Ben Telfer: 

Hello everyone, and welcome to today’s ICMIF webinar, episode two in our series, “The Mutual Advantage”. Today’s case study will be from IPB Insurance in Ireland, and they will be looking at “The journey of cultural development underpinned by mutual values”. I’m pleased to introduce today’s speaker, Tom Keane from IPB Insurance in Ireland. Tom is Head of Marketing, Communications and CSE. Tom, thank you for joining us today, and over to you. 

Tom Keane: 

Thank you, Ben. Greetings from Dublin to our mutual family across the globe. I hope you find this presentation of benefit in your work, in your mutuals, wherever you may be. I suppose first, culture. It can be something of a bit of a mystery. It’s intangible, and for many of us, trying to actually identify what our culture is and to put a name on it and describe it can be difficult. So, what is the culture in our organization? This is a question we asked ourselves seven years ago. Actually, almost eight years ago, it was in 2012. We didn’t know the answer then or where to find it. We did know, however, that our culture is important, and we knew that we weren’t maybe hitting the spot. There were a few challenges. 

I suppose we decided that we would have to focus on our culture, maybe not so much on our end result and what our targets are, but actually what the experience is. How we work internally. Because culture is about experience, the experience of people, our employees, our members, and all our stakeholders. 

If you get your culture right, the rest and the results will look after themselves. So, I think it’s important before we get into the journey is that we talk about where we were. We needed to assess our situation, so we decided that we would undertake some diagnostics around our internal engagement and actually reach out across business and get feedback from all our staff. We used a, I suppose, very well-known global provider, Great Place to Work, and their methodology is based on a Trust Index, which is made up of credibility, respect and fairness. Three elements that will produce a Trust score. And secondly, measuring engagement, which is primarily measured under the headings camaraderie and pride. So, camaraderie in that peer relationship and pride in terms of the relationship you have to your job, to the company. 

Having looked at that, we conducted a survey of staff in 2014, and we found that indeed, we did have some challenges with regard to our, I suppose, employee satisfaction. And when we looked at the scores, they were below average. We could see that our trust rating was at 65%, credibility coming in at 67%, respect at 65% and fairness at 65%. However, and this is where the mutual advantage comes in, we did find that camaraderie and pride, the engagement elements were very, very strong. We had a very high response rate at 91%, which absolutely proved that engagement was there, and the scores for camaraderie and pride was just proof of that fact. 

And what that means is when you have high engagement, you will have a greater chance to address any cultural challenges that you may have or any behavioural challenges. 

That was in 2014. Let’s move to the current situation and where we are today. We are looking at a trust rating of 75%. We’re looking at huge growth across the board in all five areas. The three areas linked to trust and the two areas linked to engagement, although they were already high. So, what does that tell us? Well, if you look at the changes you can see that on average across all the key metrics, we were looking at double-digit growth over the five-year period. And most importantly, in terms of the benchmark score, we were looking at an increase of 25%, and the benchmark score is where your employees identify you are a great place to work. So, over that five-year period, we saw some very significant achievements. 

I suppose that begs the question, how do we get there? But first maybe I’d like to tell you a little bit about how we are. IPB is the only indigenous mutual insurer in Ireland. We were founded 95 years ago in 1926, and our founding purpose was to protect and safeguard the interest of our members, the public bodies of Ireland. Indeed, IPB stands for Irish Public Bodies. And our purpose is as relevant today as it was over 90 years ago, and it’s this clarity of purpose and sense of mission that we believe is unique in the marketplace for our offering. We’re a specialist insurer, but over those 94 years, we have now become the largest liability insurer in the state. 

Looking at our purpose, and I want to focus on our purpose because from a mutual perspective, purpose is absolutely vital to cultural development. It’s vital for all organizations, but when we talk about a mutual advantage, I believe mutuals have a unique advantage in its purpose. You can see that we have made a very clear commitment based on our founding purpose, which is that we commit to being our members trusted insurance partners, providing peace of mind through tailored insurance products, effective risk manage supports, member-focused solutions and equitable claims settlements. So, long-term sustainability will be assured through continued financial strength while focusing on excellence and continuously provide members with value for money. 

