Background
Imperial Brands, a global tobacco company with a portfolio of over 160 brands, had a fragmented culture due to years of mergers and acquisitions, leading to an ‘us-them’ culture seeping into all areas, locations and functions. Business performance and investor confidence began to falter and employee engagement scores languished below the global average. A new CEO was appointed with the vision of transforming the company into a responsible and innovative challenger business.
Approach
To change the company’s culture and unlock innovation Imperial Brands launched one of the most ambitious learning programmes in its 120-year history. ‘Connections’ aimed at cultivating a set of common behaviours among the company’s 26,000 employees across 120 markets. Independently mediated focus group discussions and surveys were conducted with hundreds of colleagues globally (spanning all roles/grades) to identify the biggest challenges and improvement areas.
Based on the collected insight, five behaviours – Start with the consumer, Collaborate with purpose, Take accountability with confidence, Be authentic, inclusion to all and Build our future – were developed and introduced at every level in the organisation. Each behaviour had clear definitions, along with dos and don’ts, to help everyone understand how the behaviours apply to them: leading yourself for everyone, leading others, leading managers and leading the business for the executive leadership team and their direct reports.
A comprehensive range of methods, such as role-modelling, training the trainer, workshops, executive sponsorship and a My Connections hub were used to embed these behaviours in every colleague in the company, whether in the boardroom in Bristol, on the factory floor in the Philippines or a sales rep in the States. This meant creating a consistent learning experience across 43 countries and 23 languages.
The programme secured unprecedented commitment from senior leadership to invest more than 115,000 hours on learning in just 12 months, ensuring every single person went on the same journey together.
Outcome
In two years, the programme has transformed the company’s culture, leading to higher employee engagement scores now surpassing global norms. The sense of belonging increased, contributing to turnover rates less than half the global norm. Behaviours are now role modelled and the culture change is so important to the business that the CEO and CFO talk about it to investors. Imperial Brands also saw an improvement in business performance and innovation, with a 10% increase in the sales of innovative non-combustible products.