insurethebox - Hive Customer Story
Navigating employees through organisational change while driving innovation
500 - 1,000 Employees
Financial Services
Hailed as the UK’s leading telematics car insurer, insurethebox has undoubtedly disrupted the world of car insurance.
To explore how an ambitious business geared their people strategy to navigate growth and inspire innovation, Hive spoke to the organisation’s Group Head of People and Culture, Andy Preacher.
insurethebox launched into a busy car insurance marketplace in 2010, offering an attractive alternative to traditional motor insurance.
Celebrating initial success – and with a desire to expand into new markets and forge new partnerships – the company’s acquisition in 2015 by Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Europe (ANDIE) provided the perfect opportunity for further growth.
And as people, processes and systems came together – the organisation wanted to better understand, engage and inspire their employees with help from Hive.
Gathering employee feedback at a fast pace
insurethebox recognised that for employees to deliver on company strengths – creativity, innovation and outstanding customer service – they needed to be happy and healthy at work; with their voices being heard and their talents being nurtured.
To help address employee needs with a fresh approach to engagement, new HR visionary Andy Preacher was put in place as the organisation’s Group Head of People and Culture in July 2016 – his sights firmly set on improving employee sentiment and enhancing employee experience post-acquisition.
As a first port of call, Andy wanted to understand current employee perceptions and engagement levels across departments. He needed an employee survey tool to help his team collect and action employee feedback at a “much faster pace” than traditional methods, eventually choosing Hive for its speedy survey implementation and flexibility around frequency.
“Having worked in a lot of large organisations that use the very traditional annual or biannual survey, it just doesn’t work anymore. In a modern business you need that constant stream of data that comes directly from the floor – exactly the same way as you deal with your customers on a day-to-day basis, you can’t change and improve things if you’re only testing it once a year.”
Benchmarking engagement from the outset
To gently embed Hive into the organisation, Andy’s internal Hive Project Team implemented an employee engagement baseline exercise – working with Hive Customer Success managers to set a question strategy that involved sending employees eight questions per week throughout the month of December 2016.
(“Baseline” or benchmark surveying allows organisations to accurately report on employee engagement levels; employee feedback to recurring question themes can be compared over time, supplying those all-important engagement statistics that every stakeholder wants at their fingertips.)
This initial baseline exercise elicited a huge outpouring of feedback from employees, providing a significant amount of data in a more manageable fashion to annual surveying and giving Andy the insight he needed to form a people strategy and action roadmap for the next two years.
“The Hive platform is easy to use, really intuitive, you can pick it up when you’re out of the office, you can access it on your desktop. The dashboard that is provided for managers is something I’ve never seen anywhere else before; you’ve got the information you need there, real-time, upfront and you can action it straight away.”
Translating insights into action
Throughout 2017 and 2018, huge changes were implemented by insurethebox in direct response to the feedback collected via Hive, all of which were communicated to employees via an internal communications campaign.
“We started to see a stream of data, comments, thoughts and suggestions through from staff immediately. This really helped us to build our wider people plan, which has already seen us introduce a number of fantastic initiatives for our collegues who work here.”
In response to feedback surrounding Learning and Development; the company vastly enhanced their careers offering, introducing an Emerging Leaders Program and an entirely new Organisational Development team, who designed a more accessible and structured approach to learning.
“Lunch and Learn” sessions were introduced as one of many new internal comms initiatives – bringing employees together over lunch to hear from fellow team members on industry and company related topics, such as GDPR and new corporate benefits.
Employee feedback around internal comms inspired a new Employee Forum, a platform for newly appointed Employee Engagement Representatives to collate feedback from their colleagues, meeting with the Executive team every eight weeks to discuss issues and changes
insurethebox’s benefits offering was “completely overhauled” in line with Hive feedback. For example, the company now offer interest-free season ticket loans for travel and provide “an infinitely better maternity, paternity and adoption package than existed previously”, including a baby bonus of £200 for any new parent as gift, plus company-funded driving lessons.
The new benefits restructure also promoted great health and wellness, with employees gaining access to 24\7 health care via a Virtual GP app and Health Cash Plans that offer money-back on everyday health expenses – from chiropractors to dental services.
Mental health awareness played a prominent role in the new benefits offering and engagement initiatives. The whole organisation marked two Mental Health Awareness weeks in May 2017 and May 2018 by running personal stress resilience sessions and self-defense classes, offering free massages and training 13 now certified Mental Health First Aiders.
insurethebox additionally introduced an Employee Assistance Program, offering individual employees eight face-to-face sessions with qualified counselors as part of their ongoing effort to support sound mental health.
insurethebox is the perfect example of an organisation centering their people strategy around the real needs of their employees, expertly using Hive to navigate and influence organisational change.
Team Hive would like to give a huge thanks to Andy for sharing his Hive customer story.
insurethebox careers https://www.insurethebox.com/careers/
