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Loam Lab by Leaders Plus

Work has changed. Most organisations are still catching up.

We help you move your hybrid, flexible and dispersed teams from busy to productive, across the eight conditions that matter most. We build the internal capability to stay ahead, so high performance and a good life aren’t a trade-off.

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Why Loam Lab?

Named after the richest layer of soil where the conditions are right for everyone to thrive, whatever their working pattern or life. Founded by Verena Hefti MBE after a decade of hearing what leaders from hundreds organisations said behind closed doors in Leaders Plus Fellowship programmes.
0 %

of UK workers engaged

at work, compared to 20% globally. Gallup 2025¹

0 %

of GDP lost due to disengagement

to disengagement, approximately $10 trillion annually globally. Gallup 2025¹

> 0 %

feel unproductive

of knowledge workers, not because they are not trying. McKinsey 2023²

0 %

productivity lag

UK lags the US by 20%. OECD / House of Commons Library 2025³

1 in 5

flexibility requests rejected

flexible working requests. Denial rates have risen since 2024 legislation. Phoenix Group 2025⁴

The Problem

The goal was never busyness.

But for most organisations, that is what they have ended up with.

Your workforce is flexible, part-time, hybrid, global. Some teams are excelling but others are exhausted and busy but not moving the needle. And those working flexibly are often feeling it most.
The difference is rarely the people. It is almost always the conditions.

The Cause

Most organisations are sitting on a version of the same problems. Leaders think there is a speak-up culture, but nobody is speaking up. Flexibility is welcomed in theory, but in practice people experience trade-offs. Many are overworked, a lot of the time, without a clear way to change it. Teams are always busy, but not always on the right things. And when someone is not in the office, their manager does not quite know how to lead them well or manage their performance. People talk about AI as if it will solve this. But email was supposed to speed everything up too.

How We Help

What changes behaviour is not technology. It is leadership. The clarity, the permission, and the conditions that free up thinking time for the work that actually counts.

We work with your internal leaders, helping them look honestly at their own practice, shift it, and bring others with them. They leave with the tools to do that: session outlines, workshop designs, and a peer network of Loam Practice Leads across other organisations. It takes root from the inside. It does not depend on us.

Founding Pilot Partner

Shape What Is Next: Become a Founding Pilot Partner

We are selecting two Founding Pilot Partners who will help shape what this becomes, at cost.

We have space for two organisations in Q3 2026. Once those places are filled, the standard rate applies.

What this asks of you

A genuine interest in shaping what Loam Lab becomes: your experience and instincts will directly influence the first iteration.
Nominating six frontline team members and six middle leaders for us to invite to one Unearth Session each (max 1.5h).

That’s it. We handle everything else: the sessions, a short survey to your senior leadership team, the scorecard and analysis.

“Be the exec who built the future of work, before everyone else caught up.”

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The Loam Scorecard

Eight dimensions.
A clear picture of what is actually going on.

The Loam Scorecard measures the eight dimensions that determine whether your leaders are getting maximum productivity from their people. It is completed from two directions at once: leaders score each dimension, and so do the people they lead. 

1.

Workload leadership

Do your leaders protect their teams’ capacity to perform sustainably, especially in part-time roles where every addition carries more weight?

2.

Switching off drives performance

Do your leaders model recovery, and create the conditions where switching off is genuinely possible?
3.

Protecting time for high-value work

Are your leaders using every tool available to guard thinking time for the work that matters most?
4.

Leading teams however and wherever they work

Are your leaders confident leading people across every work set-up, and managing their performance fairly?
5.

Clarity that drives productivity

Do your leaders send a clear enough signal about what matters, and does it reach every person in your organisation?
6.

Focus on what adds most value

Do your people spend their time on what matters most, and feel empowered to challenge what does not?
7.

Leading by outcomes, not presence

Do your leaders measure what gets done, or who is visible and when?
8.

Speaking up and stepping up

Do your people feel safe to name what is not adding value? Do they have agency to propose what should replace it?
Request a Copy of the Loam Scorecard

How It Works

How It Works

1

The Unearth Sprint

What’s happening? Does the experience at the frontline match what leaders intend?

