Occupational Health checks for their employees in order to prevent work-related health risks. The employees' health status and their working ability are evaluated and monitored during medical examinations performed before employment and periodically thereafter.

The primary goal of Occupational Healthcare is to sustain and promote the health and working ability of employees. The Occupational Health service provider should propose prevention and control measures for the elimination of unnecessary work-related exposure and risks during normal operating conditions. Before carrying out an Occupational Health check at a particular workplace, the Occupational Health provider will first acquire general information about the industry in which the company operates. The examinations will focus on different criteria depending on job demands, workplace circumstances and individual employees' health characteristics.

FirstMed’s Occupational Health service ensures that a thorough and professional approach is taken to safeguarding the health and working ability of the employees. FirstMed’s custom-made approach assists companies to choose affordable and convenient services that meet the organisation’s specific needs.

In addition to Occupational Healthcare, FirstMed offers many other medical services such as pre-assignment (pre-employment) health examinations, periodic health examinations/manager screening, return to work health examinations, general health examinations, fit-for-travel checks etc.

Due to increased demand, FirstMed has recently completed a major phase of expansion thus increasing the clinic’s capacity and broadening its service offer.  The new more modern clinic environment is ideally suited to providing a high standard of Occupational Health and other medical services for management, employees and their families.

All at FirstMed strive at all times to offer excellence and value in the medical services provided.  At FirstMed, Your Health Comes First!

For further information please contact FirstMed Sales Executive Gabriella Richman via email or call +36 1 224-9095.

An interview with General Manager Tamás Molontay

On 6 February 2010, Calyon changed its name to Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank. What does this change of name express?

First and foremost, it shows the close attachment of the bank to the Crédit Agricole group. Another important point of consideration was that the new name shows better the unity and strength of the bank, which creates a good basis for us to continue the work we have been doing in the field of corporate and investment banking. Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank is among the banks providing the most sizeable loans in Hungary. In our traditionally strong fields, such as the financing of the oil and gas sector, energy, telecommunication and infrastructure developments, and also commodity hedging, we are among the largest players. Retail banking however, is not among our business lines. Our new name expresses all this more clearly than the previous one. Let me mention here that Sean Connery is the face of the campaign launched to support the introduction of the new name, relating closely to the international corporate campaign of Crédit Agricole that began last autumn.


Speaking of strengths: What do you consider as the bank’s most distinguishing strength compared to its competitors?

Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank is clearly a corporate bank. The global crisis has proven to us how important it is to focus on our clients, and this is exactly what we do, with a very strong background. We are among the world’s leading banks in loan syndication, project financing and bond issuance, but our organisation retained its flexibility, which means that we can quickly find, plan and implement the solutions that are the most suitable to ensure the optimal operation of our clients. This flexibility is also fostered by our close cooperation with our colleagues in London and Paris, benefitting from their knowledge and expertise – the flow of opinions and information is traditionally fast and global in our bank. Besides all that, we also benefit from being a branch, and consequently assume the risk rating of the Crédit Agricole group.


Will the change of name bring a shift in the focus of the bank’s activities?

No, it will not. We will continue to focus on our traditional areas of expertise. These business areas include, first and foremost, the financing of large scale investments on a project basis or in the form of export financing (for example, in the energy sector), with our services extending to related consultancy. Cash management and derivative transactions are also among our focus areas. As regards the latter, we are very active in interest rate, foreign currency, oil, fuel and gas price hedging, and probably, we are one of the best in emissions trading and hedge transactions. Our cash management solutions are cutting edge, but we will invest a great amount of energy this year in developing these solutions further.


What is your prognosis of the crisis?

Let me refer here to our analysts in London: according to their forecast, 2010 will still be a year of recession in Hungary. In other words, although only to a small extent, but the economy will continue to shrink. In this environment we will have to pay even more attention to our clients’ needs, because now, a good solution, a good financing structure can turn into gold in the hands of an organisation that finds the right model to conduct business. To that end, we are developing a number of new products, which is always very exciting.


The bank that from now is called Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank has been present in Hungary for a long time. Is this an advantage over those who came later?

Our headquarters were bought and renewed by Crédit Lyonnais Bank; the Muráthy–Teleki Palace is considered as one of the group’s most beautiful headquarters in the world. It is not by accident that the bank chose a historic building for headquarters: Crédit Lyonnais contributed to the development of the infrastructure of the Hungarian capital already in 1874, when it participated in the 6% "Hungarian Loan.” The bank returned to Hungary immediately after the fall of the Communist system, it opened a representative office already in January 1990, and was the first bank in Hungary established not by demerging from the Hungarian National Bank but by a 95%, then 100% owned subsidiary of a foreign bank, with approval from the State Bank Supervision. We are proud of our history in Hungary but it means no competitive advantage. You cannot inherit advantage – you have to deserve it with hard work day by day.

