Background

The world is changing, which is why Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) pledged to make their biggest ever investment in people, to transform culture and the way they work. Their approach to performance management hadn’t changed in 20 years and colleagues were spending 2 million hours a year documenting reviews, rather than coaching and learning. Only 20% believed it was a positive experience and 26% that it improved company performance. LBG sought a simplified, collaborative approach which encouraged development and fostered future-fit skills.

Approach

Working with behavioural psychologists Mind Gym and creative agency ICF Next, they designed and tested a fresh approach rooted in everyone taking personal responsibility for their work, development and behaviours and enabling regular coaching conversations between managers and team members. These “check-ins” focussed on 6 conditions of high-performance, through an understanding of individual and team purpose. Once the programme had been fine-tuned in testing, it was rolled out to all staff though nearly 200 face-face and virtual training sessions and a further 21 bite-sized, on-demand modules for teams unable to attend training live. As Your Best is focussed on culture and behaviour change rather than targets, success has been measured through company-wide engagement surveys; focus group findings; reduced administration time; and trends in user feedback.

Outcome

The change in culture has been extraordinary. Managers are now spending 60% less time on documenting performance, freeing up resources for coaching and supporting colleagues. Comparing colleagues who have had 3 or more check-ins with those who have had 1 or fewer: 80% know how they’re performing vs 35%; 72% feel that LBG’s commitment to learning is making a difference to them vs 46%; and 90% feel they are listened to by their manager vs 73%. Colleagues comment that this is the best change they have seen in their career and that the whole team has got behind Your Best, fully embracing personal development on a whole new level, resulting in significant improvements in output. 89% colleagues also believe the changes make a positive difference which will improve performance, compared to 20% in 2018. (All data from 2019 Colleague Engagement Survey).