Executive Summary

Operating in a new hybrid working environment, which is more complex, dynamic, and digital, challenges leaders to acquire new capabilities and strengths to guide their teams to adapt and thrive. The ActiveManager™ programme, delivered in collaboration with Hastings Direct, has enabled a sustainable step-change in the capability of leaders to lead, engage and motivate their teams in this evolving environment.

The need for a thriving hybrid workplace

Hastings Direct is a UK personal lines insurance broker servicing 3 million policyholders through digital channels. With over 3,300 employees, Hastings Direct recognized that its people are essential to the success of its vision of being the best and biggest digital insurance provider.

In 2021, Hastings saw an acceleration in its digital products and services for customers, as well as undergoing a rapid transition of its UK colleagues moving to a hybrid working environment. Committed to investing in the development of the leadership team during a national pandemic and a period of significant change, Hastings Direct identified an opportunity to uplift the capability of its leaders.

ActiveManager for future leaders

BearingPoint partnered with Hastings Direct to implement ActiveManager, a transformational leadership program.

The initial phase covered a series of interactive workshops to identify key competencies and core behaviours that would enable Hastings Direct’s leaders to be successful. The insights generated four key focus areas to support the leadership capabilities program. These included creating high-performing teams in a hybrid working environment, increasing resilience, agility, and responsiveness to change, adopting a consistent approach to teams’ management, and increasing managers’ confidence to drive accountability and ownership.

BearingPoint provided leaders with accelerated one-to-one coaching to facilitate the rapid adoption of knowledge, techniques and digital tools, enabling leaders to interact creatively and meaningfully to support cohesion, teamwork and shared experiences. The ActiveManager platform provided immediate access to a digital collaborative environment, interactive tools, progress trackers and digital learning. The ActiveManager program involved over 70 leaders and more than 500 employees.

A new way to lead

Hastings Direct now has an enhanced leadership capability, delivering a 14% uplift in team performance across several key business metrics including productivity, revenue growth, customer retention, first contact resolution, and customer quality scores. This enabled the operation to absorb increased work volumes and deliver meaningful outcomes for customers, during a period marked by significant growth and volatility in demand.

The company’s teams are more effective and efficient, moving toward more consistent, collaborative ways of achieving common goals and objectives. The impact and value of investment activities increased significantly by fostering a coaching culture and leveraging tailored methods and approaches to meet specific individual needs and contexts.

The new sustainable and hybrid ways of working allowed leaders and their teams to engage confidently, interact and perform effectively, regardless of their working location, using the ActiveManager digital tools, methods, and approaches. Managers are now more proactive, future-oriented, and less reactive. It also increased accountability and ownership of leadership performance, encouraging creativity, flexibility, and sharing best practices across the team.

In the first half of 2021 Hastings partnered with BearingPoint to successfully deliver Hastings ‘Active Manager Programme’ in our Operational teams with positive results in both their behavioral and technical capabilities that have delivered measurable commercial benefits. The programme has delivered a transformational experience that develops leaders’ capability and creates the infrastructure and environment for them to be able to lead and coach engaged, high performance teams’. Working with Bearing Point has been a true partnership, their focus on delivering changes that we can sustain has been highly valuable to us.

Pam Angel - Group HR Director

 

Client

Hastings Direct is a fast growing, agile, data and digitally focused general insurance provider. They offer a range of competitive and straightforward products and services, which include car, bike, van and home insurance and a range of additional products like breakdown cover and family legal protection.

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