There’s a lot in there, but that really encapsulates what we do. So, knowing what we do and what’s driving that in our purpose, it gives us a good foundation. But I need to set a little bit of context around that journey, where we started from. The environment we found ourselves in 2012 was one which followed the financial crash, which had significant upheaval for the financial services sector. There was significant changes in governance requirements and in the makeup of the board. There was also increasing regulation in the aftermath, again, of the financial crash, but also the general move towards more consumer-focused transparency. Structural and strategic change was happening within the organization. Indeed, we acquired an outsource provider that handled the majority of the work within IPB on the operational side, and we also saw significant increase in employee numbers. And there was a lot of change happening at that time, so in that environment of change, it is easy to understand or at least it’s understandable that you would have challenges from a cultural perspective, from a workplace perspective to gel all of this and to really try and bring some collective vision for all involved. 

Looking at our culture diagnostics, we’ve got the figures, we have the qualitative feedback. So, is it the kind of culture that you desire? Is it the culture that you expected? Are there any gaps in the culture that you’ve identified and the feedback and the gaps that have been presented? Effectively, it’s important at this stage that you have an idea of the culture that you want in your organization, and that’s a collective conversation. It should, of course, be led from the top, the chief executive from the management team, but also the chairperson from the board and the board itself are absolutely critical and have to be 100% behind the development and commitment to culture. And culture is something once you commit to it, it’s a very long-term prospect. Your focus will be on culture forever more, as long as the organization exists. 

I suppose the real answer is if you’re developing your desired culture and you want to establish what that is, then the answer lies within. It’s within your organization because your people collectively as a workforce within the organization, we have the answer collectively. So, our approach must be inclusive, it must be thorough. So, it can’t be, just seem to be an exercise in engagement. It really has to be transparent, and it has to be followed through, and credibility is key here. So, that requires a lot of effort. 

Why do mutual values matter? Well, as a mutual, we clearly believe that we are different, our structure’s different. We don’t just have customers, we have members. So, when you think about culture, what is the impact of culture? Well, culture is about, I suppose, the way we do our work every day, and there’s a Japanese saying, which says, “The way we do anything is the way we do everything.” And that’s really, for me, encapsulates the idea around culture because it’s a way of working and when you have a strong culture, that’s a consistent and a very clear way of working, and it’s one that’s actually built on values. And I’m going to look at that a little bit later, but just to give you an idea, if you look at the chart, you’ll see at the organizational end of the spectrum, we have values. 

The value here I’ll give it as an example is member-focused. The mindset is putting member’s needs first and those two are intangible. You can’t touch or feel those. The next two you can see and measure because your behaviours can be seen and witnessed. They’re written, they’re verbal. So, in this case we’ve said responding to a member’s call at the weekend. It’s a behaviour that demonstrates you’re putting member’s needs first and that there is a focus on members. And the outcome, well the possible outcome of this is this is your culture and if these are the types of behaviours are demonstrated is that you will have very high customer satisfaction results. Your members will be happy, and that is fundamentally what it’s about. 

Also with culture, culture must permeate across the organization. It has to be something where the values are shared and that the culture is a collective belief, and that is absolutely essential to effective cultural development. For example, if you’re about to leave the office at the end of the day and the phone rings and you ask the question, “Do you pick it up or continue on the way out the door?” If you value your customer then you’ll answer the call. As a result, the customer receives the responsive service, and as I say, you can see that in the chart. So, the question is, what are the perceived, what the behaviours that are seen and witnessed every day on a consistent basis? 

