From manual handling to focus on development
Created in 2000 through the merger of banks in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, Nordea is a melting pot of Nordic culture. Nordea’s famous slogan ‘Making it possible’ is about pursuing your desires and dreams. This applies not only to its customers, but also very much internally, which is why the annual employee surveys are given considerable attention.
No employee in the group should see his or her age, sex, nationality etc. as a limitation, but should, on the contrary, know that development opportunities exist for everyone.
Every year, Nordea conducts a group-wide employee satisfaction survey. The results of the survey form the basis for an open dialogue on how to improve employee satisfaction and motivation. The results also show which areas act as drivers for satisfaction and motivation among employees in the different Nordea departments and branches across the Nordic countries.
“When it comes to employees, the declared goal of the management is for the bank to be an attractive workplace for coming generations. At the same time, we want to maintain the right mixture of young talent and experienced employees in the organisation, so that existing employees also feel that they have an attractive workplace,” says Niels Dehlendorff, Senior Project Manager in Nordea, and the person responsible for the annual survey.
“To fulfil this goal, we have singled out three focus areas in Nordea, which will all be included in the annual employee survey.”
“First, we must attract and develop result-oriented employees. It is equally important that we constantly develop the competences of our managers, and, last but not least, we must ensure that our employees are satisfied and motivated.”
Already before the merger, the four banks that merged into Nordea in 2000 were conducting their own employee surveys and therefore soon agreed that this activity should continue. The merger did, however, make this a major practical challenge. So as the Excel spreadsheets became bigger and bigger, and the amount of paper used gradually became overwhelming, Nordea started considering how to develop a more streamlined method for conducting the annual surveys. Nordea drew up a number of very specific requirements for both survey method and content and then chose Ennova for the task following a call for tenders.
“Nowadays, there is much talk about user-driven innovation and its positive effects. We see our collaboration with Nordea as a really good example of this type of innovation. Nordea has provided us with a challenge, and we have challenged ourselves to constantly get better and better,” says Thomas Vestergaard, one of Ennova’s six partners, who has overseen Ennova’s collaboration with Nordea since 2001.
Niels Dehlendorff takes over. “When we started working together back in 2001, we took a fresh look at everything. How should we integrate questions from every single corner of the new bank? How should we handle the question of who was to receive which reports? And how should we ensure that the results were delivered quickly and efficiently to the bank’s several thousand managers?”
“During the first couple of years, we focused on handling these practical challenges together with Ennova. We managed to create a highly structured process that was supported by a number of tools and which also today forms the basis for implementing the surveys in practice. Since then, we have regularly adjusted our processes while also investing considerable energy into developing the content of the survey even further.”
“The 2006 survey resulted in more than 5,000 reports with very different recommendations. Moreover, it has been a requirement from Nordea that Ennova is able to identify these result differences which obviously do exist in such a large organisation. The analytical methods behind the survey have therefore been refined significantly since our collaboration started,” says Niels Dehlendorff.
“Over the past few years, we have incorporated our most recent survey method, which divides employees into groups according to their individual preferences. This means that we can very precisely pinpoint the drivers behind each individual employee’s commitment and loyalty in each department,” says Thomas Vestergaard.
In a bank with several thousand managers who all have to present the annual results for their respective departments, it is easy to imagine how long it takes to prepare these presentations. For each report, a presentation is therefore generated which the managers can use at the meeting.
“This saves many hours of work for managers and is an excellent example of how we have tried to think ‘lean’ into our setup from the very beginning,” says Niels Dehlendorff.
“Once the results have been presented, each department agrees on the conclusions, and targets and action plans are set up for the coming year. The local improvement work is essential for us and ensures that we constantly work towards the goals set up. During this phase, Nordea is assisted by an Internet-based tool from Ennova called ‘Action Plan’ – yet another time-saving solution for each manager.”
“All in all, we are now able to focus more on supporting managers in their development work instead of spending time on practical challenges. The HR organisation can spend its time on helping managers with this work instead of struggling with spreadsheets and mountains of paper...” Niels Dehlendorff concludes.