Business growth and investment have made Freightliner Group a leading UK container services provider for over 30 years. The team at the busy 30-acre Southampton Terminal offers road haulage, container storage, repairs, sales and conversions, and cargo handling.

Having worked previously with the Felixstowe team, MGI was appointed by Freightliner Group, then G&W Pentalver, in early 2023 to collaborate on a change programme to help build the highest levels of customer focus and service. During our discovery phase in preparation for the programme, General Manager Nick Smith and his team explained that service delivery in the haulage business has traditionally been less customer focused than in other industries. They wanted to make a significant change and look at service differently, and this is where MGI and the Better Together programme came in.

Based on the Mindset, Language & Actions Toolkit, the programme was rolled out face-to-face to frontline colleagues and to managers who also trained in MGI’s Managers’ Embedding Workshop. The MGI Toolkit provides an overarching framework that is easily adaptable to the language of an organisation’s particular environment. Teams are encouraged to use their own words and language within the context of this framework for a professional yet natural approach. Nick shared with MGI that everyone had really come on board and embraced the training using it to suit their own language and environment while working well together to ensure the tools become part of everyday life.

The leadership team believes that the Better Together programme has made a significant difference to the overall culture at the Southampton depot.

When visiting the depot customers have been impressed with colleagues’ responses to their questions, where positive, solution-focused language is very much in evidence. It’s gratifying for customers and colleagues to see how engaged people are, enjoying their roles and appreciating the difference they can make when they have the right mindset and tools.