Learning Academy

If you get a message on this page saying "Article does not exist or Permission Denied", please log in

20 Transformational Innovations Changing the Future of Work

Celebrating the 20 finalists from this year’s Innovation & Transformation awards. Trailblazers who are redefining workforce planning, customer experience, and operational excellence. From AI to culture change, these organisations are proving that bold thinking drives real-world results.

2015 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Customer Insight: Closing the loop at Allianz

How data, communication, analysis & rigour, from the insight team, underpin customer improvements at Allianz, by collaboration with leaders, operations teams, underwriters, marketing, QA & risk.

2015 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Delivering the end to end customer experience at British Gas Services

Discover how NPS, backlogs & efficiencies were improved simultaneously, by comprehensive end-to-end planning in British Gas Services that led to many more same day-appointments & lifted promise delivery 20%. 

2015 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Engagement: driving a customer culture at LV=

How customer focus at LV= led to removing sales incentives & targets, part of a strategic change involving new approaches to engagement, performance management and cross-skilling.

2015 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Homeworking - A flexible working culture at LV=

Learn how homeworking at LV= has boosted morale, improved customer experience, raised productivity and delivered a £2.3 million return on investment.

2015 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Risk & compliance: see how confidence sets people free at Direct Line Group

A major reform of quality & risk assessment is releasing people to have better customer conversations. This has improved customer outcomes  & grown the business, with 50% more tests at 40% less cost.

2015 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Transforming planning and sharing best practice at Ageas

See how Planning & Performance Analysts at Ageas delivered improved stakeholder engagement leading to a full redesign of the efficiency metrics lifting adherence by 3.33% and contributing to reducing attrition by 5%.

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: 2020 Vision brings strategy to life for everybody at InterCall

Making strategy clear & simple has engaged people. See how it’s released talent in the business, cut cost-to-serve 16%, delivered exceptional customer experience & driven continuous improvement.

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: 52 Weeks of Green: focus on operational performance at Direct Line Group

See how planning and front line operations teams developed outstanding collaboration and buy-in, as a result of an absolute, shared focus on service consistency, every single week of the year.

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: A framework for Amazing Customer Experience at Affinion International

Discover how the Quality Assurance (QA) team gave a competitive edge at Affinion International, with ACE, reducing service related complaints, saving money and raising the number of gold standard calls by a third.
 

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Customer experience: 7 secrets for working at pace at RS Components

Gather customer intelligence, act on it and release the potential of your people. This has delivered results fast at RS Components, putting the customer truly at the heart of the business.
 

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: FACT: operating principles for an efficient public service at Ingeus

See how value-based principles transformed the operation, saved £1.5m via automation and created the capacity to have life-changing conversations, supporting clients into sustainable work.

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Living the brand: the end-to-end journey at Red Funnel

Focus on customer, colleagues and community is driving business growth and social media engagement at this enterprising, local ferry service – making 2015 the best year in their history.

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Service Transformation: make it easy at EE

Listen to customer & colleagues, then fix what they say is broken. See how this led to huge increases in customer & colleague NPS at EE, while involving 38 technology implementations in 3 years.
 

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: The Lamp: helping us care for every life we touch at North East Ambulance Service

Learn from a great story of engagement & knowledge sharing – living the values. See how two individuals made the difference, literally saving lives at NEAS.

2016 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Trust & advocacy: how to be No. 1 for customer service at RBS

See how a desire to become the best UK direct bank has brought an increasingly agile planning function together with teams across the operations, to transform customer experience at RBS.

2017 Case Study: Betting: a game changing culture releases potential at Sky Betting & Gaming Awards

See how specialism created a culture of experts that took customer satisfaction to a record high, cut attrition, raised speed of answer by a third and is helping to grow the customer base 40% a year.

2017 Case Study: Simplifying Service: put people at the heart of change at L&G

Discover how collaboration and empowerment releases potential. By raising 1,300 ideas from colleagues in just 30 months, continuous improvement has saved 200 FTE overall and raised NPS.

