The 2023 BizX Awards marked a milestone for ActionCOACH Exeter with our first client win for Devon and Cornwall, Splash Projects. We are thrilled the Exmouth-based company won the ‘Best Community Impact Award’ at the prestigious Awards Banquet at the London Excel.
Splash directors Simon and Rachel Poole were with us on 20 April 2023 to receive their award along with Phil Weekes, Operations Director and Colin Robertson who is Director of Projects. The trophy and certificate was presented by broadcaster Gabby Logan along with ActionCOACH founder Brad Sugars.
It was an exhilarating experience for our whole delegation from the Southwest to be there to witness this exciting moment. See ActionCOACH takes 10 local businesses to BizX 2023And, of course, we hope to take many more to BizX 2024 in Liverpool.
“I feel elated for Splash Projects and pleased for the Southwest,” says Andrew De Groot who holds the ActionCOACH franchise for Devon and Cornwall. “It’s the first time our region has won anything at BizX and it was our first real effort to make it happen. This will inspire many local businesses!
“The national recognition Splash Projects has received is well deserved. After many years of hard work, this means a lot because Splash isn’t just providing amazing jobs, they are changing lives. I personally believe that what they have to offer is not just national but international and they are worthy of a global award, so the stage is set!”
Splash Projects, a worthy winner
Splash Projects delivers experiential learning programmes internationally through real-life community projects so it was apt that they won in the CSR category. Their clients are blue-chip companies and prominent international business schools. They focus on developing teams through projects like building children’s playgrounds, gardens etc, working with homeless people or children with severe behavioural issues.
“We were hoping to win at least one of five 2023 BizX awards we entered,” said Simon who has been the managing director of Splash Projects since 2005. “It’s been a tough couple of years, but we got it! Thanks to our charity partners and to Andrew, our coach, for believing in us.”
“We feel strongly about leaving a better footprint on the world and along with our clients, we change people’s lives for the better,” he continued. “Winning at BizX has been a great team building experience not just for our employees, but also for our contractors, charity partners, community partners and our clients. We couldn’t have achieved this without them.”
Watch Splash Projects in action.
How ActionCOACH made the difference
We asked Simon how having a business coach has helped Splash Projects over the years and increased the team’s confidence?
“Well, Andrew has been a client of hours for a long time, in fact we did some of our first projects with him. During his banking days at the Royal Bank of Scotland and HSBC he spearheaded projects in China and Japan as well as a huge initiative in London with about 3,500 people across 26 weeks. So, when he became part of ActionCOACH we turned to him for support as we had become crazy busy and needed to develop a better leadership structure.
“Andrew helped us form a senior leadership team, which we didn’t have before. This has taken some of the strain off my wife and I as directors and created shared management responsibilities to propel the business forward. He helped to bring our team together to achieve more, inspiring us as a group to take on a pretty daunting challenge last year.
“Through a process of developing greater cohesion, understanding and realignment we were able to deliver programmes for 5500 people in 2022 across 48 projects and in 11 different regions. So Andrew brought in the structure we needed. He also stretched our belief and this resulted in us entering five BizX Awards!
“We were really optimistic. For the first time, we saw the importance of gaining recognition for our team, and when I say team I mean everybody involved, not just the employees, but contractors and charity partners, community partners and our clients. We couldn’t have succeeded without them. They are all winners!”
So how important was it to the Splash Projects team to have won a national award in the category of ‘Best Community Impact’?
“Social impact is what we’re all about at Splash Projects,” said Simon. “Our key objective from the day we started was to turn every opportunity into something that had an impact. We’ve realised early on that corporate companies will support community initiatives if their teams can get something out of it as well. So we facilitate team building with a purpose. And that’s the way we’ve approached things over the past 18 years.
“Business skill wise, we work with some of the top business learning centres in the world including 10 different business schools. For example London Business School, HEC Parisand INDEAD in Singapore. Client wise we work with companies like Heineken, BA Systems (?), Santander and the DTSquared Projective Group. {Check this list.} Projects focus on anything from building children’s playgrounds, to gardens, sensory walkways, programmes with homeless people and children with severe behavioural issues.
Simon has always been a bit of an adventurer. He joined the military at 16 and became a Royal Engineer. Diving was his passion and he worked as a military diving instructor for eight years. Therefore when he left the army at 40 he was keen to find new ways to facilitate team building. He and Rachel moved to Portsmouth from Exmouth in 2004 where Splash Projects is now based.
As mentioned their first project was initiated by Andrew De Groot while he was working in the Operations Asia team at the Royal Bank of Scotland. Andrew arranged for 60 RBoS staff from Australia, Hong Kong and Japan to work on a school for migrant workers at a chicken factory in China.
“That was an unbelievably stressful delivery,” Simon reminisces. Andrew was extremely creative, but he didn’t have sufficient budget. He kept telling us he wanted ‘a wow factor’. So, he got all his staff to fly economy and stay in cheaper hotels to make more money available for the project. And we did it!”
It’s not surprising that Andrew is still looking for that wow factor in the businesses he coaches today. If you would like to see your business grow, with guaranteed results, consider 1:1 Coaching with ActionCOACH.
