Story:
Cutting the cord: Vodafone UK's revolutionary approach to mobility, flexibility & productivity

Since it was introduced almost two years ago, this new way of working has helped Vodafone become more agile, competitive and environmentally friendly. The open and collaborative working environment has lead employees to feel more engaged with the business which has helped increase morale and reduce staff churn. With the business acting quicker and everyone within it heading in the same direction, Vodafone has become the fastest growing mobile phone operator – in revenue terms – in the fiercely competitive UK market, while maintaining a tight rein on costs. The journey is by no means over, but Vodafone has certainly taken those first, very important strides.

 The positive effects brought about by the new way that Vodafone UK now operates have been felt across all levels of the organisation. Increased workplace flexibility and the ending of so-called ‘presenteeism’ has boosted morale for everyone from customer facing call centre staff and sales and marketing teams within both consumer and enterprise units, to back office and support functions. Across the business, Vodafone UK’s employee engagement scores, which track how staff feel about their working environment and the pride they take in their job and company, have risen.

It is not just a ‘chosen few’ who are feeling the benefits of the cultural change, everyone is involved because decisions are now being taken by the people with the best knowledge of any particular situation, not by the people who are merely seen as having the highest position in the management hierarchy. At board level this devolution means that directors have actually cut out almost a third of their meetings and are able to focus much more on long-term strategy. Moving away from the traditional closed office environment to working in a smarter way using our own technology has also helped speed-up decision making. For instance, it used to take us 90 days to change a price plan. Now we do it in four days.

 In our small business team, for example, a recent week ended with management unexpectedly needing to find savings of over £10m. The team shared the necessary documents electronically ahead of the weekend and first thing on Monday morning, armed with their tablets and laptops and joined by colleagues by video conference, the team scoped out the challenge, looked at options and decided the best way forward in under an hour. In return for just an hour of preparation  on Sunday evening,  the value of the virtual discussion on that Monday was vastly improved. A year ago the problem would have taken at least three working days to solve, by the time people had shared paper copies of the relevant documents and found time to attend the same physical meeting.

 Using technology to improve the availability of information for our sales teams, meanwhile, has lead to a five-fold increase in sales opportunities for our business that services large corporations in the UK. Vodafone’s enterprise business has deployed a Cloud-based CRM system which creates one view of the customer and bridges the gap between sales, marketing and commercial functions. When out in the field, sales managers can update opportunities on the new platform through their smartphone or tablet so the business always has a real time view of the sales pipeline. 

 Having all the information about customers in just one place has speeded-up the time it takes our large corporate division to get a new customer up and running from 90 days to just 30 days. Previously, the system for bringing new customers onboard relied heavily on email and a typical implementation resulted in about 150 emails being sent to the salesperson, not only slowing down the process but preventing them from focusing on finding the next opportunity. Now with everyone involved in the sales and implementation process working from the same constantly updated information, the whole process is far more efficient.

 The change has not just been seen within Vodafone UK’s headquarters and the teams that work there. At our state of the art call centre in Stoke, collaborative working practices and a much more open environment have resulted in far higher levels of desk utilisation while creating a vibrant atmosphere in which everyone supports each other. Teams are encouraged to work together, sharing best practice and knowledge, which has resulted in a doubling of the unit’s employee net promoter score, a measure of how likely staff are to recommend Vodafone’s products and services to friends and family. Staff churn, meanwhile, has more than halved to industry-leading levels.

 Vodafone now has more than 5,000 employees operating in a ‘weightless’ work environment which has helped the company make better use of its physical infrastructure, cut property costs and operating expenditure, and reduce its carbon footprint. Vodafone has achieved net annual savings of more than 24,000 tonnes of CO2 emissions and approximately £11.5 million in 2010/11 compared with 2006/07 while seeing revenue growth of more than 6% in the three months to end September, compared with a 0.7% decline seen by its nearest rival.

 Over the five years since the 2006/07 baseline, Vodafone has cumulatively saved an estimated £45 million from reduced travel and energy expenses. Tools such as instant messaging and video conferencing, meanwhile, have helped Vodafone exceed the World Wide Fund for Nature’s challenge to cut one in five business flights. Building utilisation has increased with employees now working from where they need to, rather than from where some arbitrary property decision has placed them and Vodafone has been able to reduce office space by 19%.

 With just a couple of printers per floor – that require employees to sign-in in order to use them so paper consumption can be monitored – and a drive to ensure everyone uses ‘soft’ rather than ‘hard’ copies of documents, Vodafone UK has saved almost 2.5 million sheets of A4 last year, a drop of 28% compared with the previous year. It is aiming to reduce paper consumption by another 20% this year.

Other businesses are taking note of the changes. Vodafone’s Newbury headquarters is proving a remarkable draw for organisations of all sizes. Interest in seeing how the company uses technology to facilitate cultural change is so high that Vodafone UK now employs four full time tour guides, who daily take senior executives, including many from leading FTSE 100 companies, on the equivalent of a corporate safari around the campus. What they discover on this safari, is that when all the pride works together the hunt - in business terms - is far more successful than any one individual could ever be.