[MUSIC] I'm here with Helen Edwards, co-founder of Passion Brand. Helen's one of our MBA students, following which you got your PhD at Beth on the relationship consumers have with brands. Today we'll talk about the relationship employees have with brands and how they actually live the brand. One of the projects you worked on was with easyJet. >> Yes. >> Can you tell me about the project. What was the brief and how did things start going? >> So when we came into work with easyJet, they had just put in a new senior management. And it was that post-Stelios era. Where the airline had done extremely well. But it was young and it was fun. And Andy Harrison came in and recognized that easyJet needed to be more than low cost. So Ryanair were becoming more of a threat. And he also recognized that the airline needed to grow up a bit. So he wanted easyJet to retain its local status. He wanted it to be an airline that was full of personality but he needed it to be a slightly more grown up airline. And to take easyJet through a new stage of growth. So he and the senior management team put in a new vision for the airline and a new set of values. And that vision was all about being low cost with care and convenience. So not just low cost but with care and and with some convenience. And they felt that that would pull them away from Ryanair. What they recognized was that they needed the easyJet population to really live and breathe what care and convenience meant for easyJet. And to bring that vision for the brand alive in their every day behaviors. And that's where we became involved, and their brief to us was simply that. How do we enable the easyJet population to live and breathe this vision that we have for our brand. We worked with HR and branding and the management team. So, it was a multi-disciplinary team. And together with them, we recognized that what we needed to do was take the easyJet population on a journey of commitment. On a journey that starts with them recognizing that there was a new vision for the airline and understanding why that was an important thing to do. Through to knowing exactly what they needed to do to play that part in delivering that vision for the airline. And that work is not the work of a moment. And I think all credit to the easyJet management team for recognizing the commitment they needed to make to make this happen. >> So easyJet modeled itself very much after Southwest Airlines in the United States, which is all about fun and cheap. >> Yes. >> So, cheap and cheerful. >> Yes. Yes. >> Those were part of the founding principals. >> Definitely. >> It was a fun airline. >> Yes. >> But, the cheap and cheerful side, I guess Ryanair really had beaten EasyJet and the rest of the world on the cheap. >> Yes. >> But there's nothing fun about flying Ryanair. >> No. >> So I guess it was much more about the idea of fun, and why had fun kind of left the equation and what did you do to bring it back? >> So fun was very much part of what EasyJet was about, but in the recent years before Andy Harrison had joined it had become a little bit out of control. And I think that they felt that fun had become perhaps juvenile. That the population were having fun at the expense of consumers at sometimes >> And so I know Andy and his team felt very strongly that they needed to not completely close down that aspect of what EasyJet was all about, but the airline needed to grow up. So they needed to stay an airline that cared about its consumers, they needed to be accessible. And easy to get along with but not juvenile and not silly. So it's a very careful path to tread. Because a lot of the population eased up population that worked there. Being fun and having fun was a big reason why they were there. And so when we started this piece of work there was a certain amount of cynicism and A nervousness about what working life at easyJet was going to be all about. >> And practically speaking, how did you go about this? Where did you start? What were some of the milestones, and concretely, what did you do to change the behavior of the staff? >> So, where we started was that we in easyJet knew that this was going to be multi-disciplinary, that it couldn't exist within marketing. >> and it couldn't exist within HR either because you need that total understanding of how people behave and what consumers need. And so what we did is we put together internally a task force, a task team that involved the senior management team and then The senior management put two people full time on this job. To come off their current work onto this job, working alongside us. We then worked out the principles of the program we wanted to put in place, which was a really important part of it because. I think it's often easy with these types of programs, a brand engagement program to forget that you're working with a brand. We agree that whatever we did for the population need to live and embrace the EasyJet values. That means in practices, if you're doing an event It's not champagne that's flowing, it's a barbecue, it's more in the easy jet mode of doing things. We then put together a six-stage program of engagement. So we recognized people need to be moved along this trajectory from understanding And agreeing with the strategy, through to understanding and knowing and wanting to play that part in delivering it, and we