Why is purpose so important? And I think again, this is the setting context around our cultural journey. We are a mutual. We are absolutely focused on our members. We wanted to build a cultural framework with very clear values and desired behaviours. So, from that perspective, we knew that the very meaning of our work would be critical and the value we put in our work as individuals would be important to the buy-in, to the conversation around our values and behaviours because purpose frames your cultural identity. It is the foundation upon which your values are built. When you ask, “Why do we exist? Why do we exist?” We exist to serve our members. What is the purpose of that? What is the history? And for us in IPB, we understood that we are just custodians of the mutual and we are here to protect and serve our members. So, that purpose and a sense of nobility about that, a noble purpose, something that is supporting not only our members, but their stakeholders, which is the wider Irish public. 

That gave us an excellent foundation to build upon. And what we found is that to really succeed, there were a number of factors that were critical to our cultural progress. It was essential to understand our culture. We needed that diagnostic feedback. We needed to get under the bonnet and to look at exactly what was going on. And also, we needed to feedback into that and we needed to then continuously engage in feedback and demonstrate that we were listening. Ownership at every level. In the case of our cultural program, this is sponsored at the very top by the board, led by the Chairperson, George Jones. He personally takes active interest in the whole culture program and is involved in sponsoring a number of key projects around that. 

Our CEO, on a regular basis will communicate to staff about the latest cultural issues. We’ll also talk about where the gaps are, and we’ll be open and transparent in looking to find the ways to address any gaps that do exist. It’s important also that values are the workplace beliefs that we hold dear. They’re absolutely intrinsically linked to our purpose. There’s no point talking about what we value in our personal value. It’s what we do when we’re in the workplace, and as a mutual, our structure and our focus is very different to commercial operators or commercial insurers. We have a different perspective. We are not focused on the bottom line. Yes, we have to be prudent, but the reality is we’re focused on the experience, making sure that our members are protected, and as long as we have the right culture, we know that the outcome and the performance will look after itself. 

We also believe that you cannot actually build a culture if you do not engage everybody and if you do not have consensus in terms of what it is you stand for. While not everybody will agree, everybody should be involved and every view point should be heard because the journey never ends, and it will continue to change because the norms of today won’t be the norms of tomorrow. Hot areas, really, really focused areas now like diversity and inclusion may not have been a focus of an organization 25 years ago, but it’s very much front-and-center now. So, it’s a continuous evolving journey of exploration and development and again, I cannot emphasize enough that as a mutual collaboration is essential. It is absolutely everything that mutuality stands for. Mutuality is about coming together and working together. 

In short, there’s no magic formula. It’s about nurturing your unique organizational culture because you have a culture irrespective of whether you have focused on it, invested in it or not. There’s a culture. The gathering of people, cultures will naturally evolve and develop. So, it is important to remember that the answer lies within. 

Just looking at the cultural investment from the IPB perspective, we had to think about this, and what is it that we do that is unique or different? And I suppose culture’s described as the way you do things or as we would say, “The way we do things around here.” So, to develop your desired culture, you must know and understand the culture you currently have and whether you’re happy with that because culture is powerful, and what we’ve found is that when we’ve had challenges from a strategic viewpoint that it’s the strength of our culture that has actually enabled us to succeed, even against all odds. 

As part of our continuous process to develop better ways of working, we engaged everybody in IPB, all staff on numerous occasions through various forum, for various phases of our program of exploration and discussion and debate. It was a very much collaborative process and this is how we were able to then define our values, identify them, describe them. So, we developed guiding principles around our values and mindset, and then we identified the behaviours that we believed were most important in relation to each individual value. And we identified four behaviours under each of the five values that we identified. Our culture framework’s very simple. I suppose the non-visible or latent, the purpose, the deep and lasting reason for our existence, underpinned by our mutuality. Absolutely front and centre. 

Then our values. These are really the things that we collectively hold dear, the things that really reflect who we are as an organization. And these principles that are linked to our values guide decision-making and actions, and that’s what we mean by “the way things are done around here.” The mindset is really about that shared perspective in terms of how we respond and the behaviours are then the visible expression of our values. 

