Industry:  Financial Services  >  Credit Card Division of First National Bank

• The credit card division of First National Bank
• 300 employees attended the program over a six month period

• Most employees had been with the bank for 15 years and the challenge was that most employees had a 'victim mentality', constantly blaming management and highly resistant to taking responsibility themselves. Employees came to work to simply 'do their jobs', without giving a second thought to how what they do contributes to the success of the organization.
• Management, on the other hand, were constantly frustrated at the work behaviors consistent with non-ownership employee mentalities - for example where staff took a long time to get back to customers, provided customers with the wrong information, or simply 'dropped' difficult calls on the call center, were rude to customers, intentionally working lots of overtime and not nearly adding the value they should, low levels of motivation - and so on.
• Human Resource repeatedly had requests for Customer Service, Telephone etiquette and Product knowledge training programs. In spite of these programs being run on a regular basis, they had very little sustained effect on the behavior of the participants. The focus was then moved to Supervisory development - with better results - but once again not as lasting as was hoped for. The decision was made to see whether business understanding would achieve the desired sustained results. Team Business was selected to answer this question.

• Team Business set out to prove that if employees understood the business implications of their actions - for the company and themselves - they would behave in a business like way, would automatically treat the customers with respect, under-promise and over-deliver, actively search for better ways of doing things to speed up processes and improve quality. They would be aware of the negative impact of unproductive costs and make a concerted effort to manage costs without compromising value to their customers.

First National Bank personnel were trained as facilitators to implement Team Business.

• Managers and staff attended the program together, vastly improving shared business language, concepts, communication and relationships. The intervention was completed over a short space of time to maximize impact.
• Staff moved from an employee mentality to an 'internal value-adding business agent' orientation.
• They understood where they and their functions fitted into the bigger picture and how their function had an impact on other functions down the value chain.
• They wanted to and could contribute to the success of the business unit.
• They got involved in a continuous improvement process and took ownership of it.
• They increased their productivity and reduced overtime costs.
• They understood the business implications of their actions.
• Silos were broken down. People at lower levels initiated communication across functions to ensure internal efficiency and therefore better service to external customers.