Background
Lovell, a leading partnership housing company operating in England, Scotland, and Wales, aimed to build a customer-centric, empathetic, and high-performing culture. They sought to deliver outstanding experiences for customers, employees, and partners while expanding from 8 to 12 regions, increasing headcount by 22%, and preserving core culture elements. Lovell aimed to empower its workforce, emphasizing principles like devolved decision-making, ownership, and collaboration across regions to create a healthy, inclusive, and high-performance culture.
Approach
Culture Consultancy addressed Lovell’s culture transformation with their 3-stage methodology:
In the Insight stage, they comprehensively analysed existing culture, challenges, and opportunities, drawing insights from customer journeys, satisfaction data, and interviews with leaders and colleagues.
In the Design stage, facilitated sessions engaged colleagues from diverse regions to define “The Lovell Way” (TLW), comprising three culture principles guiding daily actions, behaviours, and decisions. Internal branding and a 12-month engagement plan were developed to launch TLW nationwide, integrated into campaigns like Suicide Prevention Week and Menopause Awareness Month.
In the Embed stage, TLW was gradually incorporated into the employee experience, starting with recruitment. A quarterly survey was introduced to measure engagement, and TLW facilitated collaboration with key partners.
Outcome
Lovell’s culture transformation yielded impressive results:
• Nationwide events received excellent feedback, with 97% of participants recommending workshops to colleagues and 97% rating them as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’
• In a quarterly survey, Lovell received high scores, including an 8.6 out of 10 for recommending Lovell as a workplace and an 8.5 out of 10 for overall job satisfaction.
• Lovell’s Trustpilot rating improved from ‘bad’ to ‘Great’ over 18 months, reflecting happier customers and better reviews.
• Significant safety improvements occurred, with the Lovell Incident Frequency Rate decreasing from 3.58 to 3 and the Accident Frequency Rate (RIDDOR) dropping from 0.07 to 0.04 over 12 months.
In conclusion, Lovell successfully transformed its culture to support growth, enhance employee satisfaction, and achieve better safety records while delivering outstanding customer experiences.