This is an example of a first cut. When we got to the stage where we had our framework, we started to actually populate with the key descriptions, when we had condensed all this feedback. So, our purpose we see there was to safeguard and protect our members’ interest, so that has remained. Our values, before we finalized, these were rough descriptors of our values. So, a desire to think and act longer-term, pass things on in a better place than we found them for the next generation. Build heritage, make decisions here independently. There’s autonomy. We are custodians. So, you can see by the language, and that’s what culture does. The language will come true and will be your own language. A lot of the words that you’ll use will be very different. They’ll be unique to you and again, as I say, that’s culture is one of these that are linked to the mutual because that is your purpose. So, it’s a very key identifier and it will mark you out from the crowd. 

But as we went through this process, once we were happy with our framework, once we had the basis, we were able to evolve and develop this. So, how do we select our core values? Well, once we had the feedback and we put together, I suppose, a rough framework, we had had over 600 hours of engagement with over 100 staff, and as we went through that process and we started to get the various values coming through, we did a word map on it. And you’ll see, certain words will stand out, those words that resonated most with people. Of course, other key words like members and mutuality, honesty, integrity, and collegiate. We have colleagues in there. So, these are the kind of things, the kind of words that we’re framing and, I suppose, guiding where our values were going to come from. 

As I said, hundreds of hours, a lot of feedback. It was an arduous, very detailed and extensive exercise, but it was worth it. The reality is your staff will change over time, people will come and people will go, and that doesn’t change the collective employees at that time that identified and worked through to define our culture, our values and our behaviours. Because like any living organism, what happens like the human body, the cells will die and new cells will be born, but it means that the person that’s there is still the same personality and persona, the same individual, but we renew ourselves and it’s the same for our culture and our persona and our identity. People will come and go, but actually the long-term organizational memory will remain. And of course, the cultural aspects will evolve over time as new norms emerge. 

What were the values that we identified? Well, collaboration is at the heart of our beliefs. So, we identified five values because we believe, and we believed when we were setting this up that five was the maximum that you would have that would be memorable that we could capture. We also then identified linked behaviours to these values. As mentioned, we had four behaviours identified that we felt best described the values in terms of how they would be represented in an active way within our workplace. So, our values` were service-driven. Each value has its own guiding principle, and for service-driven it’s we anticipate, we respond, we deliver. And for passionate, which is linked to mutuality, we are proud custodians of our mutual and its heritage, and want to leave things in a better place for the future. 

The mutual message is carried throughout our values and based on our purpose. So, our culture and our values. We have our values, but ultimately, it’s nothing without our behaviours. This is the end result, this is the experience. So, we have our values, we have our guiding principles, and now we’re identified our desired behaviours, and these are desired behaviours based on our organizational environment. And to give an example, for passionate we have said, “I share what I know and I’m willing to go the extra mile to help a colleague.” A lot of the behaviours will be internally focused because it’s about your culture, your organizational culture. But the reality is if you work well together and were cohesive, then that actually will translate in a better experience for your customers and members. 

Another example we have is service-driven, “I am calm, considerate, consistent and solution-focused.” Again, it’s a behaviour, it’s something that’s demonstrated by being service-driven in the culture that we desire and I believe we have that culture. 

How does that look in the workplace? Well, you can see these signs where we have our value listed at the bottom half, passionate, with the guiding principle, and then above that in the white background, we have our desired behaviour. There’s four behaviours with each value, so there’s 20 behaviours in total, five values. And you can see, we have branded them across the floor. We have an open plan floor as well, which aids that communication and engagement, and that’s important as well. It’s not just the messaging, but it’s also the environment that we work in that contributes to that overall cultural feel. 

