Duke Daehling, Director, Talent Management, Analytics, and Strategy 

David Littlechild, Group Head of Culture & Engagement at Lloyds

IBM’s partnership with Lloyds Banking Group has allowed me to observe the UK firm’s innovative approach to measuring and understanding employee engagement. I’ve been continually impressed by their commitment to building and nurturing the best team as a means of creating exceptional experiences for their customers. At the 2016 IBM HR Summit in London this past June I caught up with David Littlechild, Group Head of Culture & Engagement at Lloyds, and asked him a few questions about their efforts around measuring and increasing employee engagement and assessing progress towards group goals.

Duke Daehling (DD): Speaking at a high level, what is your mission in terms of employee engagement?

David Littlechild (DL): For us, it is about creating a customer-centric mindset. Our purpose as the UK’s largest retail and commercial bank is to help Britain prosper, and we deliver on that through our vision to be the best bank for customers. All of our employee engagement efforts are designed with that in mind. We work very hard to ensure we provide leaders and line managers with the right skills and knowledge to help support high quality team conversations in the workplace and drive effective action planning activities across the Group.

DD: And how do you know if you’re meeting those objectives?

DL: There are many ways in which we understand the progress we are making and one of the most important measures is via the Group survey which we run annually. We have two types of survey: one to measure culture and another for engagement. Our culture survey is about measuring the extent to which an individual is connected to the organization. Engagement is of course measuring job satisfaction and learning what drives people’s performance, as well as getting to know our colleagues better as individuals, the same way we do with our customers. And we want that survey to give us insights and comparisons of engagement levels not only across the organization but across the industry. The important thing for all of our surveys though is that they are not HR tools. They are aligned to our company’s overall strategic objectives.

DD:  You are looking at ways to make action planning more impactful to the business. What are some of the things you are looking at?

DL: Broadly speaking, we are using behavioural science to inform the way we conduct employee surveys. This approach enables our leaders and line managers to focus on areas that continue to drive engagement and performance in the workplace. The construct of the survey is designed to support our strategic objective and the science allows us to identify priority items which will enable a leader / line manager to focus on items that will have the biggest influence on individual and organisational performance.

We are privileged to have Lloyds Banking Group present at IBM HR Summit Boston, September 6-8.  Join us to hear more about Lloyds Banking Group’s employee engagement journey as well as stories from other great customers, thought leaders and industry executives.

Click here for the full agenda.

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