Building a global leadership programme for 1,900 managers across 21+ countries

How Hemsley Fraser designed and delivered a 20-week blended leadership programme for a global FMCG organisation undergoing major transformation.

1,900+

managers upskilled globally

21+

countries reached

20 weeks

blended programme journey

4.5/5

satisfaction across all countries & modules

The organisation

Our client is one of the world’s largest dairy cooperatives, headquartered in the Netherlands and operating across more than 21 countries. With nearly 20,000 employees globally and revenues in the billions, they produce a wide range of dairy-based products sold worldwide. Sustainability and cooperative ownership sit at the heart of how they operate.

When we started working together, they were in the middle of a significant internal transformation, one that would fundamentally change how people management worked across the entire business.

The challenge

Driven by a mix of market pressures, internal performance challenges, and structural changes in their industry, the organisation needed a leaner, more resilient operating model. The goal was to become a more focused, higher-margin business, which meant changing not just the structure, but the culture and capability of its leadership.

A new CEO had reorganised the business around a global mindset. Support functions including finance, IT and HR were centralised. People management responsibilities that had historically sat with local HR teams were transferred directly to people managers themselves.

Their internal employee survey told a clear story: many of those managers weren’t equipped with the behaviours they needed to lead effectively. Providing feedback, creating psychological safety, supporting wellbeing. These were consistent gaps across the organisation.

Around 1,900 managers, spread across the globe, needed to be developed to lead in a way consistent with the organisation’s core values and leadership principles.

There was also a practical complexity. Rolling out a global programme at this scale was new territory for the organisation. Coordinating nearly 2,000 participants across multiple regions, languages and time zones, while maintaining quality and consistency. It was a significant operational undertaking alongside the learning design itself.

The solution

Hemsley Fraser, in close collaboration with the client, designed and delivered a 20-week blended leadership programme built around the organisation’s culture, values and specific capability gaps.

Leadership development options

A 180-degree feedback survey completed by participants and their direct reports at both the start and end of the programme, providing measurable before-and-after data on leadership behaviours
Three instructor-led modules (two virtual, one in-person) covering psychological safety, wellbeing and providing feedback, all aligned with the organisation’s leadership vision and values
Pre and post work for each session designed to build anticipation ahead of delivery and reinforce learning afterwards, following Hemsley Fraser’s Excite→Engage→Embed→Evolve methodology
A comprehensive participant guide giving everyone a single point of reference for FAQs, module overviews, pre-reading and support

Early results

Delivery is ongoing. The early indicators are strong:

Overall participant satisfaction of 4.5 out of 5, measured consistently across all countries and modules, a particularly strong result for a mandatory programme at this scale
Strong engagement maintained across cohorts globally
Positive participant feedback on the relevance and practical application of the programme content

Longer-term, the organisation will measure success through shifts in 180-degree survey scores, changes in their internal employee survey results, and movement in retention rates. These measures reflect a genuine belief that stronger people leadership directly influences how long talented employees choose to stay.

What made this work

Programmes like this don’t succeed because of a good design document. They succeed because every part of the chain, including client engagement, design, faculty, logistics and measurement, is working towards the same outcome. A few things were particularly important here:

Starting from the organisation’s culture and capability gaps, not from a course catalogue. The programme was built for this client, not adapted to fit them
Faculty who could deliver consistently across 21+ countries while reading and respecting local cultural context
A blended architecture that gave 1,900 participants genuine flexibility without creating inconsistency in the learning experience
Operational support that took the administrative complexity off the client’s plate and let them focus on outcomes
Measurement built into the programme architecture from day one, so progress can be tracked against real business objectives