How do we actually embed this culture, our values, our behaviours? How do we communicate? How do we engage? How do we keep the conversation flowing? We do this through constantly running campaigns, having platforms that run on a regular basis to ensure that the conversation is always ongoing, that we’re constantly thinking about it in our communications. So, for example at the beginning of every year, we hold Culture Week. Each day reflects one of our values and we will have events throughout the day, different things that will happen, and that’s important for us. 

Looking at our Culture Week for example, we held on collaboration day, we had a team building exercise called The Big Picture. And this is where everybody came together to paint a montage that reflected our mutuality, our members and the work they do and our values embedded in that. That was a half-day session and the way it worked, each team comprised of four members of staff and they had to talk to each other, and because these small pallets were just a piece of the jigsaw, of the overall montage, communication was the critical thing here, and effective collaboration. And it was a way of actually reflecting our mutual values and, I suppose, demonstrating the importance of understanding each other, of communicating, and working together, and that proved to be very successful and great feedback. 

These are the things that we can do, and everything we do now is actually influenced and linked to our values and behaviours. So, every event internally will sit under one of the five values, so when we’re actually communicating or hosting something, it’s linked to a value and there’s an explanation as to why that is the case. So, it is that embedding all the time, it’s becoming more and more natural and intuitive, and we’re now actually benefiting from what I would call this stage of maturation where we’re becoming mature. As we’ve seen from the scores, we can see that we’re coming to a place where our workplace is in a good place, it’s solid, there’s high satisfaction levels, and there’s a general sense that we work well together, and that’s what culture is all about. 

Just giving a few more examples of how we do this. We address areas like listening. So, ideas for action where employees come up with ideas that can improve efficiency and different ways of doing things. We have working groups that feedback for different challenges that we might face in the workplace or different demands that might arise. We have cultural review that we undertake to see, “Do we have all the tools and policies and procedures?” Anything else that we may need. Recognition. We recognize good behaviour. We have quarterly ceremonies, which is called Cause for Applause, which recognizes people going above and beyond. And again, that is linked to our values, so every nomination is linked to one of our values, at least one. And then it is explained what that is that particular value. 

For work-life balance again, we think about well-being, we think about work-life balance. This is a growing area for us and we’ve had a lot of initiatives over the last couple of years, but even into 2020 in particular. And in the community, our success in our culture, delivering for our members ultimately means that when we’re successful that we can actually give back. And we have, over the last seven to eight years committed and provided $13 million in social dividends back to the Irish society for good causes and community groups. 

When we talk about culture, we talk about who we are, our DNA. We also commit to making a difference. Making a difference for our members and making a difference to wider society. So, in delivering on our culture, values are critical to that and being respectful of each other, and being respectful of our members, but also being respectful and appreciative of our success and ensuring that we understand and contribute back to society. And we have done a lot of work, there’s a lot of volunteerism amongst the colleagues across the business, and that is down to the fact that we have this culture, and people are willing to go and volunteer to assist worthy causes. At a company level, we also have a framework called our corporate social engagement framework, and this is designed to, I suppose, reflect our membership profile. 

We work and, I suppose, strategically align with community groups and initiatives that are very closely aligned to our members, and we do this in our members’ name. And again, this is very much part of this continuous cultural development of understanding who we are, what we represent, and that has worked extremely well. 

What’s next? Well, when you have a strong culture and as you develop, and as this becomes more and more embedded, and as I say, we’re now coming to a stage of maturation where that maturity, where we just naturally and intuitively begin to see what’s next. And our upcoming initiative now is the embedding and rolling, rolling out and embedding of our internal customer service charter. So, as we’ve collaborated on our values and our behaviours, as we’ve started to work on a whole range of initiatives, including giving back to wider society. The next step, what has been identified through this constant process of engagement, of feedback and the feedback loop, and we understand that we ultimately, by working better together will give a better experience for all and for each other in the way we work and also then the experience for members externally. 

