Are Building Society colleagues doing high-value tasks that drive success of the organisation?

"I want employees to have more time to provide good outcomes to the customer rather than doing lots of manual work. I want the customer experience and the employee experience to be as frictionless as possible." - Phillippa Cardno, CEO of Newbury Building Society

Are employees doing any of the following?

• Manually rekeying information between systems
• Manually triggering processes
• Manual payment processing
• Printing and posting documentation or
• communications
• Manually pulling together case files for underwriters
• Dealing with manual workarounds

What should they be doing?

• Value add underwriting
• Personalised customer service
• Providing proactive support and service
• Designing new innovative offerings, products and
• value propositions
• Cross-selling
• Continuous improvement

"We are a great place to work, but our goal is to be an amazing place to work. Currently some jobs are difficult because they are so manual, people have often fed back that they don’t have the systems to allow them to be excellent. We want to have great people who are empowered by efficient processes, and best in-class technology." - Iain Lister, IT Executive at Mansfield Building Society

Do colleagues have the tools and techniques to be effective in their roles?

• Multiskilled workforce: Promote cross-training to continually develop your teams and reduce reliance on specific individuals for essential tasks.

• Understand the customer: Deploy a modern CRM system that creates a single view of the customer to enable better customer relationship management.

• Track customer cases: Invest in a comprehensive and end-to-end workflow system to centralise document management and create a unified view of the customer.

• Enable flexibility: Invest in infrastructure that allows your teams to operate effectively whether in the office or at home – reduce the reliance on paper and wet signatures in your processes.

• Identify dependencies: Review your organisation to spot individuals with critical knowledge or skills, and ensure that knowledge is spread across the team.

"Taking the friction out for colleagues is important, a focus on wellbeing as much as efficiency, in seeking to optimise what we do, removing the manual workarounds and data rekey to multiple platforms that will significantly ease colleagues’ frustrations." - Rob Pheasey, CEO of Marsden Building Society

Are colleagues being brought on the change journey, so they become champions of the new technologies, processes and ways of working?

A transformation will impact every single person working at the Society, so taking the time to manage the people impact of change will be crucial.

"It is crucial that colleagues get onboard with change and are part of the transformational change journey for the Society, rather than trying to resist it." - Chris Hunter, Deputy CEO of Darlington Building Society

• Give colleagues a voice: They have the expertise on the ground so involve them in the end-to-end process. Show them how their day-to-day roles will be improved.

• Effective communication: Timely, clear and transparent communication is a simple but effective way to bring everyone on the journey. It’s not possible to over communicate where change is concerned.

• Simple and intuitive training: This will help users become multiskilled and confident using new technologies, embedding a culture of change and continuous improvement.

• Change management: Adopt a structured change management approach that includes clear objectives, stakeholder engagement, and a phased implementation plan.

"Cultural transformation, driven from the top down, is key to a successful modernisation. By taking the lead in shaping the culture and setting the scene, you ensure that the culture of modernisation permeates throughout the organisation, allowing progress to be made." - Paul Tilley, CEO of Earl Shilton Building Society

Modernisation will empower colleagues with the processes, tools, and technology needed to focus on high value impactful work, enabling the delivery of exceptional value and customer service.