Client Stories
Global Insurance service provider with over 99,000 employees
As the company works through thousands of agents, it was essential that employees of the company in each branch worked seamlessly as a team.
The dysfunctional operations were impacting results.
The CEO and senior management team identified this as a top priority & got invested to address the challenge.
Challenges
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Different messaging from different people in the branch, resulting in offended agents
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Not aligned with the goals & objectives
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Violation of values in terms of respect & language etc
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Duplication of tasks due to no clear demarcation of roles in executing tasks
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Branch leaders were not skilled to build collaboration, resulting in conflict
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Competitiveness within. This was marginalising the market advantage
Suggested way ahead
Design a training intervention on “Teaming for Excellence” for all branch managers across India in a span of three months. This would seed accepted attitudes, behaviours and language across the country.
Process
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Designing the training with hands on involvement of top /senior management team
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First batch of participants was senior leaders so that they send the message of importance of this intervention to all leaders down the line
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Inauguration of the series by MD of the organisation
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Ten-day intervention spread over 3 months
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Participation of CEO in all sessions across India. The intention was to talk about “ground reality” and explain how different values and behaviours will play themselves out in reality
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Format adopted was off-site & beautiful locations were chosen. The intention was to send the message that these leaders make a huge difference & investing in them is ROI for the company
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Assessments – Adventure – Experiential – Conversations were the core methodologies used
Impact
Leaders exhibited behaviours & attitudes at work. Many stories of empowering team environments were scripted.
The intervention was so successful that eight years later, we are still facilitating four batches of this training every year for all new leaders.
Reason for Success
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Very robust design with sustainability elements incorporated
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Updating to newer challenges and needs
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Insurance sector has a healthy internal competition culture and regional leaders continuous messaging of connecting powerful teams to numbers
Digital Network Integrator with a presence in over 150 countries
Challenges
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The international division of the company was facing integration issues. While each country worked seamlessly with their group, the same seamless attitude was not displayed when it came to servicing clients across geographies
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Customer complaints, blame game, internal completion, silo mentality
Suggested way forward
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Global team building programme
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Showcase the strengths of each location to send a message that we need to maximise strengths
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Let people know each other as people versus roles and geographies
Process
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Selection of percentage wise representation from each geography
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Since only 5 % of employees were going to be physically present, engaging all through two powerful exercises as pre-work
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Using an online gamification tool, we designed an exercise for all team members to complete together
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Using adventure exercises the message of one unit was spelt out
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Live integration of the results of the online game, participants were shocked to see how their total results diminished when 4 countries did not finish the task
Impact
High excitement, energy & commitment to remember that the sum of the whole is bigger than the parts.
The chief had this to say “I thought the team-building day went very well and thank you and your team for all your hard-work on it. The VIP collage contributions were also quite impressive; back in the Europe office here in the UK they are already asking what happens next, so I am sure there will be real interest in the follow-through”.