How We Maintain a Positive Work Culture Through Values, and Changes We Made as a Result of Lockdown
With Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds, Head of Customer Service at Southern Cross Health Society
Show Notes
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds is the Head of Customer Service at Southern Cross Health Society.
She’s been in the contact centre industry since the mid 90’s, and loves making a difference to customers and her people.
Today, she shares they how they maintain a positive work culture through values at Southern Cross, and changes they’ve made as a result of lockdown.
You'll Learn:
The 4 things Stephanie did when she first started as Head of Customer Service (02:05).
The 5 functions of a team, which formed the basis of a workshop Stephanie ran to foster trust and a positive culture (02:36).
The 2 common areas her Team Leaders realised they needed to take action in (03:23).
The 5 things Southern Cross has done to help the health and wellbeing of staff in the Covid lockdowns (04:09).
One of the aspects of Friday standups which people find really motivating (05:29).
The 5 ways they embed the organisation’s values at Southern Cross (07:26).
The 4 steps Stephanie suggests Senior Leaders can take to improve the psychological safety and engagement of their people (09:47).
Transcript
Blair Stevenson (00:00)
Welcome to the Secrets to Contact Center Success podcast, connecting you with the latest and greatest tips from the best and the brightest minds in the industry.
I am Blair Stevenson, founder of BravaTrak. Our Sales Leadership System enables contact centres to increase revenue and achieve their sales growth targets.
Today I'm joined by Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds, who's the Head of Customer Service at Southern Cross Health Society. So, Steph, welcome along. Great to have you.
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (00:27)
Kia ora, Blair. Thank you for having me.
Blair Stevenson (00:28)
You're most welcome. As a starting point, tell us a bit about yourself and your background.
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (00:35)
So my background is actually hospitality. I did hotel catering and event management. That was my study, but I did a slight deviation to that and started my corporate career in 1994 in the UK banking system, after I had my first child.
I started out in data entry and filing, and then quickly moved into a role where I was dealing with customers over the phone. And like lots of business units back then, they suddenly realised that they needed a contact centre. So therein began my contact centre career.
I started as a consultant, made my way through as a Team Leader and eventually a Team Manager of those teams. And I've stayed in that space ever since because I absolutely love it.
Blair Stevenson (01:14)
Awesome. So why do you love the contact centre environment so much?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (01:18)
I think it's that connectivity between great customer service and making a difference to people. And making a difference to people is actually my personal purpose.
I really enjoy making a difference to customers, making a difference to staff. And particularly in the contact centre space, I love watching people thrive and flourish and develop their careers. Whether it be in the contact centre or outside of the contact centre.
Blair Stevenson (01:42)
Nice. Thinking about people thriving, I know that as first-line managers, Team Leaders almost make or break contact centre culture. I think you came into the Head of Customer Service role about three years ago at Southern Cross. What did you do to understand how the Team Leaders were operating at the time?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (02:05)
Probably not anything too different to what you would normally do when you start a new role. It was just the usual getting to know them through one-on-ones, through team meetings, through coffee catch-ups. That kind of thing. Just trying to understand how they were operating as a team.
And I guess it became clear that they still had opportunities to build their own culture, and lean into some tough conversations with each other as well.
Blair Stevenson (02:28)
Right. Cool. So how did you take that situation and improve it? How did you help them move to that new space.
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (02:36)
What we did was, we actually held a workshop based on the five functions of teams. So trust, conflict, commitment, accountability, and drive for results. And what we did was we rated ourselves as a team in each of those areas, and each of the leaders had to stand up and say why they'd rated themselves as a team in that particular area.
And off the back of the workshop, we agreed some actions that would help take us forward in those areas, which really did help foster trust and their own culture. I guess for me, the biggest win was actually open and honest conversations in that session, which starts to build the trust, which is obviously that foundational layer.
Blair Stevenson (03:17)
Yeah. You talked about identify some actions to take them forward. What sort of actions did people come up with?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (03:23)
Some of the actions were actually having some performance management meetings, so that accountability for the results. So where we get together as a team, and we talk about how our team is tracking, and the actions that we've taken, and just holding each other accountable, so that was one of that.
And leaning into those conversations as well. So just some coaching around how we would have those conversations with each other, if we were feeling if maybe someone wasn't holding each other accountable.
Blair Stevenson (03:50)
Nice. We were talking about it earlier, the pandemic has created some challenging times for everyone. I'm just curious about from a leadership perspective, what are some of the changes that you made with the move from in-centre work to remote work?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (04:09)
I guess in that last long lockdown, we did a couple of things differently. We did actually move to one shift, to make it easier to look after our health and wellbeing because, of course, we had been office-based, so it was a huge move for us. And we needed people to just to be able to concentrate on their health and wellbeing.
We had way more regular wellbeing check-ins with our teams and we kept our team meetings light and funny. So not too work heavy in terms of that, so that people could really concentrate on connectivity and motivation.