We are looking at this. We have developed an internal customer service charter. We have five particular commitments, and this is underpinning our overarching commitment to drive service excellence for all, a promise to each other. So, that is again aligned to one of our values, our service-driven value. So, you can see that there is natural extensions as you develop a culture, and we can see this now. We’re already getting a lot of feedback around this, and there’s an appetite now to actually start working even closer together. We understand that the collaborative approach of effective working will mean that if we can get it right internally, our customers and members will have a much better experience and everybody wins. 

I think that raises the question, what is the culture in your organization? Do you know? And if you don’t, why don’t you? But if you do know, what are you doing about it? Is there a gap? Is it close to your desired culture? So, maybe it’s time if you haven’t started or embarked on that journey to ask yourself the question. 

For us at IPB, we feel that we have a real sense of who we are, what our culture is, our purpose, our mission, our values and behaviours, and we believe it is absolutely linked to our mutuality. And it’s this mutual advantage that we understand very clearly is about working together, and by working together that we can truly make a difference. So, I hope you have some questions and I’d be happy to answer them. Thank you for listening and I’ll hand you back to Ben. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you very much, Tom. Tom, did you want to show that video as well, just before we get to the Q&A? 

Tom Keane: 

Oh, yes indeed. Yeah, I think, Ben, in terms of context, it’s really to say that as a mutual, our DNA and our purpose, mission, values and behaviours, the way we work and our vision is that by working together that we can actually make a difference for each other, for our members, and for wider society. And because we have a strong culture and because we are experiencing success on the back of that, we are able to give back to society. And as I’ve said, we were the first company in Ireland to issue a social dividend, unlike a former financial dividend. And these monies are being invested in areas linked to our members. So, this is one of the cast studies here. It’s a short video, so hopefully you will enjoy it. 

[VIDEO]

Children come into us, they can’t walk. We help them walk. A child may come into us with a different diagnosis, such as cerebral palsy. They may present with pain. We can create an orthotic solution that will help alleviate the pain. We enable to child to fulfil, to reach their maximum, really, their potential. 

I didn’t have a lot of stability at all. I couldn’t get around places. They really make miracles happen at St. Gabriel’s. 

For us to have Joseph upright means an awful lot because it gives him great stability when he goes to stand up, so. And the support that we get here is tremendous. 

I feel like I can do anything because I love having the support behind me. And before that I just didn’t know what to do. 

The sky is the limit for Joseph. He really has a can-do attitude, which is really phenomenal. But that wouldn’t be possible unless we did have the practical support. The expertise is here and the professionalism is here, and once you have the right care, it’s like it’s the foundation of everything really. 

With more centres like St. Gabriel’s, the children will be helped, and I hope with that that there will be new found confidence. 

Being a social enterprise is really, really important to our service and it’s something that we’re very proud of. All orthotic services in Ireland are operated by commercial companies, but we’re different. And as a social enterprise, of course we have to be sustainable, but the core element of our work and our ethos is about providing the best possible care. 

Ben Telfer: 

Excellent. Thank you very much, Tom. Brilliant video to end your presentation. We do have a number of questions in. Tom, before a question, a comment that somebody made just about your presentation that it’s a brilliant example of how “culture eats strategy” for breakfast and I just wanted to share that with you. So, first question, Tom, is about when you get new employees. Do you have any sort of cultural tests that you give to new prospects to ensure that fit in terms of culture from the start? 

Tom Keane: 

Yeah, well it’s a good question. It is very relevant because the reality is, retention is critical, and I do believe that when people work for mutual there is a longer term loyalty there because they buy into what we stand for. And I think traditionally that has been the reality that we’ve attracted talent. But in terms of protecting your culture and attracting the right talent, the right mindset of individual who understands and appreciates, that is a good question. Obviously, I’m not the HR professional and my colleagues, Maria, then Conor will be best placed to answer that. But I what would say is that very clearly, we do use our mutuality as, I suppose, an important part of that and our corporate social engagement. That CSR, that social aspect as well to attract talent. 

