Practice study – MORE TH>N – A great place to work
The challenge
More Th>n had been in a period of immense change aimed at turning the business around.
The performance of the company had been steadily improving, with the share price rising and the focus moving to achieving sustainable growth. However, MORE TH>N suffered from many of the same issues prevalent in customer contact centres across the UK; high levels of employee attrition, above average absenteeism, problems recruiting the right people and low morale.
More Th>n recognised that to achieve their growth ambitions they needed to transform their contact centres into great places to work. The challenge was to increase employee engagement, measured by lower attrition and absenteeism and increased engagement survey scores and essentially create a great place to work.
Bringing it to life – the model in action
The solution
Previous attempts to address these issues had been unsuccessful. It was recognised that a different approach was needed, one which had not been created by senior leaders in an ivory tower. Employees needed to volunteer themselves in the changes, and the way to achieve this was via an approach that would lead, involve, and create trusted dialogue, whilst ensuring changes were sustainable.
The programme began with a two-day mobilisation workshop, which involved 25 representatives who would become “Great Place to Work (GPTW)” site representatives and ambassadors. The workshop set out the rationale of the programme. Over two days attendees were involved in designing a programme of activity, which would contribute towards creating a great place to work. The workshop was highly interactive and included an influencing skills training session. The participants felt the workshop process itself was a truly engaging experience and that others within More Th>n should have the opportunity to go through a similar experience. They therefore designed the ongoing programme around a series of face-to-face workshops.
Then followed a series of workshops aimed at More Th>n leaders, which were facilitated by the site representatives. These workshops asked participants what makes a great place to work and what values were important, using an innovative card-sorting exercise. Leaders were also asked what role they could play in making the changes happen.
Leaders then delivered workshops to their teams, whereby they were also asked what makes a great place to work, what values were important to them and the role that they could play. This face-to-face dialogue was a vital part of the process of engaging employees. Time was spent really listening to their thoughts and ideas, giving them an opportunity to be involved in the change and contribute to the solutions. The process was not outsourced to HR or Internal Communications but was owned and delivered by leaders themselves, which ensured trusted dialogue was established. Support functions, for the first time, played a genuinely supporting role, behind the scenes partnering with leaders to ensure the workshops were a success. They were not the face of change – as had happened previously.
The outputs from all of the workshops were collated and fed back to staff through a variety
of channels.
A second workshop was then held for all staff, delivered by leaders, communicating the findings from the first workshops and participants were asked to get involved with action planning,
to come up with ideas to tackle the issues raised.
A full communication plan was designed to ensure dialogue was established throughout the programme. This included a dedicated intranet site, local newsletter written by site representatives to update staff on progress, and a DVD to communicate progress and showcase the initiatives each centre was undertaking. Centres were also asked to nominate colleagues from their sites as their “face of Great Place To Work”. The winning entries then enjoyed a makeover and photo session in London. Following this their photos were used to relaunch the look and feel of Great Place To Work, and included posters, intranet sites and other materials.
To ensure ongoing involvement and sustainability of the programme, front-line staff were identified to act as champions. They facilitated local action groups and a two-day course was delivered to empower them to drive change at their centres.
In addition a fun and thought provoking session with leaders challenged them to look at how they recognise people in their teams. During the session, case studies of real employees were looked at to see if they really knew how to hit the right note when saying well done.
The outcomes
Results demonstrated the success of the overall programme. 95% rated the workshops as good or very good, with 100% understanding why the programme was happening and 99% understanding the contribution they could make.
Many improvements were driven by staff at the local sites and ranged from the implementation of the first ever customer account manager within consumer insurance industry to health living initiatives to community volunteering.
However, the most compelling evidence for the success of the programme was the reduction of attrition by 19%, the reduction of absence by 1.5% and the an increase in sales contribution against target of 6.7% in the first year and of 18% in the second year.
