How Mortgage Advice Bureau built their MABnificent Culture

Client 

Mortgage Advice Bureau (MAB) is one of the UK’s leading mortgage advice brands, with around 200 appointed representative businesses that house more than 1500 mortgage advisers.

Each year they help over 100,000 customers buy their first home, dream home or save money for their current home. They believe everyone should have a home and in doing so, make a very complicated process easier, but they also want to grow and widen their offering to bring the MAB-magic to even more key moments in life.

Objectives

They were already undertaking a ‘transformational change project’ driven by technology, to simplify and improve their customer and adviser journey but they wanted to ensure their internal culture connected all these things together and supported achievement of their strategic ambitions. They also wanted to become an even more MAB-nificent company to work for.

We were briefed to:

• Perform a “stress test” on their current draft Mission, Vision and Values and refine it appropriately
• Design a Launch Campaign for the future culture, increase engagement, and activate a positive change to grow the business
• Make sure it is embedded throughout the organisation, including into recruitment, onboarding, retention, performance management and engagement
• To do it all during a Global Pandemic. No easy feat!

Approach

Consultancy methodology remotely via zoom, email, and phone. Claire Smith, MABs Director of People and Culture, took control of the entire project making it easy for us to do our job.

A Culture Design Group was created, comprising a mix of MAB’s Senior Leadership members, managers, and staff to fully understand all the issues faced within the business and to be the group who were able to elicit the essence of both the culture today and the culture required for the future. We needed the culture definition and story to be authentic, connecting MABs past, present, and future, to develop a strategic narrative. ‘MABology’ was born.

Deliverables:

Design stage

• A new Mission, Vision and DNA was designed through facilitated exercises with the Design Group – the result of which was MABology
• A strategic narrative created, that the CEO/Founder, leaders, managers, and staff could all connect with about the MAB organisational change journey
• MABology Design & Iconography – We briefed the inhouse creative team at MAB to create a more cohesive brand
• MABology Launch Plan and 12-month engagement plan based on our 4E’s of Human Change principle – Educate, Engage, Empower and Enable and to develop the values into a set of behaviours
• MABology Online Launch Day Live Event – kickstarting the day with a MABology wellbeing booster, presentations to describe what MABology is, along with ‘surprise’ MABology kits sent in the post inviting staff to the event, to be opened on the day outlining the agenda, accompanied by their favourite snacks and beverages to engage and excite them
• MABology film – A feel good short film bringing their employees work experiences to life and to show just how far MAB has come
• MABology Manifesto – A Culture Bible that maps their story, mission, vision, and DNA. It serves as a go to place to understand what MABology is and how to live and breathe it

Embed stage

Once MABology launched we needed to make sure it was truly embedded into the MAB DNA. We did this by:

• Developing an implementation road map
• Post launch engagement activities to get them in a routine and rhythm for ongoing success including Friday Joy, MABfest and MABplause
• Creating facilitator guides so managers could run MABology workshops with their teams to help individuals and teams understand what MABology meant to them and how they needed to change their ways of working.
• Providing mentoring support to key MAB people to keep momentum and overcome any challenges
• Establishing key cultural metrics so they can track the change

Results

• Over 200 employees attended the MABology Launch event
• Over 400 MABplauses since launch
• 78% of people joining Friday Joy – a 15-minute virtual business update every fortnight
• 6 MABstars celebrated at first new-look quarterly people event (MABFest)
• 94% of people feel they fully understand the Mission, Vision and DNA
• Staff are 2.5X more likely to recommend someone to work at MAB 
• Staff believe communication has improved by 83%

And that’s not all …

• Mortgage Advice Bureau took ‘Highly Commended’ for the Business Culture Leadership Award with their Head of People and Culture, Claire Smith
• They won Best Medium Organisation for Business Culture, and they were crowned Best Overall, out of all 26 categories
• Culture Consultancy won Business Consultancy of the Year 2022.

Now, isn’t that MAB-nificent!