And we demonstrate our values. So, we do use the cultural artifacts that we have to, I suppose, attract talent, and we’re not afraid to tell them the story of IPB and our journey, and where we are, and what we’re proud of. I think it’s important to be proud of the company you work for. And in IPB, that’s something you would have seen in those scores area, the pride and camaraderie. Those two elements, even when our scores were low, they were high and that really, I believe, was down to the fact that we were a mutual. So, we had a mutual advantage from day one. 

You don’t usually see that where trust levels are not that high, but yet your engagement levels are and that there’s a pride in working the company. But that’s because you have a purpose, and that purpose and that meaning that is there in your job. I think people want to have meaning in their job. So, it’s a long answer to maybe what should have been a very short answer to that question, which is yes, we use and we do promote the cultural, I suppose, advantage that we have, the mutual advantage that we have. But in terms of actually filtering people at the recruitment stage to make sure that we have the right fit, I’m not maybe so sure that we do that. But again, as I say, it’s just I’m not aware of that. As I said, that will be more of an HR element. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you, Tom. It’s still an excellent answer. Second, and we got a couple of questions that are quite similar. So, the question is how do you leverage your mutuality in your marketing and branding? And then also, do you have any successful initiatives or strategy that communicates your mutual values to the end customer or member and really creates that mutual difference? 

Tom Keane: 

Yeah, it’s a very good question and the fact is if you are a mutual and you are not utilizing the advantage that mutuality affords, you’re missing a trick because we absolutely, 100%, we love being a mutual. We talk about our members. There isn’t a sentence I utter in the workplace where the word “member” isn’t mentioned. It is absolutely ingrained. We actually in everything we do is reflective of mutuality of our members. It is a bit of a love in. We are just so committed to them. 

I spoke about our internal customer charter. So, we internally, we’re all internal customers and we’re also internal service providers, but we understand that if we can get it right internally, we can actually deliver externally. The experience for our members will be really fantastic. But we also know that let’s not communicate this to our members until we get it right. So, we didn’t issue a customer service charter. We said, “Actually, we need an internal customer service charter first and we need to make sure that we can deliver on that before we go.” 

To me, that’s the kind of the honesty of mutuality. So, it is absolutely crucial that we constantly get the message out. All the time we talk about our mutuality, about “what does that mean?” And that really is about it’s closer engagement, it’s transparency, and it’s actually doing things that they don’t see, that we know we’re doing for them, but they don’t necessarily know but we know that when the time comes, that they will stay with us. Our retention levels are extremely high, over 99%. So, the reality is … and that’s for all customers because we have some customers that aren’t members and that is down to the fact that we present ourselves as this. Even our identity with the ring and the three colours. There is a story behind our identity that is absolutely based around mutuality, the strength of the ring, that we’re all, together we’re one. 

As I say, I’d need a day to get into it. But yes, we’re marketing all the time. We have a lot of events that we link into. All of our CSR activity is in the name of our members. The video you would have seen is supporting social enterprises, that’s a partnership with all our local authority members. So, they’re front and center, they’re working with the social enterprises, there’s a mutual benefit there because in our local authority areas, our local authorities benefit from these social enterprises succeeding, delivering services on the ground and employing people. And for us, it’s that giving back. It’s the fact that, as I say, even social enterprises in that video say we’re different. We’re not like a commercial provider. 

Well, that’s the same for a mutual insurer. We’re different to the commercial insurers, to the PFC types, and we have to use that at every hand and turn because it’s who we are. So, when we engage with our members and potential customers, we will present our personality, who we are. So, that’s really it. 

Ben Telfer: 

Thank you, Tom. I think we’ve got time for one final question, although it’s probably a three-part question because I’ve put three questions together. 

Firstly, how many people do you have working at IPB and do they all work in one site? 