recognized that that wasn't the work of the moment. So we divided the tasks, the journey, into six clear buckets if you like. Started with understanding an involvement. All the way through to reminded and rewarding people. So, the six stages were understanding, involving, inspiring, convincing, reminding and rewarding. And then what we did was plan Activity into each of those buckets of the program, and they were sequential. And so we started with understanding and involving me and we did a series of cooperative inquiry focus groups. We trained their trainers to run these groups. We did staffwide Photographic inquiries. We got everybody involved in asking them what they thought. And then we moved through, and then what we also did, which I think was really important, was we harnessed activity that was already going on. So we said, what are you already doing in the organization that is understanding people and involving your population? So easyJet had already instigated a staff redesign of the uniform. And we harnessed that and said, that's part of our program. And Andy Harrison already had a program of breakfast with Andy, where he would randomly invite people to come and have breakfast with him and we harnessed that as part of or program. So we developed activities, and we harnessed existing activities. >> So that first stage so was very much top down, but then bottom up, and when you say you used photography >> Staff had cameras. >> Yes. >> And it was part of the enquiry to serve as basically what the problem was, in some ways. >> What we actually asked them to do is capture the spirit of Easy-Jet. So what we wanted them to do was tell us what is the spirit of Easy-Jet that you would never want to let go? And then we were able to use that, to go back to them and say, this is you want, what you believe is the spirit of EasyJet. Let's all agree that and now let's work out how we're going to bring that to life of consumer. So once we understood what the population wanted is the spirit of EasyJet, what we also asked the EasyJet Population to do during this inquiry stage was to get them to identify the customer journey in absolute detail, to walk through a customer journey. And each stage of that customer journey, whether it's printing your boarding pass or That dreadful moment where you're queueing, wondering which seat you're going to get. What we asked them to identify was whether they felt this was a moment of opportunity for easyJet to show it cared. Or for EasyJet to make it a bit more convenient for them. And what they were able to do in, just lay out the journey in the focus groups that we did, and recognizing the points at which they could make an impact. They were almost immediately able to walk out of those focus groups and start doing something differently. What we also did was turn the picture inwards and we said to them take us through your journey as somebody who works for Easy Jet. How does it feel? How much care and convenience is there for you? And they were also able to identify the moments in which EasyJet could make a difference to them for care and convenience and, to their credit, the management team did make those changes. So there's two elements there. One is you took the abstract values of caring and expressed them in concrete behaviors >> Yes. At moments that matter. >> Yes. >> And the second part is you have to live the values internally for them to be expressed externally. >> Yes >> Okay? >> Yes. And a concrete example of that is that the preflight briefing where the crew come together, just before the flight, often at very unpleasant times in the morning. And they've all come from all over the country and it's a briefing with the captain of the place we were all going here.and we need to do this. At the time took place in a very sparse room in a what was the equivalent of a mobile home on the edge of the airport in Lantant. And, what we said to them is, if you put your staff in this environment, you then can't expect them to go on the plane with a smile on their face. They do, but it's remarkable that they do, so the change that came about was let's make this environment a bit nicer for them. Let's put some hot coffee in, and the staff really appreciated that. I mean, a small gesture that can make a huge difference. And just remind the EasyJet population that they are also cared for. And they deliver that to consumers. What follows that, and again it's a really important moment, is we did a series of events. So we took everything we've learned into a series of events. And we managed to get the events to coincide with the relaunch of the uniform. And it is a bit of a moment where I think a management team needs to take a deep breath because it's that moment of crystallization where you really commit yourself to what you're doing. because you are standing in front of everybody, saying this is what we're going to do and we believe in it, and we've listened to you, we're going to move forward from this point. EasyJet did it in an EasyJet way. We couldn't get everyone off the planes to one event. That wouldn't be low cost. So we ran a series of events in each of their bases. They have six European bases. And we ran a series of events, but the format was always the same. The launch of the uniform, some video around where the business wants to go. Andy or one