By Lorenzo Hall FIEP, Founder, Owner, Managing Director, Transform & Achieve
In this interview, Communities that Work’s Managing Director Lynsey Sweeney FIEP speaks with Lorenzo Hall FIEP, creator of the “Transform and Achieve” programme, supported by J.P. Morgan.
The programme helps people struggling to find work by offering online resources for personal development in areas like mental health, employment skills, and finance. Lorenzo discusses his background in housing and coaching, the programme’s evolution, and how understanding human psychology can drive habit change to boost employability and shape future employment services.
Interview
Lynsey: Lorenzo, thanks very much for agreeing to be interviewed by me. I’m excited to be the guest editor of the journal, and I’m super excited to speak to you. Could you give us a little background of “Transform and Achieve” your history with it, how it came about, and where it is now?
Lorenzo: My journey with Transform and Achieve started in housing, which is how we met. It began in 2012 under the name “Employment Boot Camp”. At that time, I was working for what is now Peabody Group, which was formerly known as Family Mosaic. I used to do a lot of leadership coaching back then and something that became apparent to me when I was coaching a manager in charge of regeneration and communities at the time, was that they were struggling to get engagement from their residents beyond the typical landlord-tenant relationship. They wanted to help more with health, wealth, and well-being, but their residents were very unresponsive. So, my coaching has always been on influence and the psychology of influence, starting on the inside and then social influence externally.
Lynsey: Quite profound.
Lorenzo: It has been my passion ever since I began my Continuing Professional Development studies in psychology. So, the manager I was coaching then said, “Well, a lot of your discussion about management of the self could be relevant to our residents.” They asked me if I could design something that would attract people, but make it a bit more holistic, and that’s when I designed what is now called “Transform and Achieve”.
“We designed a five modular programme that included fitness, nutrition, as well as employment, financial resilience, and the psychology side of it as well.”
Lynsey: So, you designed the whole course?
Lorenzo: Yes, it was a five-module course programme. It was meant to help people who have multiple barriers. It was told to me that our residents have a range of barriers, from being long-term unemployed and having mental health issues to being lone parents and having childcare challenges. Other barriers also included being ex-military or ex-offenders, as well as young people in care and young people leaving care. There is a wide range of people dealing with such challenges, and I used to visit quite a lot of schemes to understand the challenges they were talking about. So, we designed a five-module programme that included fitness, nutrition, as well as employment, financial resilience, and the psychology side of it as well.
Lynsey: So that was 12 years ago now?
Lorenzo: Yes, the original design was called “Fit for Work”, which is a terrible title, but that was the main idea – helping people and stimulating them at a cellular level. At the time, I was reading a lot of stuff about cells, how they have hormones, and how hormones have a big impact on our thinking, feelings, and behaviours. After a while, the organisation changed the name to the more preferred, “Employment Bootcamp”, and eventually we got a pretty good contract from the JP Morgan Foundation. We then decided to change it to “Transform and Achieve”, which is the best name.
Lynsey: Does Transform and Achieve still have those five modules at its heart?
Lorenzo: Currently, it works mostly on four modules, because these days, particularly within the contract and employability sector, the fitness element doesn’t seem to be something my customers are buying. So, the five elements are still there, but the fitness one is seldom used within the employability sector. However, it’s still used in housing, thankfully.
Lynsey: I think that’s a fair observation, there aren’t many employability programmes that I can think of that routinely have a physical exercise health element to them. They might signpost to that, they might offer leisure centre benefits, but there isn’t a lot of real engagement on that. Based on that, are you saying the housing sector still allows space and time for Transform and Achieve to deliver the fitness module, or is it something that you’re trying to bolt onto courses?
Lorenzo: We occasionally get housing contracts that ask us to include the fitness element, that is something we occasionally get from housing. We’re not doing a lot of delivery in housing at present, because I think their funding has changed quite significantly, and many of their employability teams have unfortunately been stripped back.
“What differentiates Transform and Achieve, I think, from everything I’ve seen, is that we’re a habit-focused organisation, we recognise that people form habits unconsciously and this is learned behaviour”
Lynsey: Well, I hope we can get Transform and Achieve back into housing commissioning and more into mainstream employment services, where it certainly has a place. Could you sum up the difference between Transform and Achieve and other courses or experiences that people may have when they go through an employability journey, and any feedback you’ve had that stands out, shaping or showing what Transform and Achieve is and why it’s so impactful?
Lorenzo: The model I designed is based on the psychology of transformation and habit change, as our thinking and behavior are learned. This can include both helpful and unhelpful habits that impact goal achievement. Most of us, including myself, aren’t consciously aware of our competence or incompetence. What sets Transform and Achieve apart is our focus on habits and the recognition that they are formed unconsciously. In the employability context, people struggling to find work often develop a sense of learned helplessness, as the job search process requires resilience and involves frequent rejection. Unfortunately, the daily habits they form can harm both their mental and physical health.
Lynsey: So, if you can support better habits and link people to the right engagement, rather than just going through the motions, this can help them get a job position that fits them better. Then if you pull those two things together, you’re much more likely to have a lasting success for that person.
Lorenzo: Absolutely.
Lynsey: That is super helpful – a few quick final points from me. The government is going to launch a White Paper in the autumn, about how they’re going to shape employment services at the DWP level. I know you’ve met the DWP and other relevant ministers before, in the course of the work we’ve done together. So, based on what you know works best, if you were in a meeting with a minister now and they said, “Lorenzo, what works best? How do we need to design a programme?”, what would you say in a few short sentences to get the message across clearly?
Lorenzo: I think people often struggle to respond well when pressured to meet expectations for achieving their goals. I believe many job coaches and advisors lack the skill to meet people where they are and engage with empathy, focusing on the whole person rather than just ticking boxes. While they want to do a good job, my challenge to the government is whether these advisors have been properly trained in showing empathy and helping individuals transform, regain confidence, and rebuild self-belief. Personal change and transformation coaching is a profound skill, requiring a deep understanding of how the brain works, and I think more focus on this is needed in the industry.
“Everything my coaches learned, they learned. We didn’t start with these life skills, we’ve combined our life skills with psychological education, and that’s what Transform and Achieve does with our customers.”
Lynsey: Yeah, it’s quite a deep skill, but not impossible to train in, right?
Lorenzo: Absolutely. That’s the whole point – it’s completely possible. Everything I learned, I learned and everything my coaches have learned, they learned. We didn’t start with these skills, we’ve combined our life skills with psychological education, and that’s what Transform and Achieve does with our customers. All our evaluations say, “I didn’t know my brain worked like that, and now I’ve learned to behave and think in new ways” because the period we take them through is the habit change period. So, they form new thoughts, because they form new neural pathways and move away from other default ways of thinking. I think that’s what needs to happen.
Lynsey: Maybe it will one day. They are going to make a lot of changes at the DWP, and they might start to commission more in that shape and in that space – I hope they do.
