Fuelling change with authentic purpose

In a three month programme, we helped Wealthtime discover an authentic sense of purpose which they used as a powerful driver for change.

Chris Trantom facilitating a workshop for Wealthtime employees

About Wealthtime

Wealthtime (formerly Novia) offers its customers a comprehensive range of investment services via its web-based platform. Following private equity investment and a recent merger, Wealthtime has entered an exciting period of fast growth and change. With big, bold ambitions for the next five years, their executive team decided to invest in becoming a purpose-led organisation as a key strategy for success - and turned to &us for help.

Uncovering authentic purpose

A key driver for Wealthtime was preparing their people for the fast pace ahead, and ensuring that they could successfully engineer the culture change necessary to help them realise their ambition and vision. While other partners had offered support and assistance here, nothing quite felt authentically ‘them’ to the executive team.
Wealthtime’s CEO Patrick Mill believes (and we agree with him) that what’s critical for commercial success is focusing not just on shareholder growth, but stakeholder growth – connecting everyone in the business to success in ways that matter for them.

A presentation at Wealthtime's office
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Team brainstorming session at Wealthtime
Wealthtime employees coming up with new ideas on post-it notes

“We might be a financial services company, but ultimately it’s a people business. We have a big responsibility to our clients – the people we serve –  we hold their savings for their futures, and we employ just over 300 people, who are our business.”

Patrick Mill, CEO, Wealthtime

So, &us began first by defining a core set of behaviours that would act as a new North Star for Wealthtime, around which its people could rally and be inspired. From this, we worked collaboratively to articulate a more authentic purpose statement - one that came from within, whilst simultaneously challenging and stretching the organisation toward their vision.

A collaborative process

The collaborative process &us and Wealthtime went through together
Lucy Campbell from Wealthtime discussing the work she did with &us
Reflections on working with &us
Lucy Campbell, Product and Analysis Lead, Wealthtime

Across three inspiring months, &us supported an internal cross-functional team of mixed seniority and helped it to act as the insight engine for the work. Putting the Wealthtime team front and centre was a crucial step in generating buy-in, and ensuring that any outputs generated felt authentic and ‘owned’ by Weathtime’s people.

This hard-working internal team worked horizontally, reaching out across the business to uncover what was important to Wealthtime’s people. They tested ideas, reflecting on and provoking the exploration of key themes, and gathered invaluable feedback to understand the true essence of the company.

&us spent this time educating teams around purpose, building Wealthtime’s insight-gathering capabilities while we simultaneously crafted the narrative that defines Wealthtime’s purpose today. We also helped the team to develop an engagement plan, detailing how to embed the purpose and behaviours across the organisation at all levels.

Key outcomes

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Authentic purpose statement

At the end of our journey together, the joint team had produced a purpose statement that continues to act as a challenge to Wealthtime’s ambition and vision. It is actionable, exciting and authentic.

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Creating champions of the purpose

The exec and core team within the business developed a mature understanding of the new purpose, and worked hard to socialise the work so that it can actively support the cultural transformation that Wealthtime has embarked upon.

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Aligning the business with the purpose

After the initial work, we began a six month programme of change designed to align aspects of the company with the newly defined purpose. This included a series of projects to rewire key structures such as the employee experience, corporate social responsibility, and training and development programs.

 

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