Tom Keane: 

We have just over 150 people all working in one site. It’s an open-plan office and that is really important because it does aid a better communication. So, we’ve grown by about 50% in the last 10 years and we’ve grown in terms of top line, when you talk about the financial side of things, but also in terms of customer numbers, in terms of the scale, employee numbers, in terms of claims number. So it’s just, it’s that growth for us as well. It’s important that you have a robust culture in place to be able to tackle that. 

But it is important, the open plan we find really, really supports that kind of culture that we want to have. And working environment does contribute significantly to that end. 

Ben Telfer: 

It’s great that you’ve mentioned that because that almost tees up the next two questions because it’s asking how important has your culture been as employees have been working remotely and separate from each other? And then the second part of the question is about how you’ve been able to promote and remind staff about their values in a digital workplace rather than everybody being together in that physical, open space office? 

Tom Keane: 

Yeah. Well, I suppose just in terms of the importance of our culture as people work remotely, the reality is you think of, I mentioned camaraderie, it’s incredible. We have great turnouts for virtual gatherings. We have had a host of various surveys. We’ve had events. There’s a lot that we’ve been doing. And the reality is that there’s just a sense of “we’re in it together.” We have great engagement. We’ve had a number of events, we’ve had our town hall delivered virtually. Great engagement, again. 

But I suppose if you were talking about well, look, it’s very hard to gauge these things in terms of how people are getting on, but we did … one of the things that was important that everybody, all of us were aware of what the expectations are, the limited expectations, the understanding that we all have different situations. So, we’ve been very focused on, I think, communicating to people as well to say, “As we work from home, our personal circumstances will be very different to each other. You may have a partner that has lost their job and there are challenges there. There may be children that need to be schooled and just an eight-hour day or seven-hour day is not going to work.” 

So, it’s for people to understand that that is okay and it is absolutely okay to have these challenges and to need that time to do the other things that are so important as well. But what we found is actually that in many cases, we’ve seen just for example in our claims department, productivity has been very strong, and we’ve seen actually increases in productivity in some areas. And that can be of course down to the fact that you probably have less distractions when you’re working from home and you’re in your own little office or whatever. But we have seen consistent solid engagement, communication, and an appetite to meet. 

I would say this that if my wife laughs at the fact that I seem to be on Teams after five o’clock on a Wednesday or Thursday and Friday catching up with colleagues across the business where we have social gatherings. Going, “Do you not see enough or deal enough with each other?” And she comments on the fact that, “It’s amazing, I don’t see that where I work and I don’t see or hear about any other organizations where colleagues want to meet up after work in a remote setting and just to have a catch-up in a social context.” 

So, I think that does suggest that we’re in a good place. I think we do, the fact is that you have to keep constantly reviewing, thinking about, “What else can we do? How are we getting on? How is everybody getting on?” And it is engagement. As I say, the answers are within. It’s within all of us, so as long as we can keep tight and talk to each other, and share, and discuss, and debate, and as I say, build consensus on the things that matter to us, our values, then we will succeed and the future will be bright. I’ve no doubt about that. 

So, I hope that answered that question. But Ben, is there anything else that- 

Ben Telfer: 

No, I think that’s excellent, Tom. And that was a great bit of advice and some learnings for people. And I think today more than anytime with this or how things are changing so quickly and we cannot predict the future, having to see looking at your culture on a continual basis is a great point to leave with the audience. 

Tom, thank you very much for an excellent presentation. It was so great to hear how mutuality influences your values and your culture, and how that’s embedded across your organization to make a difference. If anybody in the audience has any further questions or would like to follow up, please get in touch and we’ll be happy to connect you with Tom. Thanks to Tom again for an excellent presentation and question and answers. Thank you for everyone for joining, and enjoy the rest of your day.

The above text has been produced by machine transcription from the webinar recording. ICMIF has made every effort to ensure that transcriptions are as accurate as possible, however, in some cases some text may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. Listening to or watching the webinar recording will allow you to hear the full text as delivered during the webinar but this is available in English only. Our transcriptions are provided to enable members to select the language of their choosing using the dropdown menu above.