Brief

Our client, a major insurer covering around 90 per cent of public and private sector workers, including more than 310,000 NSW businesses as well as government agencies, was looking to transform the claims process end-to-end after a successful overhaul of workers’ insurance. The aim was is for internal and external teams to be a highly engaged, high-performing workforce operating productively within the target operating model. To enable this, employees needed to be well supported during the change process across multiple programs, with fit-for-purpose change leadership, engagement, communication, training and adoption support. A highly complex change of this nature can have ramifications across the entire ecosystem with considerable people risk, not all of which is within the organisation’s control. This meant our Blue Seed team had to consider:

• Impacts identified across affected groups and types
• Business objectives and outcomes aligned with change success measures
• Interventions to help leaders fulfil their roles in leading change
• Culture and behaviour reinforcement, with skills creation and enhancement
• Operating model changes to deliver the desired customer outcomes.

Solution

Blue Seed Consulting was engaged to complete a Change Diagnostic to fast-track the client’s change program, assessing its effects and establishing direction and clarity in just six weeks. During this time our team consulted with business leaders, experts in the field and the program team to assess the impacts, devise a strategy and develop recommendations to propel the change process. One of the key challenges was how to measure the impact when the organisation was establishing an entirely new claims model from scratch. To do so, the team created sample personas to represent the diverse set of experience and backgrounds that people would bring to the role; this helped identify the unique needs and challenges to be addressed for the different types of recruits. This assessment also helped our consultants adapt the cultural and behavioural changes needed to inspire the workforce. Blue Seed ran a number of workshops with business leaders and front-line staff to highlight the change required, the challenges and a common definition of success. The Blue Seed team also established key recommendations and a delivery plan which included the activities, roles required and responsibilities for delivery of the various components, before taking a lead role in directing and establishing the delivery team.

Results

Because our team provided a focus on the key cultural and behavioural elements of the change and helped build a consistent understanding of the reasons behind it across the workforce, employees responded with excitement to the prospect of reinventing the model and drew confidence from the results they saw. Consulting with business and program leaders on the key needs and messaging also meant that the leadership group felt a sense of confidence and certainty about the program’s success, as they were equipped with the understanding and tools needed to lead change in their respective units. With an aligned leadership team, a clear change strategy and a supportive workforce, the risk of failure was mitigated, meaning the likelihood of realising the savings and competitive advantage of the program hoped for at the outset were very high.