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Putting people first: Marcel explains what has driven his team transformation
14/02/22
Your team has undergone a transformation recently that puts both your people and your clients into a greater focus. Tell us more – what did you do?
As part of our solid cooperation among Tax and Legal Services Central Switzerland (TLS Central), Luzern and Zug, we established two working groups within our joint teams: a “people working group” and a “client working group”. The purpose of this really was and is about setting a focus on strongly caring for our people and clients at the same time. The idea to transform into these newly created groups was born after analysing the results of our annual Global People Survey (GPS) of 2019. This, as well as additionally collected feedback from our clients and people on how to improve the client and people experience and work closer together led to several discussions around a new team setup. So, we established the people and the client streams and have been growing together for more than two years by now. I’m leading the people group, which consist of around 10 to 15 people, from new joiner to partner level.
Can you go into more detail – why was this transformation necessary?
TLS Central has been very successful in the past ten years. Our great figures resulted from having great people working together. We wanted to keep – and strengthen – this approach, which is why we decided to create a vision that would set its focus on our people as priority in order to keep our great, hard-working talents.
We started to question if we really knew each other beyond our profession and transformed our key focus from “figures only” into “people value first”.
A simple, everyday example might explain this shift better: The first agenda point in our TLS Central meetings was checking the latest figures. Now, we begin with checking in with our people, and with really discussing their individual topics. Another, very simple but transformative element for our teams was the fact that new joiners are now welcomed to introduce themselves as a person first - not as a tax expert.
We started to question if we really knew each other beyond our profession and transformed our key focus from “figures only” into “people value first".
What is the added value for you and your team?
I believe that a space in which we all talk in a relaxed and trustworthy environment gives our team the possibility to address more diverse topics or pain points and exchange ideas on a frequent basis. It creates trust and a sense of community and belonging. People topics that have been discussed in our newly founded groups will later be brought up with the whole team, our so called “people roundtable”, where they generate new agenda points and follow-up tasks. Our new environment leads to a combined effort.
Have you noticed any changes since transforming into the new working groups?
We actually noticed a fewer number of leavers in the past years. Adding up, we have also managed to improve our GPS results compared to the last turn, especially when looking at results with the focus of collaboration of our team based on our value “care”.
Your actions may inspire your colleagues and others – what do you suggest as a first step to go aheader and make beneficial transformation happen?
A very solid and good starting point would be, of course, to decide on switching your focus on people and/or on client experience. You may need to clarify, what your vision for your team is, which is what we were doing before we created these working groups. This leads to my second advice: Get together as a team to identify a joint thinking on how to start and the way forward. Take it step by step, but follow a strong, uniting vision.
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