Transcript for the video embedded in the Lowell Knowledge Transfer Partnership case study.
[The screen shows a red and black background with the title ‘University of Leeds KTP Case Studies: Lowell’.]
[Music]
[The screen shows various images of people in an office environment]
[Professor Irena Grugulis, Professor of Work and Skills at Leeds University Business School, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Professor Irena Grugulis says:] “It's a truism that people are the most important part of organisations. The simple act of investing in your people of putting resources into making their work better or more skilful or less stressful sends a very positive message. My name's Irena Grugulis I'm the Professor of Work and Skills here at Leeds University Business School. Our KTP project was with a company called Lowell and three of us were involved in it: James Brooks Hugh Cook and myself, and together we were looking at the well-being of Lowell's employees”
[Alison Leslie, formerly the strategic people partner for the operations at Lowell, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Alison Leslie says:] “Lowell is a debt collection company and a lot of the colleagues who work for us end up getting involved in some quite challenging conversations with customers who may be quite vulnerable due to their financial situation and this can be very hard: it can be stressful, it can be emotionally draining. I'm Alison Leslie, at the time of the KTP project I was the strategic people partner for the operations at Lowell. The Knowledge Transfer Partnership worked really well. The great thing was that James and Hugh had quite a lot of quality time to work with our colleagues to do call listening and to really get a good diagnosis of what was going on.”
[Dr Hugh Cook, Associate Professor in Employment Relations and Human Resource Management at Leeds University Business School, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Dr Hugh Cook says:] “I'm Hugh Cook. I'm an associate professor in Employment Relations and Human Resource Management. Dr. James Brooks, who was the KTP associate, was already an experienced H.R. manager, already a postdoctoral research fellow. He was absolutely the best person for this job because of his skill set. So our main aim was to help Lowell to realise greater productive value from the existing mental health support systems in place. In specific terms we were interested in the types of mental health threats, if you like, that employees were exposed to in a call centre environment and the unique mental health support systems that Lowell was implementing.”
[Alison Leslie, formerly the strategic people partner for the operations at Lowell, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Alison Leslie says:] “At the time our engagement levels were quite low. So we really needed to look at some of those challenges see what more we needed to do as a business”
[Professor Irena Grugulis, Professor of Work and Skills at Leeds University Business School, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Professor Irena Grugulis says:] “One of the lovely things about a KTP is it is so nice when we can see our recommendations actually having an effect on the ground”
[Dr Hugh Cook, Associate Professor in Employment Relations and Human Resource Management at Leeds University Business School, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Dr Hugh Cook says:] “The end points of any scientific or academic research is improvements in something in the world”
[Alison Leslie, formerly the strategic people partner for the operations at Lowell, appears on the screen, seated in front of the camera.]
[Alison Leslie says:] “I'm pleased to say that we’ve made significant impacts and so I'm really really pleased with the outcomes”
[The video ends with a screen displaying the text “leeds.ac.uk/ktp”.]