John Lewis Empowered Leadership Event

People at John Lewis and Waitrose are more than employees, they’re owners and partners too. As the UK’s largest employee-owned business, the John Lewis Partnership is always looking for ways to engage its people. When it came to us, the Partnership had aims of reaching its 8,000 leaders at once to shift culture from one of telling, to one of inspiring. Inspiring events are what we do best.

Our team of creatives got stuck in, planning a week-long event that would bring all leaders together and leave them with no doubts that John Lewis and Waitrose could thrive under their fantastic leadership. As the event coincided with the launch of a new area on the Partnership’s learning portal, we built everything around the exciting new content leaders could find there.

Live activities were designed to inspire and get people thinking big. This was the first step in their journey towards becoming ‘specialists in people’, so learning was at the very centre of every activity. To make sure it stayed that way at every step, we worked closely with the Partnership’s Learning and Development teams. Together, we created an engaging event that was both cost-effective in delivery and provided plenty of results against the organisation’s strategic objectives.

Around 1,200 leaders attended each day, and all enjoyed a large communal space, main plenary and four breakout areas. We got creative with the set-up, re-using the main plenary space in a unique and unexpected way to make sure one breakout space would be particularly memorable. And it worked. Every session was delivered effectively and, even better, partners were still discussing things they learnt at the event in the days, weeks and months after it ended.