Page 39 - HKMA TA2020 Souvenir Programme

Excellence Award

“AXELERATE” (Transformational Leadership Programme for All People Managers)”
AXA Hong Kong & Macau

About AXA Hong Kong & Macau
AXA is a global insurance company, providing a full range of coverage for individual and commercial customers. AXA offers all-round, integrated solutions
across Life, Health and Property & Casualty to address all our customers’ insurance needs. To enable business success in the fast-changing world, it is
important that all departments collaborate as “One AXA”, operate with agility, and empower colleagues with a space to make decisions. AXELERATE
particularly targets all people managers to support their transformational leadership for achieving these cultural enablers.
AXELERATE was originated from AXA Group office. To introduce AXELERATE to AXA Hong Kong and Macau, the HR Learning Team and 4 leaders across
departments attended a Group-led Train-the-trainer programme in Indonesia. With the support and input from Executive Committee (EXCOM), together
with a comprehensive Learning Needs Analysis, the local facilitator team localized AXELERATE, focusing on change leadership mindsets on collaboration,
agility and empowerment.
Since 2018, the 2.5-day AXELERATE Programme was launched with four parts: (1) “Make Sense” (0.5 day) of the managers’ leadership role in AXA
strategy and change mindsets; (2) “Collaborate” (1 day) across departments as One AXA with agility; (3) “Empower” (0.5 day) people to achieve team and
organizational agility; (4) “Inspire” (0.5 day) people with storytelling. Without lectures, the AXELERATE journey employs blended learning with experiential
activities, peer coaching, role play, articles and videos etc., such that different learning styles are supported.
AXELERATE focuses on mindset change, and is unique in many ways:
• Internal Facilitators: by HR Learning Team in partnership with 11 business facilitators across 5 divisions, including 2 EXCOM members. Each session

also includes an EXCOM chit-chat, where EXCOM members take turns to come and share an important leadership story to inspire participants.
Discussions are therefore totally AXA-specific.
• Learner-centric: each manager would bring along one leadership challenge to focus on for personalized learning and reflection. Managers are
formed into participant-led and safe peer groups “Basecamp”. The same Basecamp groups gather constantly to keep relating learning to individual
leadership challenges in an iterative and trusted manner.
• AXELERATE as an “experience”:
 The “Collaborate” session features a 1-day Lego activity “Japanese Land”, where participants are inspired to adopt more agile and flexible

collaboration at work.
 “Agile Tool Marketplace” under “Empower”, where participants grasp four simple and practical management tools by going through four

15-minute booth activities, each led by one facilitator.
 Spontaneous visual facilitation with just-in-time drawing to capture sharing, with minimal slides.
To provide post-programme support to managers on their learning application, alumni gatherings “AXELERATE Recharge” are being organized, where
alumni exchange application experience. To facilitate constant reflections, a pre/post-programme survey is in place, prompting participants to keep a
“pulse check” on their leadership practices across 4 behavioral questions.
Since launch in 2018, 10 sessions of AXELERATE are well received by 270 managers with a 4.3/5.0 rating. AXELERATE participants’ learning effectiveness
is verified by facilitators, and their workplace behavioral change is demonstrated by a 10% increase in pre/post survey scores and application stories
collected. Organizationally, since AXELERATE’s launch, the results of corporate-wide regular “Employee Pulse Survey” show an average score increase of
90% across AXELERATE-related areas on collaboration, agility, empowerment and communication, which contribute to a 142% increase in the overall staff
engagement indicator “Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS)”.
Comments from Adjudicators
It was a sophisticated leadership approach with the train-the-trainer programme condensed into 2.5 days only which addressed the rather difficult tasks
of instituting collaborative and empowering mindsets among targeted participants. The programme was particularly impactful with a learner-centric
design initiative together with a combination of design thinking, sharing sessions, as well as application of engaging rituals to enhance the overall
experience.
The post programme reinforcement with alumni gathering as well as post-assessment paved ways to sustain the mindset change in the long run. On the
whole, the programme delivered positive results with impressive in-house resources.

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