of his management team talking about vision and we would talk about what we had heard from the staff as well. >> Now many companies use these kind of events to launch the brand, or the re-branding, the re-positioning, rejuvenation. >> Yeah. >> And then it's back to normal. >> Yeah. >> What followed from these events and how did you create traction for this program? >> As soon as an event had finished we targeted senior cabin crew members within the EasyjJet population because we felt that they were the leaders on board. So at the time EasyJet wasn't a huge airline. But I think there're about three thousand, three and half thousand cabin crew and then pilots. And we felt that, if we started with the senior cabin crew members, they're the leaders on board, so they're the people that go and talk to the pilots, they generally do the announcements onboard. They manage the crew onboard. And so as soon as the events had finished, we started running working sessions with those senior cabin crew members. And they were workshops effectively. We tacked them on to some annual training they had to do. So again, we needed to think low cost. We couldn't get these people off the planes and just take up their time. because that would add cost to the consumer. But what we could do was harness an existing piece of training and add a three hour slot onto the end of it. So we developed the session and we trained EasyJet trainers to deliver it. And, basically the session itself was all about starting at the point of the strategy. Where do we want to go? What have we learned about the consumer journey? Where can you make a difference? And those workshops ended with every single senior cabin crew member making a commitment to a change of behavior that they would do and that they were willing to be measured on. And so, it was quite tough stuff at that stage. And those workshops rolled out over an 18-month period, so that everybody went to one. At the same time, the HR department launched a new people model. Where the entire reward scheme was changed to match the behaviors that we were encouraging through these workshops. Or, in fact, that the EasyJet population were defining themselves. At the same time EasyJet launched a new rewards scheme, internal rewards scheme to again reinforce the work we were doing through the workshops. >> So could you give an example of one of the behavioral measures and maybe of one of the rewards. >> So one of the significant behavioral measures was, I mean, these are small and simple things. EasyJet had gone, that classic announcement of, when everybody's on board and you're about to take off. They had gone from complete freedom to say what you like to complete scripting, because it degenerated [LAUGH] Due to a certain amount of anarchy at one state. And so what we agreed to bring back was freedom, but within guidelines. And what one of the things that the senior captain crew members did was talk through how they would make those announcements. We also branded their space. At the time, they moved into hangar 89. I need to check, I think it's hangar 89. They moved into a new building and so, what we were able to do is bring the brand more exclusively in the building but not in a here's the brand way. We put white boards up where we were looking for suggestions for how EasyJet can better demonstrate locals with [INAUDIBLE]. We Ran on their internal staff portal. We ran questions and little training exercises that they could use. So the message came across in lots of different ways. >> So little and often in some sense. >> Little and often and it was those little moments that would make the difference in fact. The HR director at the time, talked about, this is the management of small moments going forward. >> Mm-hm. >> To keep it consistent,- >> Mm-hm. >> But to keep it on track, definitely. >> And, it always helps to have a business case at the end. So you're tracking behaviors, you could the behavioral change. What kind of a business case was presented to management I guess, what were you looking for in terms of results? It's these programs that we've worked not just with EasyJet but with the other large service organizations,. You're looking, you have to out in place your own measures. And we were very ambitious with EasyJet where we in fact at one point thought we could measure the flight crew and the flight. So staff satisfaction and customer satisfaction by flight, by crew and we wanted to match those two things. That was very ambitious in the end. The measures that we looked for on the staff side were staff turnover, a reduction in staff turnover, and staff satisfaction. And we saw staff satisfaction go up and staff turnover halved. Now the program played its part in that but it wasn't the only thing EasyJet were doing so I think it's important to say that. On the consumer side you're looking for increases in the consumer satisfaction, which we saw, and profit pursuit. So, a measure for EasyJet, a very commercial measure for EasyJet is if the consumer is sitting on that flight feeling good, they are more likely to buy another cup of coffee. If they've been well looked after by the EasyJet staff member, they're more likely to have another sandwich, buy a bottle of water for their child and profit per seat doubled during the roll out of this program. >> Thank you. [MUSIC]
