By digging deeper into the customer experience issue I came to a practical question: “who creates the customer experience?” It’s your people. People who come every day to the workplace, engaged, making an impact. Only then will the customer experience come naturally. 

So that was my aha-moment: if I want to create a culture naturally supporting excellent customer experience, I should move from “pushing people to deliver results”, to “creating an excellent workplace where people really feel kind of fulfilled”. Only then can they make a meaningful impact which counts. Culture in some instances is almost like politics or religion: if you believe that “command and control” is the way to go, then a culture of empowerment and engagement is like a fairytale for you. You can never achieve it. I always like to be very provocative: if a company believes that by establishing a culture change program, by appointing a project manager and creating a communication framework, its culture will change, it is a naive expectation that never materializes. If it’s just a program predesigned at the C-levels, it will barely work.

A new culture can’t be created from one day to another, and, more importantly, it does not push out the one your company already has. Therefore, what you need to first understand is what culture you have, what behaviours prevail and how they impact your business. Actually, the culture you have in place successfully brought you where you are today. Once you understand it, you can evaluate which elements you want to change and which ones you want to keep.

Only then you can build a strong alignment across your top leadership team. The leaders have to walk the walk. People need to feel it, believe it and buy into it. Otherwise you will always hear that “those are just slogans good only for the wall posters”. 

Leaders often underestimate the fact that employees who work in the company have created the culture and are proud of it. You should always imagine how you would feel if somebody would suddenly tell you “it’s all wrong what you have done, we need to throw it out the window now.” Every individual takes things personally. And you are about to tell them they did not contribute to the past success. People always need to understand what you want to change and why. You need their support if you want to succeed. 

There are many tools and many surveys about how you can measure culture. I think the measuring tool you opt for does not really matter. However, what is critically important is to have a fantastic debate over the results. Because when they are being discussed, people become passionate and engaged. And that’s already the beginning of the change. So, the debate does not really need to be cascaded from the top down. But when you have a debate, a discussion, you must get your people involved. 

Of course, there are many roadblocks to overcome before the new culture prevails.  In Home Credit we are still at the beginning of our journey. In the past, the big part of our culture was very much individualistic. We have always seen from the engagement surveys that people miss collaboration, that they feel many silos amongst different functions and also too little cooperation across our markets. We should have been utilizing the impact of our scaled operations, like sharing best practice and working on major cross-market projects together but we focused rather on each market individually instead. So, my first priority was to establish a collaborative culture. 

We heard from our people that sometimes the environment does not fully respect them as individuals. And I was thinking: “wow! If we are ignoring people’s traits so much, maybe we’re utilizing only a fraction of their true potential”. To unleash that was my second priority. I work with the leadership team to create an inclusive environment where people can feel that they are themselves and will be appreciated for who they truly are, for their talent. In a way, I want to create a “complementary environment” in which different people profiles complement each other and the teammates rely on each others’ strengths.  

I strongly believe that such a change of culture can grow from different corners or “hotspots” around your organization and is driven by different teams and individuals who are close to the customers, feel the necessity to adapt and want to become part of something new. In Home Credit, we created a platform that these teams and individuals can meet frequently, discuss progress and their impact. My own experience teaches me that the people who are closest to customers, the true front-liners, can play a huge role in creating a new culture.

In Home Credit we have a pretty diverse environment: diverse in terms of gender, cultures, generations… but diversity does not equal inclusion. There are a few elements that you need to reflect upon in order to build an inclusive environment. First, trust and safety. You need to create an environment where people feel that they can actually speak out. They need to feel safe to say which situations they do not enjoy and explain why. Second to trust and safety come listening skills. In my view, it is the most underestimated leadership skill. If you create an environment where listening skills are advanced, you feel that your voice counts and is respected. Then you can really contribute. Third, I would like to mention vulnerability. An inclusive environment cannot be fully achieved if people cannot show their vulnerability. And again, that’s the magic that needs to come from leaders. They need to create an environment that allows for failures: people can say “I don’t know”, or “I don’t feel well” and even “I cannot deliver”. So these are three elements the good leaders reflect upon. 

For many leaders, demonstrating vulnerability to their teams is not a common habit.  I actually think that doing it is extremely brave. I strongly believe if you are able to show emotions, empathy, your own mistakes, you demonstrate you are a human being and it’s brave. We should articulate such an approach much more because it is typically underestimated in male-driven environments. That is why I consider discussion about vulnerability, emotions, empathy as basic elements of diversity which should be raised more often in boardroom.   It is extremely important for the environment where people talk to each other and they support each other, give feedback and work together. For the environment of collaborative culture.