How housebuilder Lovell built their unique culture
Culture change to support growth
86%
Would recommend Lovell as a place to work
43%
Reduction in Accident Frequency Rate
‘Great’
Trustpilot rating – up from ‘bad’ 18 months before
The client
Lovell
Lovell is a leading partnership housing business providing innovative residential construction and regeneration developments across England, Scotland, and Wales. Built on a pioneering spirit, they have embarked on an exciting journey of transformation and growth.
Objectives
To build an empathetic, customer centric and high-performance culture to deliver an outstanding experience for customers, their people, partners, communities, and other stakeholders, whilst also fuelling business results and sustained achievement of 5 Star Builder status. They wanted to:
- Reimagine the culture, building on the best bits and prioritising new behaviours for growth – they would go on to grow from 8 to 12 regions and increase headcount by 22% over this period.
- Create reimagined ‘experience’ where colleagues, managers and leaders all know how they contribute to the success, ensuring their views are heard, considered, and debated.
- Nurture and develop new capabilities, mindsets, and behaviours (i.e., devolved decision making, ownership, collaboration across regions) to support the scale of change.
- Build a healthy, inclusive, high-performance culture where people own their development and contribute their best.
Our approach
We applied our award-winning 3-stage culture change methodology as a foundation. We tailored the methodology to the client’s needs throughout the process to ensure we could deliver a unique future-proof culture for Lovell.
Stage 1: Insight
Understanding & assessing the existing culture, challenges & opportunities
- Reviewed customer journeys, Voice of customer insights, customer satisfaction, brand research and identifying the opportunities for improving customer experience.
- Reviewed a range of ‘people’ data – employee engagement surveys, HR data, IIP assessments and diversity & inclusion insights.
- Interviews and focus groups to gather qualitative insight from a cross section of leaders, managers, and colleagues.
Stage 2: Design
Designing the future culture
- Facilitated sessions with a mix colleagues, on different sites, across different regions.
- Explored ideas with customers for improving their ‘Service First’ approach.
- Used these learnings to define ‘The Lovell Way’ – 3 culture principles which would guide everyday actions, behaviours, decisions, and ways of working.
- Created new internal branding to bring ‘The Lovell Way’ (TLW) to life – with comprehensive iconography and artwork.
- Developed a 12-month, phased internal communications/engagement plan to launch nationwide – using a blend of channels, styles, and messaging.
- TLW was embedded into internal campaigns including Suicide Prevention Week, Menopause Awareness Month, National Walking Month, and they now have a 12-month calendar of TLW-underpinned campaigns.
Stage 3: Embed
To ensure The Lovell Way became an every day, lived reality
- TLW is being embedded into the end-to-end employee experience on a phased basis, starting with recruitment and new joiners who experience the same immersion as part of their induction.
- A new quarterly employee survey, measuring both engagement and culture, has been Implemented.
- Using TLW to establish aligned and collaborative working relationships with key partners e.g. housing associations.
Results
The nationwide events received excellent feedback
97% would recommend the workshops to their colleagues.
97% rated the workshop as ‘good’ or ‘excellent.’
99% ‘agreed’ or ‘strongly agreed’ that the facilitator was engaging and knowledgeable.
Great results in quarterly survey:
| Average score (out of 10) | Points above benchmark |
How likely is it you would recommend Lovell as a place to work? | 8.6 | 0.8 |
Overall, how satisfied are you working at Lovell? | 8.5 | 0.8 |
How likely is it you would recommend Lovell’s homes to friends and family? | 8.4 | 0.1 |
How likely is it that you would stay with Lovell if you were offered the same job at another organisation? | 8.2 | 0.9 |
Lovell’s culture provides a good fit with the things that I consider important in life. | 8.2 | 0.4 |
Happier customers, better reviews
Trustpilot rating improved from ‘bad’ to ‘Great’ over an 18-month period, and Lovell expect to see improvements in customer satisfaction results/NPS in the National New Homes Survey.
Improvements in health & safety
The Lovell Incident Frequency Rate (adverse health, safety, and environment events per 100 employees) reduced over from 3.58 to 3 over a 12 month period. The Accident Frequency Rate (RIDDOR) reduced from 0.07 to 0.04 over the same period.
What the client had to say
“The simplicity, depth and yet practical nature of the culture principles really articulates who we are and how we operate, and is already driving many improvements e.g., embedding them into our recruitment means we have recruited >150 people with strong cultural fit.
We proudly include TLW in our new business tenders and firmly believe that it’s helping us win new business by differentiating ourselves – showing how we bring the emotional experience in to everything we do in working with customers, partners, communities, and suppliers etc.
“We wanted to create a culture that people want to be part of – where everyone enjoys playing their part and understands how they can contribute towards their own, and the company’s, continued success. The Lovell Way brilliantly encapsulates this, helping inform the choices people make around not only what they do, but importantly how they do it – it really is guiding people’s attitude and behaviour, with others in mind.
I am impressed by the way our people have embraced The Lovell Way across the regions – it’s not an initiative which has resulted in just posters on walls. For example, ‘Do the right thing’ has fuelled people to increase their knowledge and ask questions so they can make better informed decisions around ‘the right thing’, as well as provide better experiences for others, speed up progress and be more efficient.
It’s providing greater consistency and shared learning in the way we do business and will help us to continuously improve.”
Steve Coleby, Managing Director, Lovell
