Life-sized cardboard cut-outs of comic book superheroes like Wonder Woman and Batman aren’t quite what you’d expect in the headquarters of a leading mobile telecommunications company but they are strongly in evidence in Vodafone Ireland. They are there as a physical manifestation of the company’s 1000 Small Things Superheroes Campaign which is aimed at fostering a culture of innovation by getting staff throughout the organisation to contribute their ideas on how to make life easier for Vodafone’s customers.
“The germ of the idea came about when we were looking at how we had succeeded in changing our culture to become far more innovative”, explains Vodafone Ireland HR director Rachel Mooney. “And we realised that we had to change again and that we couldn’t be complacent. The idea is that every person in the organisation feels personally responsible for making things easier for customers – and that’s not a million euro software improvement or whatever, it’s all the little things. If everyone can contribute one small thing that’s 1,000 improvements for our customers and that’s very significant.”
The superheroes are part of the healthy competition which has grown up around the initiative.
“Being Vodafone we are very competitive so we’ve introduced an element of competition to make it fun and exciting”, says Mooney. “Each function has adopted a superhero character and each week we have battles between superheroes with the functions pitting their ideas against each other. It has been great for functions like mine where we don’t normally engage with customers. It has made us focus on the customer experience and think much more about it and the rest of the organisation. 1000 Small Things has the potential not only to improve our customers’ experiences but also to increase employee engagement overall.”
Another step the organisation took in fostering innovation and new ways of thinking was the introduction of the graduate programme in 2009. During the 18-month placement the graduates go on three rotations, the first month in retail and in the call centres, so they can experience the full customer life cycle, the second rotation is a project that is suited to the subject they have studied in college and the final rotation is in an area completely outside of what they have studied.
First intake
Lorna Brady joined Vodafone Ireland through the first graduate programme. “I was part of the very first intake of graduates and there were just 10 of us”, she recalls.
“It was very interesting because culturally it was something Vodafone was not used to. But it has evolved a lot since then and the graduate programme is now very much business as usual.”
While the graduates might have taken some getting used to for Vodafone the company held some surprises for them as well. “One of the things I was quite surprised by was how much Vodafone is open to change”, says Brady. “When we joined first the ceo told us not to be afraid to rock the boat and ask why we do things in certain ways and to bring new ideas about new ways of doing things.”
And this wasn’t mere rhetoric. “I have found that ideas are taken on board and people are encouraged to develop them and make them happen. For example, one of the graduates I started with has developed an app for new starters in the business. It is effectively an induction pack on your phone or tablet. It tells new employees where to find all the resources the need. It’s quite a simple idea but it is proving very useful.”