The CX Files Podcast Blog 4: Gill Marchbank’s Top Three Tips to Foster World-Class Employee Culture

Mark: ‘Clearly you have built a very positive culture for the employees and the management there, clearly that culture only works and can only be defined if you are leading from the front and you are demonstrating, this is how the business is going to operate, so, if you were talking to an audience, you know, other executives within contact centres in the BPO industry, what would you say are the two or three tips that help you to demonstrate that this culture is real and it’s not just something for you know, your annual report?’

Gill: ‘For me, it’s all about trust! We have a saying here, ‘If we can’t trust, you can’t work here’ and that’s what we have built the basis of our business on. Tell the truth, do what you say you are going to do all of the time at all levels, it doesn’t matter if you are an agent or the CEO, people must be able to trust you. If somebody makes a mistake and doesn’t follow that culture properly or does something that you wouldn’t want them to do then you must fix it, don’t sweep it under the carpet. That is probably the biggest piece of advice I would give to anybody because if people can trust me and they can trust my team, they will ask for help when they need it and that has become the self-fulfilling part of the culture.

Secondly, I’d say collaboration and empowerment, having empowered employees is the single biggest step forward to success and certainly, I can prove that over the last couple of years. So, I would say to people, don’t be scared to share the numbers good or bad, share the future and the plan and get buy-in from everybody and then build it together. Share the success and ask for ideas, because if you do that, everybody is accountable for the delivery of it and everyone is buying into it, and that can be right down at agent level. We had our staff Christmas party last Friday night, and I thought to myself, shall I share the numbers, will they understand what I’m trying to say – and I didn’t even get to finish reading out some of the numbers from the year before people started cheering because they do understand, and they want to be part of it. I think that sometimes in bigger businesses than ours, people don’t share the numbers, don’t share the results and obviously, we’ve done that this year. We launched our ‘All Hands’ as well, which is the collaborative vision for next year and that means everybody knows what our targets are.

Lastly, this is an obvious one, which everybody will know, but that is recognition. Recognising individual success loudly! Our People’s Choice Awards on Friday Night were unbelievable, with people collecting their prize, there was tears and laughter, standing ovations and things that I just couldn’t have imagined I would see, and of course we missed our party last year. But it’s not just that, it’s having a breakfast with the boss, shaking someone’s hand, and saying well done, saying thank you, and it’s the little things that I really think make a huge difference when you are leading a business to success. I’ll go and shake anyone’s hand now I’m allowed!’