A Hay Group case study

© 2010 Hay Group. All rights reserved.

Having undergone a significant period of change NAB recently set out in a new strategic direction. Underpinning this was a determination to differentiate through organisational culture for the benefit of their people, customers and communities. To support this, and in partnership with Hay Group, NAB focussed on understanding how best to leverage employee engagement and culture in order to drive business success.

Partnering with NAB on their new engagement and culture journey NAB is a global financial services organisation of 40,000 people and more than 450,000 shareholders. Their global operation covers Australia, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, the United States and Asia. As well as the NAB brand it is also well known for operating units such as BNZ, MLC and Yorkshire Bank within the global portfolio.

In 2009 NAB announced an updated strategic direction in light of changing economic conditions. This strategy aimed to ensure that the organisation continued to sustain its strong position for the long-term, building on the success of turning around the business over the past few years.

NAB's revised strategy had four main imperatives, one of which was the ability to differentiate through culture and reputation for the benefit of its people, customers and communities.

NAB understands that it is their people who are the key to their success. That is why NAB is focused on building a great place to work, where its people can fulfil their own personal aspirations, while fulfilling the aspirations of their customers.

Integrating engagement and culture measurement As part of this renewed focus on people and culture, NAB set out to review the way it measured and acted on culture and employee engagement across the enterprise. The aim was to focus on enabling enterprise wide engagement and culture strategy development and planning, with localised interventions and execution.

This new measurement approach was to help NAB to achieve and embed its new set of core Enterprise Behaviours, which were designed to inspire the appropriate standards throughout the business and help create a high performance culture.

NAB invited a number of consultancy and research firms including Towers Watson, Gallup and Hewitt to bid to work in partnership to support this journey. Hay Group won in a unanimous decision. The feedback was that Hay Group offered a bespoke solution which showed a fresh approach and was reflective of NAB’s desired culture.

Employee engagement as a driver for success National Australia Bank

“The tools, processes and project management which we used in partnership with Hay Group have truly set us on the road to success”

Dorothy Hisgrove, General Manager People Engagement, Human Capital Strategy, NAB

A Hay Group case study | Employee engagement as a driver for success | National Australia Bank

© 2010 Hay Group. All rights reserved.

Key performance indicators Hay Group was pleased to be able to demonstrate superior levels of performance in each of these categories, laid down by the NAB procurement team:

Consistent measurement approach across the NAB Group

Cost-effective solution with measurable return on investment

Fast and efficient service delivery, including survey design, administration and reporting

Increased employee engagement and improved high performance culture across the NAB group

Appropriate levels of local resource support through each phase of the measurement program

These elements drew on Hay Group’s significant global experience of projects of this size and scope. Most importantly, both Hay Group and NAB felt the proposed project teams had demonstrated real synergy throughout the procurement process and both parties were excited about the opportunity of working together in a real and meaningful partnership.

Creating an actionable survey directly aligned to organisational success

A true partnership To ensure the best possible result from the bespoke survey, Hay Group partnered with a NAB Working Committee to bring as much knowledge to the table as possible and to spearhead their approach. The survey needed to encapsulate both the cultural and employee engagement issues. Together, the NAB and Hay Group team developed a core questionnaire, with different NAB business units adding their own area specific questions.

Integrating engagement and culture measures NAB had previously used separate engagement and culture measurements with other providers. After discussion it became clear that culture needed to be measured in a way that dovetailed with NAB’s strategic goals via the already defined Enterprise Behaviours. This would enable NAB to understand the levels of demonstrable and impactful behaviour uniquely tied to their own strategic aspirations rather than trying to achieve results via a generic model of culture.

“After initial consultation, we knew an off-the-shelf culture measure just wouldn’t cut it for NAB. We designed the survey specifically to unpack NAB’s Enterprise Behaviours in on order to help the organisation drive a values based leadership program. We also focused on measuring ‘enablement’ to supplement the engagement portion of the survey, helping people and teams work more effectively together,” comments Sam Dawson, Head of Insight Pacific at Hay Group.

Global survey roll-out The next step was to roll the survey out to all 40,000 NAB employees globally. This was a significant task which entailed Hay Group extracting data from NAB’s HR system and cleaning the data with the help of the Working Committee and embedded HR professionals across the business.

“Establishing a representative organisational hierarchy was particularly important in enabling us to provide individual reports for the 3,000 managers across the business. Establishing a workable database for a project of this size is a large and often complex piece of work. Interestingly, the survey was offered online to all participants, with the exception of the UK. Here, to navigate around internet availability issues for branch-based staff we developed an automated telephone

“We knew an off-the-shelf culture measure just wouldn’t cut it for NAB. We designed their survey specifically to drive values based leadership”

Sam Dawson, Head of Insight Pacific, Hay Group

A Hay Group case study | Employee engagement as a driver for success | National Australia Bank

© 2010 Hay Group. All rights reserved.

survey. This was made available to approximately 4,500 people which met local market needs and we were all very pleased with flexibility this approach gave us” says Sam Dawson.

“We successfully hit all the critical project stages” says Dorothy Hisgrove from NAB. “Together with Hay Group we turned around the project in an impressively short time-frame of approximately four months with a first cut of data being presented within two weeks of the survey closing.”

Results to truly drive improvement action Hay Group processed the data and provided NAB with a multi-layered reporting strategy aligned to the unique needs of each internal user group. Initially, Hay Group walked through the results with the Chief Executive and then a presentation was made to the Executive Management team.

Within a short timeframe, presentations were made to each of the 15 Business Units to enable them to understand their own results in the context of the overall Enterprise.

“We then provided interactive results to each NAB manager. All 3,000 received a unique interactive Excel results tool which enabled them to conduct their own data cuts, plus they could click on a button and output a tailored Power Point presentation to take directly to their teams,” remarks Sam Dawson.

Moving from Insight to Action Also embedded as part of the process was an online action planning tool ‘Insight to Action’. This tool not only enabled managers to logon and network with others around their specific improvement actions. The tool also contained an action planning resource library, designed specifically for the NAB managers, to help set them on the road to success in terms of impactful improvement action.

True organisational impact The results of this engagement and culture initiative have helped NAB to embed their newly formed Enterprise Behaviours across the business.

The results have also given a unique perspective into the levels of both engagement and enablement within the business. This has given managers the direction needed to understand how to best support their teams to optimise levels of engagement and performance.

The program has assisted NAB in planning their cultural strategies, as developed by each of their different business units and allowed NAB to measure the relative success of their HR touch-points across the business.

It has also enabled people leaders at local levels to be truly empowered with the information they need to work towards culturally embedding the new Enterprise Behaviours.

“Every organisation sets out to deliver true organisational impact from their engagement and culture survey program” says Sam Dawson. “In partnering with NAB, we are proud to be part of this important initiative and it’s great to see the survey is having an immediate real world impact”.

“The impact of an exercise such as this can be a significant catalyst for change” remarks Dorothy Hisgrove. “We are now firmly in the process of embedding the results and actions throughout the business. The tools, processes and project management which we used in partnership with Hay Group have truly set us on the road to success as an internal team and as a business”

“Together with Hay Group we turned around the project in an impressively short time-frame of approximately four months with a first cut of data being presented within two weeks of the survey closing.”

Dorothy Hisgrove, General Manager People Engagement, Human Capital Strategy, NAB