We also introduced a whole of contact centre stand up on a Friday morning, where we all got together. And we've kept that going, which has been fantastic. So that was one of the biggest wins.
During this lockdown, we've been very lucky. Southern Cross has given us an additional 30 minutes for lunch. So we now get an hour for lunch and that's really to encourage us to get out and about, out of the house and get some fresh air.
And we've got some Wellness Wednesdays, so we've got seminars, different seminars happening every Wednesday throughout this lockdown. So that's just been fantastic.
Blair Stevenson (05:12)
Fantastic. And giving people a bit more time just to get out and get away from work for a period of time is a pretty smart move. You mentioned Friday standups. What are some of the things that happen in those standups?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (05:29)
It's a mixture. Some of it is business, what's happening in the business. We've had members of the exec team come along and give us business updates, so they're normally held around the business, so they've come along specifically to the contact centre for those. We've done some learning bites.
We've also had a whole series of guest speakers along from around the business, both to tell us about the projects that they're working on, but also to talk to us about their careers. Because obviously people in the contact centre, they're really interested in 'what's my next', and hearing those success stories and seeing how people progress through the business is really motivating for the team.
Blair Stevenson (06:04)
That's a really smart move, because career development is really important for most people. Southern Cross is a not-for-profit health insurer, which in my mind suggests it's a values driven company. Is that correct?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (06:24)
Yeah, absolutely we are, but we've got a really clear vision for a healthier society, and we're committed to working towards delivering on our strategy, and we do so in a way that's aligned with our values.
The values are standing strong altogether, with heart, vitality and to be the best. And they play a vital part in the way that we work together to achieve our goals, they guide our behavior, the way in which we communicate with each other, and they come to life through everything that we do both internally and externally.
Blair Stevenson (07:01)
I think that's an awesome start. And talking about the guide behaviour piece, one of the things I'm very aware of is that you can take any value - standing strong was one you mentioned - and different people can have different views about what that actually means.
So I was just interested in what you've done in terms of defining behavioural descriptions for each of those values.
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (07:26)
There's a few different things that we do to try and really embed those and make sure that people understand what we mean by those.
So when you first start at Southern Cross, you go on what we call the 'That's Us Day', where they take you through the values. So they take you through the history of the values, which were developed by the staff, and they start to really educate you in that.
We also have a values expectations toolkit, which provides both some practical steps on how to demonstrate them, and also the descriptions of the expectations that underpin those values.
Another thing that we do is within the Health Society, we can send each other e-cards, and the e-cards are aligned to those values. So you send them to people who are shining examples of that, and you say what it is, what they did, which is absolutely awesome.
And each month, the exec team get together and they choose the three best e-cards from around the business. And you become a member of the 'That's Us Club', which is just awesome.
And then at the end of the year, they have a huge celebration to celebrate everybody that got into the ‘That's Us Club', and they award a Supreme Winner and they award a High Achiever as well.
And last year, the Supreme Winner was a contact centre Team Leader, and this year, one of the High Achievers was another contact centre Team Leader. So just awesome recognition of the way that they work in alignment with our values.
Blair Stevenson (08:46)
That's really cool. What's that done for your culture?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (08:51)
I think it does a couple of things. Obviously, the part that I've just talked about is celebrating it, so we celebrate shining examples of that, which is awesome, but it also enables you to have conversations with people when maybe they're not such shining examples of that. And again, leaning into those courageous conversations starts to build that trust that you can talk to people about it, so it kind of gives you that guide.
Blair Stevenson (09:13)
Nice. So it means you can hold people accountable both positively, but also where people are off-track. You've talked about health and wellbeing a lot here in terms of culture. And one of the key buzz phrases these days is around psychological safety.
What do you regard as the most important actions that senior leaders need to be taking to improve psychological safety and the engagement of their people?
Stephanie Riordan-Edmonds (09:47)
I think there's probably a couple of things. The first thing is, it starts with you as a leader. So you do need to be human. You need to show that it's okay to talk about emotions by sharing yours.
You can admit to your own mistakes and failures, obviously reframing them as learnings. And asking for feedback and reaching out for help or guidance. It's okay to need help.
I guess the environment piece is also interesting. As a leader, be available for quick chats, when people just need some guidance. You can recognise others when they're being candid or they're giving feedback. Call it out.
I think the other piece is getting to know your people outside of work as well, really understanding how they operate. What's important to them. What's motivating them.
And probably that most important one is reframing failure. It's an inevitable speed bump on the road towards success. So it's an opportunity to talk about it, talk about what you've learned about, and obviously not blaming people as well. You're looking to support and fix in that space.
So those would be a couple of my call-outs.
Blair Stevenson (10:56)
Wonderful. Steph, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Well, that's it from us today. First listeners, you'll find a link to the show notes in the episode description below.
And if you'd like to connect with Steph on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-riordan-edmonds-956b0361/), you'll also find the link to her LinkedIn profile in the description too.
Also, if you'd like to follow me on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevensonblair/), you'll find links to my profile there as well.
Well that's it from us today. Have a productive week.