Tag: BT

Bored with the Board?

I struggled to stay awake as the BT board bored us with the cost cutting blah @ the AGM this week. It may well be necessary but boy is it dull, haven’t they got any other tricks up their sleeve?

I recall the CEO of Global Services showing us all the downward trend in mobile spend and expenses on a recent webcast and pointing to this as a success. We all know that these costs can be very easily and quickly driven to zero. I can’t believe he really sees these things as sustainable success, as a shareholder I sincerely hope not.

Rather than just squeeze until the pips squeak, what else might you do to get people fired up and enthused in these difficult times? Before I left BT I posed a few questions to the Global Services leadership team, they were:

How are you going to motivate your people?
How are you going to get them to give the discretionary effort that’s so vital in delivering a great customer experience?
How are you going to get your people to trust you, and each other?

Referencing the first question specifically, Roy Saunderson drew my attention to the following interesting analysis from the USA and Canada. It would be convenient to dismiss it just because it’s not from our own backyard, but I think it’s worth a look, and a think, and a do. My experience in BT Global showed me that simple basic recognition is poorly executed. Less than 3 out of 10 could strongly agree with the statement “In the last 7 days I’ve received praise or recognition for good work”. That’s despite the fact this statement is widely acknowledged as a critical key in the link between managers and staff. BT is not alone as the data below suggests and as I said to Ian Livingston (BT Group CEO) before I left, just think how powerful BT could be if it could get just one step ahead of the herd in these vital areas?

Have a read, have a think and do. The sad news is I saw little evidence of action when on the inside, and if the board are to be believed, that attitude persists. The great news is this can be easily fixed, in any company. I hope you enjoy changing it and I wish you every success in doing so.

Recognition definitely needs leadership at the helm, so lead on!!

Check out this latest study from Ipsos Reid which is highlighting that recognition or the lack of recognition maybe impacting lowered engagement scores in Canadian workplaces.

Apparently Canadian employees are becoming less loyal to their employers. According to these recent findings from Ipsos Reid’s Build a Better Workplace syndicated study, 22% of Canadian employees are expressing decreased loyalty to their employer.

“Loyalty to one’s employer is very dependant on recognition,” says JB Aloy, Ipsos’ resident expert on employee engagement and author of the study. “Staff who feel their involvement is not acknowledged are more likely to become disloyal.”

Interestingly, Recognition Professionals International, has “Management Responsibility” as its second Best Practice Standard for recognition practices and programs.

A few years back Roy Saunderson asked managers in the public sector across the United States and Canada how important it was for them to have senior leader involvement in recognition.

How important is it to managers to have Senior Leader involvement with Employee Recognition?
* 93 percent of managers indicate Senior Leader involvement is very or extremely important
* 75 percent of those managers stated Senior Leader participation was extremely important

Now consider the harsh reality when they asked what percentage were REALLY involved:

Actual level of Senior Leader involvement
* 21 percent of Senior Leaders are very involved
* Another 58 percent are somewhat involved

*(Source: Roy Saunderson, “Survey on the Effectiveness of Employee Recognition In the Public Sector”, Public Personnel Management , Vol. 33, no. 3 (2004): 255-275)

How do you turn good into excellent?

Listening Your Way to a Great Result

Like most large companies, Vodafone runs a supplier performance programme. Twice a year, Vodafone evaluates its suppliers against these criteria: Corporate responsibility (CR), financial stability, technical capability, delivery and quality of service as well as the strength of the commercial relationship. OK, granted the last one’s a bit…subjective perhaps, but I think this is a good, broad set of criteria. I first became aware of the programme after reading a press release about the CR measure. I was delighted that Vodafone were looking into this area, because I am personally interested in sustainable business and the company I was representing; BT, is a good CR practitioner. When I dug a little deeper, I found that Vodafone scored BT at 71%, 7 out of 10. Not bad, but not great either.

Being a curious person, I called up the Head of Supply Chain and he agreed to meet and talk through their programme. The guys at Vodafone were great. Honest and straightforward, they really conveyed a sense of wanting to work together to improve. This wasn’t a huge surprise to me as I’d previously carried out some very interesting mutually beneficial improvement work with Vodafone, but it’s still great to get that encouraging approach.

We listened actively and worked hard to address Vodafone’s programme requirements. When I say we, this work was delivered in the main by me and a great guy in BT called Mick Bruder. Over a 12 month period we supported Vodafone’s programme and improved the CR score to 90%. Vodafone considers a score of 90% and above to be excellent. In turn, this improvement fed into the wider programme and pushed BT into the top 15 global suppliers to Vodafone for the first time. I’d settle for excellent.

When I was subsequently asked to write the Stakeholder Engagement section of BT’s Sustainability report, I asked Vodafone if they would consider being referenced as a case study. They agreed. This delighted me, made me feel proud of the work we were doing together and really helped to cement this great working relationship.

So the next time someone asks you about the business benefits of sustainability, why not show them this story?