Client
Zurich Financial Services
Bridging business objectives with user-centred digital communications.
Ever since flying the nest from Zurich in 2002, Robert Woolf and Sea Communications have maintained a great relationship with Zurich. In that time, Sea has helped to shape ecommerce platforms driving 1m quotes a month and redeveloped the now long forgotten but hugely popular Zurich Rugby Club. We've supported projects spanning the life and general business, online banking and customer service. Bigger agencies have come and gone. Yet Sea remains as a small team that is deeply committed to improving the productivity of employees within the business and Zurich as a whole.
Employee engagement
Our favourite project for Zurich is this one - an employee engagement programme spanning 660 UK Underwriters. The business had observed several symptoms of ‘change fatigue', whereby staff perceived themselves as too busy for change. Top-down directives didn't work. Cracking the whip didn't work. Even payrises didn't work long term. Nothing seemed to work because staff felt as though they were being asked to change too much, too often. The benefit of change wasn't obvious and so we were asked to deliver a communications piece that would communicate the benefits to the business.
Perhaps our first service design project (before we understood what it was called), we first sought to discover the motivations of Zurich's staff - what would benefit them? We quickly learnt that change couldn't be achieved through communications alone but through radical behavioural change. Staff needn't to participate in change not be the victims of it.
New ways for staff to access opportunities
With our help, Zurich piloted a targeted incentive scheme offering new ways for staff to access opportunities. All staff quickly realized that through voluntary participation, they could become personally involved in the success of a strategy, change or improvement. 72% of underwriters took up that offer and 29% volunteered for new outcomes.
This project not only inspired individuals to come forward, it enabled Zurich to identify and nurture the top 20% of ‘emotionally committed' underwriters in their UK operations. Our groundbreaking employment engagement strategy helped to boost business productivity by recognizing the hidden talent of their staff.
The project was endorsed at global board level and Zurich is now pioneering new services in the engagement of staff, spanning 60,000 employees.
Service design for business
This project is a really good example of service design for big businesses. We harnessed the perspectives of our target group and they eventually became involved in designing their own solutions to change management and business improvement. Indeed, there are many worldwide examples in the private sector, including financial services, where service design has achieved radical improvements to performance, productivity and understanding.
With our industry experience and service design skillsets, Sea Communications are really well placed to help businesses like Zurich innovate.
