Performance Improvement in the Private Sector
Phoenix Group is the UK’s largest long-term savings and retirement business and is home to c.13m customers. ReAssure is part of the Phoenix Group looking after c.3m customers.
Like many other businesses during the pandemic, ReAssure adapted and responded to significant changes in customer expectations, with a growing expectation of a greater level of digital correspondence and significantly quicker response times, together with the introduction of a hybrid/homeworking environment for their colleagues.
Alongside the impact that the pandemic had had on both colleague and customer behaviour, ReAssure’s Customer Service operation had also experienced significant growth following a migration. The colleague population had increased with over 800 new starters recruited in 2021 alone. This combined with the higher number of customers transacting crystallised the need to refocus on operational effectiveness and ways of working.
In order to effectively deliver on the Phoenix Group purpose of helping people secure a life of possibilities and in response to the large scale change that had occurred in the previous two years, Managementors was brought in as a new delivery partner to facilitate transformation across their back-office operation. The core objectives were to:
- Coach, train and upskill Team Leaders into a reshaped role, focused on actively managing performance to drive team productivity
- Enhance the Management System framework to ensure the managers had the tools needed to manage in a hybrid working environment, reflecting the large number of new colleagues that had joined during the pandemic
Following an in-depth analysis of the operation, the programme started with an 18-week pilot which was then followed by a rapid-roll out to all teams through a series of intensive 6-week sprints.
At every stage, ReAssure colleagues were heavily involved in the development of the solutions to make them their own. Managementors acted as true facilitators rather than simply prescribing solutions, which was evidenced by a high level of buy-in and ownership. Additionally, significant focus was placed on training workshops and desk-side coaching which empowered managers and gave them the skills and confidence to challenge performance and more actively manage their teams.
Through the refinement of the Management System, and a restored focus on performance, a more customer-centric language was embedded to enable teams to correlate the improvement in performance to the impact on the customer. A more tangible buzz around performance was developed and a step change in operational effectiveness followed.
The hard work and commitment of the ReAssure teams generated operational effectiveness gains in excess of 20%. In addition, service levels improved by 69% and the number of complaints being logged decreased by 30% by the end of 2022, comparable with previous year.
View the Managementors Ltd profile in the MCA Members Directory.