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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: toward customer-centric and agile, part 3

Growth mindset and Customer Experience Management

Ronald Heijn, Harold Clijsen and Monique Schut in conversation with Adriaan Vermeulen about the transformation of PGB Pension Services getting ready for the new pension world.

In four parts, I'd like to take you through the extraordinary change journey of the past 3 years that PGB Pension Services has gone through together with Noviter to become more customer-centric and agile. Today part 3:

Ah, and that's about behavior and attitude!

"Exactly, and that's one of the hardest things to change," Monique admits. "In 2019, we introduced Carol Dweck's theory of the growth versus fixed mindset. We organized meetings with employees in which we talked to each other about situations in which we were in an optimal learning mindset (growth mindset) and in which circumstances we were precisely not open to feedback and growth (fixed mindset). These sessions certainly didn't solve it all at once. But it helped raise awareness that the key to change and improvement lies with you and me. It was also the beginning of a new kind of conversation that we encouraged precisely between management and employees. An ongoing dialogue (what we call Let's Talk) throughout the year, about your performance, your ambitions and the support needed. This was in contrast to the traditional performance reviews that took place 2 or 3 times a year and were more likely to be demotivating than the other way around."

Having a good dialogue is also an art. Monique: “We send and receive all kinds of things in a conversation. But do we really 'touch' each other? And what does it actually lead to? After a large group of managers and employees asked for this, we developed a training course to practice this skill together. We call it the performance dialogue.” Adriaan: “Basically, it is about getting to the core of an exciting or difficult subject through connections with each other. You do this by opening up and putting yourself in the other person's shoes and then agreeing on very targeted, concrete, small actions to move and improve together. Examples of difficult topics are: two managers who no longer communicate with each other; a report that is hardly or never read anymore; an employee who underperforms. Where people work together, it is full of these kinds of 'obstacles' that stand in the way of progress and change. That is very normal. It is just not normal that you move around these obstacles, which is at the expense of efficiency and customer satisfaction.”

Monique: “From the start, we knew that behavior and culture required our full attention to achieve the desired changes. Our vision was to mix it with the substantive topics as much as possible and to apply it decentrally. So when we introduced KCS to a team, it was immediately about mindset and performance dialogue. Or when we talked about customer focus during the MT training days, it was also directly about how to accelerate or slow down. Naturally, we also organized training courses centrally to support behavioral and competency development. For example in the field of agility with the help of TIAS University. We developed new core values ​​and competencies that were part of the new strategy and discussed them. And ultimately we translated the change into new employee and leadership profiles, in which agility and customer focus became concrete.”

Harold: “The cool thing is that we did this in Monique's team with our own HR and organizational development coaches. I would certainly advise others to invest in this. This makes it much easier for managers to discuss their team, without having to do so via the hierarchy. In addition, this greatly saves the management the time available and the coaches are much better at supervising that change.

“Yes, that's right,” Monique continues, “but you still keep the feeling that you are a facilitator

Customer focus is at the heart of everything we do

There we were at the end of September 2021, the 12 quartermasters, with a plan to inspire the management on 'how we as an organization could become more customer-oriented'. “Apart from all kinds of beautiful models and insights, it came down to seeing the 'human' in our participants and employers and social partners,” says Martijn van den Berg, Communications and Customer Experience Manager. "And it worked. We had touched the management in the heart with the Trudy story. We decided to bring that story to all employees in our monthly employee meeting and call for more stories like this to be shared. This contributed to the inspiration.”

Martijn continues succinctly: "And immediately after the inspiration, education followed. What 12 quartermasters knew about customer experience management (CX) was known to 50 employees 3 months later. Six months later, through special customer experience games, we had another 150 employees are able to convey the basic ideas. And then you hope that after the education something will be achieved." That did not take long. "In various places we saw a movement starting on our own initiative with improvements to improve customer experience in our own processes.”

“And if you just persevere, we will see that it really has an effect,” Ronald adds. “As directors, we speak with social partners and employers every day and we also receive positive signals from their feedback. That is very satisfying. Still, I would like to see more successes shared. There is so much beautiful happening that we can all learn from and be inspired by.”

Read part 4

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The 5 competences of an Adaptive organisation

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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: towards customer-focused and agile, part 1

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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: towards customer-focused and agile, part 2

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Transformation at PGB Pension Services: towards customer-focused and agile, part 4

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