Lloyds Banking Group, Finalist 2016, The Innovation Award

Key features

• Lloyds Banking Group has sought to really embed flexibility across the organisation by taking an innovative approach to agile working
• The Getting Smart about Agile Working campaign reaches across the business from more inclusive job advertising to agile working assessments for business areas to reducing travel initiatives.
• The company is receiving more than 100 agile working applications a month, of which more than 90 per cent are approved.
• Lloyds is already reaping cost and productivity benefits.

As a founder member of the Agile Future Forum, Lloyds Banking Group has been looking closely at ways to become more agile over the past 18 months. In September 2015, Lloyds launched a new agile working programme ‘Getting Smart about Agile Working’ to help staff and their managers think more creatively about how, when and where they work to deliver the best outcomes. The campaign has helped to embed agile working into the company culture.

The campaign has five pillars: agile culture, agile workforce, agile tools and technology, agile property and agile travel. Under each of these, Lloyds has activity in place and a newly developed website provides support and tools for each. The website also provides case studies demonstrating how agile working benefits both the business and staff and showing examples of different agile working practices.

Lloyds has launched a new agile working policy which is much broader than flexible working, allowing agile working to be business driven as well as colleague initiated, focused on delivering mutual benefit and creating opportunities for a wider range of agile working practices to be used. Lloyds has formal tracking in place which shows that the company is receiving around 100 agile working applications per month, of which more than 90 per cent are approved. To support this, mandatory training on agile working was rolled out in 2015 for all Lloyds staff.

In addition, under ‘Getting Smart about Agile Working’, Lloyds has changed the way it words its job adverts to ensure they are more inclusive for people who want to work in an agile way.  They have added new agile working questions into the bi-annual staff survey to assess the issues and challenges people face and to measure the engagement of staff who work reduced hours.  They are also analysing performance management data for part-time versus full-time workers.

Agile working value assessments have been conducted in key business areas to evaluate the specific needs in those areas and implement the most suitable initiatives. A travel reduction initiative has been introduced which has resulted in colleagues spending less time travelling to face-to-face meetings. And the company has launched a new job share microsite.

These initiatives are reaping results. In Lloyds’ Asset Finance business, a home working initiative has increased productivity and resulted in a 10 per cent uplift in answered calls. In Retail Telephony Banking a multi skilling initiative was adopted which resulted in a productivity increase from eight calls per 1,000 to 20 calls per 1,000. Lloyds’ ‘No Travel Week’ has reduced business travel costs by over 25 per cent and delivered an 18.5 per cent reduction in C0₂ since 2010.