2017 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Releasing potential: gain the attention of the board at TUI

Explore an extraordinary depth of engagement in Swansea, the hub of a new operating model that has turned around performance in a competitive market, with a 40 point rise in NPS and £17m benefits.
 

2017 Innovation & Transformation Awards: The human touch: is it easy to make the right choice? at Aegon

See how behavioural psychology has transformed sales and put the customer first, with great conversations, based on new scripts and training that gives the confidence to go beyond them.

2018 Innovation Award Winners

The Innovation of the Year 2018 award was won by Homeserve; an organisation centred on people and customers. In achieving commercial success and building community engagement, front-line teams re-connected with the organisation’s purpose, to rebuild trust. Marked out by judges as one of the best entries they’ve ever seen, this is a story everyone can learn from and be inspired by. They were also presented with the Innovation Award for Social Transformation.

2021 Innovation & Transformation Awards: FIS Group

Learning Culture at FIS Global
Career progression is now at the heart of this organisation’s culture, with a passion to drive learning and development. A playbook of next steps is embedded into their operating model, with metrics and review points, putting colleagues at the centre of their strategy for customer service.

2021 Quality & Improvement Awards: Susan Drape & The AA Quality Team

At The AA, Susan Drape-Comyn has developed her team of ‘check the checkers’ as a centre of expertise, as coaches within the business. They rose to the challenge of lockdown, early on, establishing ways in which virtual engagement and coaching offer new, if unexpected, benefit in time and impact. They’ve also seen a real shift in consistency of support across the different operations, key to their role, and explored bespoke calibration approaches focussed on need. All told, there’s been a marked boost in morale and engagement.

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Creating time for meaningful conversations at Water Plus

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Creating time for meaningful conversations at Water Plus
At the heart of the Innovation & Centre of Excellence is an internal talent growth programme driving improvement through automation and robotics. This isn’t about replacing people, this is about releasing mundane tasks that shouldn’t take a human to do, so the humans can add real value to customers. 

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Crowd sourcing innovation making it easier for all passengers at Northern Rail

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Crowd sourcing innovation making it easier for all passengers at Northern Rail
Focussed on “doing the right thing” making travel and access to travel by train easier for people who may have previously faced challenges. From dementia friendly signage, sign language, accessible toilets and using VR to help customers and front-line colleagues.

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Driving employee engagement and customer satisfaction at Ocado

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Driving employee engagement and customer satisfaction at Ocado
Focussing on people development to drive employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Holistic approach to development, covering all levels to raise standards. Demonstrating a people focus strategy and culture to bring the very best out in everyone.

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Transforming customer journeys with the CI Squad at FIS

2023 Innovation & Transformation Awards: Transforming customer journeys with the CI Squad at FIS
Using a continuous improvement framework to understand and fix the root cause of issues. Partnering with operational and specialist teams to plan, deliver and sustain improvements. Listening to customers and colleagues to understand what needs to change and making over 100 improvements in the first year.

2023 Insight Awards: Megan Hutchens at L&Q

Megan Hutchens looked outside planning for solutions to a planning challenge at L&Q. High handle times meant that they were unable to answer calls within agreed service levels. Analysing the data identified opportunities to improve and effective coaching has improved efficiency, reduced costs and improved service levels.

2023 Insight Awards: Stuart Marr at RSA

Stuart Marr has played a key role in introducing Interaction analytics to RSA. Aligning to company values and putting equal emphasis on speech and text he has built an automated QA model. This allows the QA team to focus on coaching and improvement.

2023 Partnership Awards: Centrical x OVO Energy

2023 Partnership Awards: Centrical x OVO Energy
A cohesive and genuine partnership underpinned the introduction of an employee engagement platform which has delivered positive business benefits across a range of metrics. Everyone has data access that they can rely on, with one source of the truth. This enables advisors to self-serve and squad leads & coaches to understand coaching opportunities and areas for focus.
123456