Evidence Case Study: RSA 

The following case study was provided as part of the evidence for the effectiveness of employee engagement strategies in improving performance, productivity and, in the private sector profitability.  It has been used cumulatively with other submissions compiled by many leading companies and organisations to leave little room for doubt about the statistical importance of engaging employees.

This particular case study is an additional support to The Evidence Paper

Background:

RSA is one of the world’s leading multinational insurance groups. They employ 23,000 people, serving 17 million customers in around 140 countries. In late 2007, when RSA commenced their engagement programme in partnership with Gallup, morale in their business was low. They had just come through a tough few years of fixing their business and when they ran their first Global Engagement Survey, their results were in the 38th percentile.

Results:

Today, as a result of their engagement programme and working with Gallup they are now considered the world’s most engaged insurance company.  They are recognised as a great company to work for in all of their markets, including being placed 6th in the 2012 Sunday Times Best Companies to work for in their first year of entering and receiving Gallup’s 2012 Great Workplace Award, which is presented annually to the world’s most engaged organisations.

RSA place their employee engagement strategy as a driving force in their organisational success. Simon Lee, Group Chief Executive, stated: ‘People who love what they do are more productive, give better service to customers and ultimately deliver better results. It’s no coincidence that during the years we’ve been focusing on improving engagement we’ve also significantly grown the size of our business and established leading positions in our key markets around the world.’  He further stated that: ‘…It’s by continuing to make the engagement of our people a priority that we’ll build an even stronger business for the future.’

Through their analysis, they have demonstrated that at RSA, engaged people are more productive and drive growth. In their MORE TH>N call centres, they found engaged people have 35% lower average wrap times (time between calls) than disengaged people.  This means engaged staff are able to talk to, on average, an additional 800 customers per year (based on average call handle time of 365 seconds).  Put another way, for every 8 engaged and more productive people they have, they get the equivalent of an additional member of staff at no cost. In the highly competitive insurance market, RSA credit their Broker Promise initiative[1], launched in 2009, as a main factor in them becoming a market leader in the UK Commercial Mid Market sector.  In 2010, their research demonstrated a correlation between engagement and growth finding that the more engagement improved at a regional unit level, the more new business improved in the same regions.  In 2011, they took this analysis further and identified a 0.60 correlation between engagement results and new business performance at team level.