About Hodge
Hodge is a private bank which is 79% owned by The Hodge Foundation, a charity supporting welfare, medical, academic and educational causes. Both as a lender and as a savings bank, we take a steady and controlled approach to doing business. This long-term view – avoiding short-termism – is coupled with a solid reputation for looking after our clients. Doing the right thing is what we aim to do in all areas of our business – it guides our decisions – and our depth of experience, values and reputation means we are a business that you can rely on.
Our partnership
Hodge has a true partnership with Sweetmans and Partners. They have taken the time to understand our unique needs and culture, which has enabled us to achieve the outcomes we were looking for across our Executive and leadership community, and so support our ambitious and exciting strategy.
Hodge’s long-term plan is to blend the strongly felt ‘human’ appeal of our organisation with a need to deliver a strong commercial return for our shareholder.
Programme overview
So far, our partnership with Sweetmans has responded to this vision through the co-development of:
- A 360 feedback and coaching programme to highlight and embed valued leadership behaviours
- A series of workshops for the Exec team to define great leadership at Hodge
- A tailored leadership programme for senior Leaders, with a focus on leading change
- A ‘Coaching for Leaders’ programme to support the development of a coaching culture at Hodge
- Executive coaching for our Exec, Commercial Lending and Operational Leaders.
- A Hackathon to identify what our “doing the right thing” value means in practice
We’re now in the throes of co-developing an exciting mentoring programme for our talent pipeline.
Our partnership with Sweetmans enables us to support and challenge each other to bring fresh thinking, and new ideas to the table. Their status as a B-Corp is also important to us as a business being 79% owned by the Hodge Foundation. As we are looking to encourage more of a start-up culture within Hodge, it has also been great for us to work with a start-up business, and benefit from their fast, personal and dynamic service and innovative responses to our evolving needs. We see them as a valued partner to achieving our long term plans and goals.”
Coaching gives me the space to consider my decisions and actions, I value the challenge and support that comes from having a trusted partner. As a result, I’ve encouraged my team to receive coaching and an investment by the business more generally in the development of coaching skills across the leadership community.