How Social Learning Changed Organisational Culture
Lowell Financial Group is a debt collection business with a mission to improve credit for all. They buy debt from Telcos, utilities, financial services, banking, and retail, then work with customers to become debt-free. They have over 7.7 million customers and helped half a million become debt-free in the twelve months before this project.
The Financial Conduct Authority(FCA) reviewed how the industry was ‘living’ their conduct rules, and their review exposed shortcomings across the sector.
With an FCA deadline of just three months to demonstrate our c1500 UK colleagues not only knew about the conduct rules but could apply them confidently, Lowell identified the online social-learning solution – ‘What Would You Do?’(WWYD) to support the application of behaviours and conduct.
There were three key aims:
- Psychological safety: Colleagues should be able to be vulnerable when testing thoughts, assumptions, and understanding.
- Robust decisions: We needed to ensure that our colleagues would ‘do the right thing’ when it mattered most.
- Clarity: when unsure, colleagues know who they should talk to.
This project’s timing was crucial due to the deadline, and because we were mid-pandemic, getting people together was out of the question. Lowell had a number of other requirements too:
- Flexible: To minimise the operational impact, yet able to meet the deadline and raise the bar on capability.
- Self-service: The solution needed to enable Lowell to run sessions by themselves, and at times most suitable to them.
- Time critical: It had to be delivered within the three-month FCA deadline
- Virtual: The workforce was dispersed across the UK due to the pandemic, so any solution had to be online.
- Tailored: It had to meet the FCA requirement and engage 1500 colleagues across multiple disciplines.
- Cross-functional: They needed a solution that transceneded the organisation and bring functions together to understand each other’s pressures because culture change doesn’t happen in silos.
- Multi-level: The solution needed to be relevant to all levels in the organisation, enabling all levels to share the same experience and appreciate the decision making at each level.
- Safe space: It had to create a safe space where people can speak up and say what they think without fear of judgement or ridicule.
Lowell partnered with Thinking Focus (WWYD creators) and delivered an award-winning solution. Together they created bespoke scenarios based on real issues. Feedback was fantastic, with people ranking WWYD as the most engaging and impactful of any online training they’d experienced.
Ricky walks you through the project
Results
Lowell tracked their results over the following twelve months, seeing improvements in four of five cultural metrics and maintaining the fifth.
What participants said:
Chief Risk Officer at Lowell – Kevin Blake shares his thoughts on the programme
Actual game play from the project.
Let’s talk about your culture
If you would like to see how what would you do works, book a demo and invite up to ten people and experience how people interact on everyday dilemmas that change behaviour.
If you want to discuss your team’s culture, book a call with one of the team members or check out our culture blueprint.