Client

UCB (Union Chimique Belge) is a global biopharmaceutical company founded in 1928 and headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, with operations in approximately 40 countries and a workforce of about 9,000 employees.

With a clear patient-centric ethos, UCB is dedicated to ensuring that people living with severe diseases can enjoy the best possible quality of life. The company focuses on conditions of the central nervous system (neurology), immune system disorders (immunology), and rare diseases. Innovation, sustainability, and collaboration drive its approach to creating meaningful impact.

The Challenge

UCB’s Quality team was a growing and diverse group of 90 professionals spread across four regions, with the majority based in Belgium. The team includes Directors, their direct reports, and consultants supporting the business.

As the team expanded, the Head of Quality began to see signs of growing friction: increased conflicts, lower engagement, and a gradual loss of genuine human connection between senior leaders and the wider team. With more people, and more regions, alignment in ways of working was slipping.

It also became clear that people weren’t learning on their own, and that to truly transform, everyone needed to learn together. The goal was to connect people across locations and levels, strengthen collaboration, and embed a shared way of thinking and working.

The Task

The vision for the programme was to:

• Build self-leadership capability across the team to navigate a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous (VUCA) world with resilience.

• Equip people with a common vocabulary and practical skills to connect, communicate, and collaborate more effectively.

• Strengthen relationships between senior leaders and the wider team, while fostering peer-to-peer learning across the organisation.

Our Solution

Working in close partnership with UCB’s Quality leadership team, we designed a bespoke three-year leadership programme centred on emotional intelligence (EQ) skills:

1. Discovery through listening – We ran a survey across the team to understand which topics they were most excited to learn about.

2. Individualised coaching – We ensured each that participant had a dedicated coach and a chance to debrief their learnings.

3. Cohort design for connection – Cohorts were mixed across locations and tenure to encourage collaboration and relationship building.

4. Phased learning approach –

   • Year 1: Self-awareness — understanding personal strengths.

   • Year 2: Practical application of learnings.

   • Year 3: Social awareness — building cultural intelligence.

The Impact

The programme ran successfully for all three years, with the team remaining engaged throughout, even growing in size during a second-year acquisition. With all this change, the retention rate stood at an impressive 98%.

Key outcomes:

1. A common language and shared toolkit to thrive — not just survive — in a VUCA world. People owned their careers and stayed motivated.

2. A united, confident team that balanced IQ and EQ, representing the Quality function with pride.

3. Stronger trust and transparency between leaders and the wider team, with increased mentorship and coaching across all levels.

Client Testimonial

“Impel Talent worked with me and my leadership team to create a bespoke program meeting the needs of my technically minded team. They helped us engage with the team prior to delivery in order to better understand what topics were relevant to them. This helped with the buy-in and success of the program from day one.

I personally met each person on my team at the end of each year to discuss what they enjoyed and what could improve. I had an overwhelmingly positive response from my entire team to keep the program going each year. It gave them an opportunity to discuss topics they don’t normally talk about, meet colleagues they don’t usually work with, and learn from each other during the group sessions.

I can’t recommend Impel enough if you are looking for bespoke solutions. They are a pleasure to work with.”
— Head of Quality, UCB

Our Expertise

At Impel Talent, we specialise in creating bespoke leadership and capability-building programmes that connect people, build trust, and deliver measurable results. Our approach blends emotional intelligence, practical tools, and experiential learning to foster meaningful change across teams and geographies. By listening first, designing collaboratively, and delivering with precision, we help global organisations like UCB build resilience, shared purpose, and lasting alignment in the face of complexity.