Global logistics company Toll Group is going through a culture transformation , but how have COVID-19 and other issues affected this journey ? Vikram Cardozo , Chief HR Officer , David Bell , Head of Talent Acquisition , and Ruth Oakden , Wellbeing Group Manager , discuss the challenges .
Vikram Cardozo , Chief HR Officer
Ruth Oakden , Wellbeing Group Manager
David Bell , Head of Talent Acquisition
Vikram : The past 20 years at Toll Group can be broken into two buckets . In the first 10 years , we made around 140 acquisitions and the company was trying to build a spirit of entrepreneurship . This meant each acquisition was encouraged to run independently and we didn ’ t integrate as one organisation , culture and system .
The last decade has seen us face more competition . This meant we needed to start working together and see each other as a team . The shift we ’ re trying to drive now is about “ One Toll , One Team ”. We need more accountability and have created new values around being customer-centric , teamwork , integrity , progress and taking ownership to deliver results .
The key difference now to the past is that we ’ re measuring our values . When you measure something , it becomes real . So values are part of our recruitment , part of our appraisals and part of our reward system .
Ruth : The culture change journey is about taking who we were and making us who we want to be . In some ways , the first cyber attack ( Toll Group was hit by two ransomware attacks in January and May 2020 ) gave us an opportunity to line up together and fight a common enemy , with the impact shared across the business . I would never say it was a good thing , but some positives came out of it . It gave us an opportunity to see ourselves as one organisation and to depend on each other more . This set us up to cope with the demands of COVID-19 more smoothly .
David : From a talent acquisition point of view , it has been about leveraging new practices and technology . How do we do more ourselves ? Bringing in people more aligned to our values will help us to build new skills .
Difficult conversations are part of life , so we need to build a skill set for this
Getting employee buy-in
Vikram : Before creating our values , we surveyed more than 6,000 employees to see what they wanted the company to look like . We then did workshops on our new values and created leadership ambassadors for each value ; the next stage is to create employee ambassadors once we ’ re able to interact a bit more in a COVID-adjusted world .
We also want to open up spaces to have more open and difficult conversations . The key here is to make sure they are constructive sessions and have outcomes . It has to be done in the right way , so we can grow from it .
Ruth : Difficult conversations are always part of a change journey . They ’ re also part of life , so we need to build a skill set for this , whether as employees or in general life . With COVID-19 , lots of conversations are not happy ones . People need a method for going into these conversations and our difficult conversations training programme is one of our most requested . It ’ s about building resilience , but it can be hard when you can ’ t do it face to face .
David : Toll Group has traditionally been an in-person , face-to-face company . COVID-19 forced us to go remote and virtual recruitment was a challenge . The past six to nine months have seen a total revamp of our talent acquisition practices – we ’ ve pretty much started over .
We ’ re now used to managers interviewing remotely , which would have been unthinkable 18 months ago . It has been a springboard to other potential innovations , such as video job listings , artificial intelligence and chatbots .
We want to open up spaces to have more open and difficult conversations . The key is to make sure they are constructive and have outcomes
Post-COVID world
Ruth : Some of us have had the opportunity to work from home , but the majority of our employees have continued working in the field and have had increased demands on them . The COVID experience has been very different for them and won ’ t change much after .
Vikram : Between 80 % and 85 % of our employees are drivers or warehouse operatives , working at various operational shops or in vehicles . They have to be out there doing work , during COVID and beyond , wearing masks and having safety protocol – their work hasn ’ t changed .
For those of us who had the luxury of working from home , it was about safety . Now , it has become more about convenience . I don ’ t think things will go back to 100 % of how they were before , but I expect we ’ ll see a hybrid model . The culture of a company and people ’ s connection with their employer diminishes when we work remotely . You work better together as a team in person . That said , given the environment , things will be different and we are ready to embrace different .
The view from AMS : Tara Knobel
We ’ ve partnered with Toll Group since 2020 , and in 2021 launched a multi-country fouryear outsourcing partnership . We support Toll with the entire recruitment process for permanent hiring in Asia , US and Europe , with teams based at client sites and in our Manila Global Client Service Centre . We ’ ve also provided consulting solutions for recruitment diagnostic , assessment and selection , technology and business intelligence .