Old Mutual Wealth Case Study | Employee Communications Case Study

Transformation | Project

Quilter

29 Nov, 2020 · 3 -minute read

Headquartered in the UK, Quilter (then Old Mutual Wealth) provides long-term investment solutions to help customers achieve the lifestyle they want.

Old Mutual Wealth case study communicating business transformation

In 2018, the business embarked on a journey to become the UK’s leading wealth management platform. This meant going through a full-scale migration of their old UK platform to a new modern platform, to meet the future needs of financial advisers and their clients.

The migration program is hugely complex and would involve large scale change for employees – with a new operating model and structure, and significant job uncertainty.

The leadership team genuinely care about their people and wanted to take employees on the transformation journey with them, encouraging them to embrace the changes as an opportunity to build skills with more relevance to the market or their future aspirations – either within the business unit, the wider Group or another organization in the future.

1 Challenge

We worked with Quilter to develop an employee-centric communication strategy which would help people to understand the business transformation, and the opportunities that existed for them as a result.

To maintain consistency and engagement throughout, we developed a theme for the transformation exercise titled “Hello Tomorrow”. The theme was deliberately conversational; speaking directly to employees without alienating them or complicating the process, and embodying the spirit of change without feeling overwhelming. We worked hard to simplify messaging, using language that was straightforward and jargon-free, and ensuring that all communications were transparent and relevant at a personal level.

2 Solution

Old Mutual Wealth case study communicating business transformation

We also created a new visual identity, working within the corporate guidelines to ensure it was still recognizably aligned to Quilter, but with a more personal look and feel to reflect the content and key messaging. Fonts, colors and gradients were carefully cultivated to make the brand and associated deliverables visually engaging. Recognizing that people were at the heart of the transformation we featured employee photography and quotes prominently throughout.

A series of roadshows and leadership events were used to launch “Hello Tomorrow” across the organization. We worked with their internal communication team to produce branding for the events, leadership materials, line manager toolkits, videos and digital content to explain what was happening.

People Transformation Director at Quilter, Penny Cole, shares her conclusions:

“From the outset Gallagher got our brief, they took the time to understand our ambition and our people, they partnered in the truest sense of the word, in the early stages often co-locating to ensure we worked as one team. They have been generous in helping us to achieve BIG things with limited resources as we built momentum and belief in what we did and they understood that for us engagement wasn’t just about comms, it was about designing a human experience that didn’t shy away from the light and the shade of the journey we were taking our people on.

Since launch our program has landed well, we are smashing industry standards and we continue to see fantastic engagement results and participation, we continue to tap into Gallagher’s creative expertise and they remain a highly valued partner – they are also terrific fun to work with!”

And the results keep on coming, with “Hello Tomorrow” scooping Gold Awards for Innovative Employee Engagement, Business Transformation & Managing Change, and Team of the Year at the UK Employee Experience Awards 2020.

Read the full interview ‘How Quilter is helping employees through change’.

3 Outcome