How title insurance could speed recovery
An interview with John Maidens, CEO for First Title Insurance plc

by Robin Marshall

Title insurance can help a transaction move more quickly and safely, often at less cost than using conventional due diligence. That, says John Maidens, CEO for First Title Insurance plc, means that capital goes to work quicker, and yields arrive earlier; two very important considerations in a hard economic climate.

But what, exactly, is title insurance, and why should businesses be interested in it. “Title insurance protects owners from unexpected third party challenges against any defects in title, which may affect an owner’s ability to use or develop a property,” explains Maidens. The cover provided thus “enables land to be developed, mortgaged and used, notwithstanding a range of title defects…. In short, title insurance mitigates risk.”

The First Title group of companies has operating throughout the UK and Europe for more than 20 years. According to its website, “consistent company growth has been achieved via product innovation, diversification of services and through strategic acquisitions”.

First Title is an UK-based, FSA-regulated insurance company, authorised and regulated to issue policies in the UK, Ireland, and throughout the EU, and will also consider risks in Russia, Serbia and Croatia. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of The First American Corporation.

Maidens insists the products First Title sells have not changed because the economic times have become more difficult, but he does suggest that the ways in which they are used, and the reasons for using them, have.

“We are finding that buyers and banks are beginning to look to title insurance to supplement the protection that they would ordinarily secure from a seller through property-related reps and warranties. Indeed, we have already worked with Administrators, such as BDO, to replace property reps and warranties in order to preserve the value of the assets. I would envisage that this type of application of our product will increase as ‘distressed assets’ begin to move in the market.

“Further to this we can assist borrowers and lenders when refinancing corporate debt where property is the mainstay of the security. Rather than reviewing the quality of the security to give the lender certainty that the charge is fully enforceable, we can insure and guarantee the assets, giving the borrower leverage over the interest rate negotiation.”

None of which means the company, represented in Hungary by former BCCH chairman Andrew Jackson, has a magic recession-busting wand to wave, although Maidens says he does see some signs of improvement.

“I believe that there are reasons for cautious optimism, with more attractive valuations, combined with a return of risk appetite; there has been a very gradual return of confidence to the sector, particularly prime property. Our enquiry levels are very healthy at the moment and we are confident of the market picking up during 2010.

“In CEE, transactions are still a bit slow, although we are seeing more activity in the last quarter. Lending is expected to remain tight through the first half of 2010, which is likely to limit transactions. We are bracing ourselves for another challenging year, but have some bright spots; Poland seems to have the most positive signs for recovery.

“In Hungary we have a residential retail product that will be launched soon. This is the first of several countries for this product.”

Maidens, 49, joined First Title in August 2007 as its Financial Director, having worked in senior finance roles within the insurance industry in the UK, Europe and the United States. He was appointed CEO of First Title Insurance plc in September of this year.

BCCH welcomes FTC among its members

Ferencváros (FTC), a sister club of BCCH Foundation member Sheffield United FC has recently joined the Chamber as a Full member, and is looking forward to make use of the various benefits of BCCH membership. The club is based in Budapest, and is a real social institution that opens the door to a wide range of B2B contacts in Central Europe, and especially in Hungary.

Ferencváros

Ferencváros is based in Budapest, the wonderful jewel of Danube, and one of the business, financial and cultural hubs of Central and Eastern Europe. The football club Ferencváros, ‘Fradi’ or ‘the Green Eagles’, is a real social institution that opens the door to a wide range of B2B contacts within Central-Europe, and especially in Hungary.

28 time Hungarian champion and 1965 Fairs Cup winner Ferencváros, with the exception of the last three years have always been present in the top tier of Hungarian football since the league’s inception in 1901, and is poised to return to the First Division 2009 and re-enter European competition.

Ferencváros (FTC) is a sister club of Sheffield United FC, the famous English football club which transcends the normal limits of a football club; it is a PLC with interests in property, football and leisure on an international scale, and FTC also wishes to develop stronger links with other countries.

The network

Strategy

Ferencváros is to reclaim its status as one of the best performing Central European clubs; to capitalise on the Ferencváros name, one of Hungary’s most famous brands internationally; and to use the prominent and unique marketing, PR and promotional activities in this industry in connection with international opportunities.

For the supporters
• A successful and entertaining team
• A safe stadium with a friendly family atmosphere
• Significant matchday and other services in the new stadium
• Corporate social responsibility to preserve and protect the community’s values

For the business partners
• Strategic partnership with a sports company which ensures the region’s biggest advertising power connections and possibilities stretching around the world
• A common approach to consumers and creation of common interests and values through the FTC brand.
• Assistance in creating B2B connections in Budapest as the region’s commercial and cultural centre
• Property expansion: establishment of a conference, office and commercial centre