Can improving communication
be a mechanism to make employees feel more involved and engaged
with the business? This was the question faced by Norwich Union
Insurance when many of their employees wished to leave the company
after experiencing two mergers within two years. In this case
study presented by James Brooke and Alastair Ham, the authors
describe how Norwich Union was able to begin to effect a major
cultural change by improving team leaders' communication with
their staff.
The key component of Norwich Union's success
was in recognizing the limits of traditional top-down communication
vehicles. Despite the excellent newsletters, electronic media,
and audio-visual vehicles produced by the company's internal
communication team, employees repeatedly expressed the desire
for more face-to-face communication with their direct line managers.
These frontline managers are the "opinion leaders,"
setting the climate and behavior standards for their employees.
Because of this, the trend in large companies to "put the
CEO on video or to call a big conference with the top team on
the podium" is not as effective during times of corporate
change as a strategy which focuses on frontline managers.
Norwich Union's strategy placed team leaders
as "the main hubs of communication" by establishing
daily team meetings. The meetings (and we quote):
- Would have a regular agenda, based on
two or three performance measures that teams can influence and
feel that they own…
- Would emphasize listening to the team's
ideas and involving them in problem solving…and
- Would help the team to focus effective
upward pressure, making sure that senior managers are able to
recognize and fix any problems that are outside the team's influence.
In order to train them to take on this
new, expanded, leadership role, the team leaders participated
in a two-day "immersion session." These sessions focused
on "listening, problem solving, making people feel involved
and managing the climate in the meeting." In addition, substantial
time was spent role-playing real workplace situations and building
team leaders' self-confidence. Another key element to the program's
success was the creation of a pro-active mindset. By anticipating
the obstacles they were likely to face when returning to their
jobs and "re-framing" problems as opportunities for
change, the team leaders were given the tools to succeed.
When they returned to their jobs after
the immersion sessions, team leaders began holding "SMP
Daily" meetings, named for the three performance measures-service,
morale, and profit-teams began to evaluate every day. Three months
after the sessions, team leaders' evaluations of the program
were still as positive as they had been immediately afterwards,
and they started to report "a fundamentally different attitude
emerging." The authors feel that this radical climate change
is due to several factors:
- Employees feel that their ideas and perspectives
are acknowledged and respected by the company;
- Regular focus on specific performance
measures within the team's influence gives "shape and purpose
to people's jobs, showing them how they make a difference and
helping them feel successful"; and,
- Emphasis on shared problem solving and
brainstorming fosters a "can-do" culture.
By focusing on changing the way frontline
managers communicated face-to-face with employees, rather than
using traditional top-down communication vehicles, Norwich Union
was able to fundamentally change its climate and avoid a crisis
in employee morale and productivity.