A structured baseline survey goes to your most senior leaders across the eight Loam Scorecard dimensions, capturing how they see the organisation and what matters most. Two Unearth Sessions follow, one with frontline people, one with middle leaders. Both surface what people on the ground are actually experiencing, intelligence that rarely reaches the top.

Output

Your Loam Scorecard: what your leaders intend across the 8 dimensions, the agreed critical metrics, what your people actually experience and where the biggest opportunity gains lie.

2

The Clearing

Which dimensions does your senior leadership team most want to move the dial on?
Your senior executive team explore what they want to take from the Unearth Sprint. They look at what the Loam Scorecard tells them about what would most move the dial, to ensure their people, across every location, time zone and working pattern, genuinely have the clarity and agency to do work that matters. They decide which areas to focus on first.

Output

A clear picture of where the gap is biggest, and your leadership team’s decision on where to focus first. 

3

The Growing Season

Develop internal champions who breathe life into the outcomes your senior leaders care about most

The twelve-week initiative that builds the leadership capability to close the gap. We develop internal champions who breathe life into the Loam Scorecard outcomes your senior leaders care about most, equipping them in outcome-based leadership, flexible and part-time working fluency, workload management, and the working practices that free up thinking time.

What this means for your people

The Loam Practice Leads take this back into their teams, surfacing what is getting in the way and creating the conditions where people can say what they have been thinking. For the people doing the work: clearer priorities, workload focused on what moves the needle, and space to focus on work that matters.

Output

Embedded Loam Practice Leads who move the dial on the dimensions that matter most, equipped with leadership capability, session outlines, toolkits and a peer network. The change lives in your organisation, not a retainer with us.

Optional: The Field Map

Identifies specific activities and processes where work is not adding value. Available on request.

4

The Yield

Impact evaluation
Six months on, we return to the Loam Scorecard together. The same eight dimensions, measured again. We track movement against the metrics that matter to your organisation.

Metrics tracked

  • eNPS and engagement scores
  • Performance and productivity data
  • Revenue per employee
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This Is For You

This Is For You If You've Ever Thought or Heard

Loam Lab works with COOs and HR Directors who recognise their organisation in those sentences, and are ready to do something about it.
“My teams are always busy, but I am not sure they are working on the right things.”

“We support flexible working – but our leaders do not feel at ease with it and struggle to manage performance fairly.”

“We tell people to switch off, but our leaders are always on, and everyone notices.”

“We have a speak-up culture. And yet everyone keeps doing work they know is not efficient, and nobody says a word.”

“We are under pressure to achieve more with less. We keep restructuring but the problem persists.”

“We are implementing AI, but like the introduction of email, our people are still as busy.”
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Our Story

Verena Hefti MBE
Founder, Loam Lab

Our Story

“I feel like I have to choose between my life and my desire to make an impact in my career.”
I have heard some version of that sentence more times than I can count. Said quietly, matter-of-factly, by capable and committed people in senior roles, people who are not struggling. People who are good at their jobs, and know it. Over the past decade, through the Leaders Plus Fellowship, I have worked alongside hundreds of senior leaders navigating flexible working, parenthood, and the demands of leadership at the same time. And the same things kept coming up. Workload that never lets up. Time spent on things that do not actually matter. The creeping sense that working harder and adding value are not the same thing.

Nobody should have to make that choice.

McKinsey research from 2023 found that over half of knowledge workers feel relatively unproductive at work — not because they are not trying, but because the workforce has changed and the way most organisations lead it has not kept up. It is now flexible, part-time, hybrid, global. The leadership conditions around people have not caught up.

This is what Loam Lab was built to address.

I built Loam Lab because developing great leaders is only half the answer. The conditions around them matter just as much. Leaders Plus develops the individual. Loam Lab fixes what surrounds them — the clarity, the workload, and the leadership capability to get the most from a workforce that works differently.

Two organisations, two sides of the same coin — both built on the belief that everyone deserves the conditions to do work that matters.

— Verena Hefti, Founder

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Get In Touch

Whether you are ready to explore working together, want to find out more, or are interested in becoming a Founding Pilot Partner, we would like to hear from you.

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