It’s awesome to see a long-established company embrace the changing world and thrive in today’s digital landscape – especially when that organization can trace its history back to the early days of the Enlightenment. Few companies in the world are more established or esteemed than Lloyds Banking Group, which today encompasses multiple brands, including Lloyds Bank and the Bank of Scotland, which was founded in 1695!

When you’re building on a 321-year old heritage, there’s a lot to consider but, in today’s digital world, you have to keep both eyes looking forward. That’s why Lloyds decided a unified collaboration solution for employees was critical to continue to thrive. Jive is not only helping Lloyds Banking Group preserve more than three centuries of corporate memory, 90,000 employees can now carry that collective knowledge into the future and collaborate together to continue to succeed.

Aurea: What are the top benefits Lloyds has experienced using Jive to power its internal community (Hive)?

Mark: We see three main benefits from having Jive in place…

1. The ability for colleagues to create new connections and foster relationships which they would never have been able to do previously.
2. The ability to quickly get answers to questions, no matter how random they may seem, either through the power of people’s networks or one of the many specialist communities we have, ranging from Excel help groups, to customer-facing colleague support groups, to new initiative launch groups. Our Community Banking Questions group, dedicated to helping frontline colleagues get answers from their peers or head office colleagues, is our third most popular group receiving 50,000 views a month. In the 6 months since launch, it’s had 2,300 questions posted, of which 99% have had responses, and is now a fantastic knowledge base.
3. The ability for customer-facing colleagues to be able to share our customers’ experiences with non-frontline colleagues and engage in conversation with them, helping all colleagues better understand what our business is about and how we need to place our customers at the heart of all we do.

Aurea: What types of departments and teams use Hive, and how does it help them achieve their personal or company goals?

Mark: 99% of our colleagues now have access to Hive and our community reports tell us it’s being used pretty much across the board with all business areas having active rates greater than 80%, and in most cases over 90%. Considering Jive was not designed to replace our existing intranet or SharePoint, and is something colleagues have to actively seek out, these are great numbers. Our Career Community group has over 10,000 followers where colleagues share their tips on development opportunities and support those who are seeking to progress their careers. We’ve had many examples of mentoring and job shadowing opportunities being freely offered by colleagues and it’s really opening up opportunities for colleagues who would otherwise have found themselves restricted to their limited networks and existing business areas. This type of agility is essential for us to grow and adapt to the ever-changing world in which we operate.

This great comment one of our colleagues posted really sums up the benefits we’re witnessing…

Jive has been great and I would encourage everybody to use it! When I’ve had complicated queries Jive has enabled me to get in touch with people who can help that I wouldn’t normally be in contact with. It’s really helping staff in the branch network reach out to other departments that we don’t have contact details for. I had a complicated query relating to a legal charge held against a third title number to a property and a stressed customer in branch who was beside himself with worry as it was blocking a purchase going through – within an hour I had someone from the securities team updating the land registry – amazing! I’ve also had IT issues that I’ve gone round in circles with over the phone that have been resolved with a simple message on Jive. Its brilliant and great to see all departments coming together!

I also love reading and posting the good news stories – these have inspired my own branch team. The sharing of hints and tips and best practice means branches can learn from each other. It’s also really given staff a sense of achievement and recognition when they are tagged into a great story or people comment on how well they have done. Great to see people taking pride in a job well done. I really feel Jive is helping me widen out – I can communicate with my colleagues all around the country and I’m not contained to my branch or local area anymore.

Aurea: What has Hive’s biggest impact been on you, personally? How has it changed the way you work?

Mark: I now work out of Hive and just check my emails 2-3 times a day. It has massively reduced the reply-to-all email threads that used to circulate and get out of sync. It also means anyone new joining the team can get immediately up to speed, we don’t lose the knowledge of leavers, and I can bring anyone into a conversation without having to forward emails (and copy everyone else from the original trail back in). It has also challenged me to be more confident to share my work openly, particularly early drafts, and enable others to help shape my thinking or kill non-value adding ideas quickly.

Aurea: Looking forward 5 years, how do you foresee Hive supporting your organization’s vision?

Mark: No one knows exactly what the future of work will look like in 5 years, but we can be pretty certain it will look very different to what it does today. What we do know is that our organisation needs to constantly adapt and change to our customers’ needs – responsiveness and speed of delivery will be essential to staying relevant and competitive. Hive is helping us make this behavioural change by making us more transparent, making our knowledge far more accessible (and no longer something to be hoarded), and helping us feel like a smaller, more connected company than a large complex one.