In a session from the Future of Field Service Live Tour event in Stockholm, Sarah welcomes Caroline Häggström Marklund from Vattenfall to discuss their award-winning people-first strategy in customer services.Tune in to gain valuable insights into building trust, debunking the myth of a "soft" people-first approach, and creating a workplace culture that truly puts its people first.
Sarah Nicastro:
I am going to welcome up Caroline from Vattenfall to have a chat. Caroline, welcome.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Thank you.
Sarah Nicastro:
Thank you for being here.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Thanks for having me.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yes, of course. Okay, so tell everyone a little bit about yourself, your role.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yes. Okay. I am Swedish, born and raised in the north of Sweden. Probably one of the coldest people from the north because I'm always freezing, so I guess that was not my place. I have a history in economics but have been in, I would say general management since almost 15 years. Most of those years I've been in construction, building power plants; not me literally holding the tools, but working with the people that build the power plants. Then these last couple of years I've been introduced to the customer and sales world of utility at Vattenfall. That's where I'm now. I live here in Stockholm. I also have two cats, Cat and Gilbert. They are big on Instagram. My side job is social media manager to them.
Sarah Nicastro:
Okay. Well I'm going to have to follow that. Okay. Yeah, great. Okay so what Caroline and I are going to talk about this morning is Vattenfall customer services prize winning people first strategy. Now, so the people first journey has led to a number of proud moments: so, Vattenfall won the Swedish Union's HBTQI award for most inclusive workplace, best service in the energy sector, and has earned its Great Place to Work certification.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah.
Sarah Nicastro:
So all wonderful accomplishments and as I mentioned, really representative of putting a lot of effort into thinking about what is our culture like? What is our leadership style? Are we putting people first? So that's what we're going to speak about. As you mentioned, you can give some advice, but you can also share some setbacks and some mistakes made, so we'll get into that. So can you talk just a little bit, sort of set the stage for the journey Vattenfall has been on in terms of people first. How did it start? What has that evolution looked like?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Especially in customer service, it is all about relationships. If your people aren't comfortable or safe in their environment, how are they going to be able to have an open dialogue with a customer and do what is needed to do, not what they are allowed to do on paper basically. So, we started the journey of people and then performance because I am a firm believer, and now I also have clear evidence, that if you as a leader focus on enabling your people, setting them up for success, then the performance will follow.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
You need to measure it obviously, but you don't have to be “there” if you're “here”. Include and trust in people, it will come much easier.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah, I was thinking of asking the audience for a show of hands, but I don't know who all would be honest anyway, but I think there are a lot of organizations that are still in the ‘performance over people’ mentality, culture, and I think this is again, one of the biggest areas of shift we're going to see. So, before we talk through some of the specifics of what Vattenfall has been through and what you've seen on this journey, let's just take a step back and can you speak to, what are the factors you think are underpinning the need for this evolution, this shift, the 180-degree switch?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah. First of all, I think it's about common decency, treat people well overall and in general, in business and in society. I think that's just what you do.
Sarah Nicastro:
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
But then I also think that we've been through a number of decades of automation and lean processes, and there are now, the tasks that are in our hands now are way more complex than what they used to be. And, in order to sort that out, people need to feel enabled and engaged. I think that also when work is more and more relationship focused, I mean it's about relationships with customers, with the clients, within the organization, with colleagues and all of that, no matter what AI, our job will always be to sort of maintain relationships, I think. If you're going to manoeuvre that world, I think you need to be given a lot of trust and freedom. It would be weird of me as a leader to say that I know what all of the 400 people here in this organization, I know exactly what you need to do, because I don't, but I need to trust them that they know what to do if I tell them what the final goal is. Think more complex environment, a more harsh overall climate in the world is leaning us towards this.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah. Complex and dynamic, right? I mean that's the other thing when you talk about in manufacturing lean and these sort of very process rich, prescriptive environments where that command and control type leadership can work, I'm not saying it should, service is a different world. Particularly today, you have just constant change, real time connectivity, so many things. It is complex and it's very dynamic and trying to tie teams to a prescriptive approach, not only slows things down, it limits their creativity and ultimately I think their fulfilment.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Absolutely.
Sarah Nicastro:
Okay. So one of the big points of caution you said when we spoke, which I really loved, is don't say you want to be people first or even worse, that you are without being willing to do the work.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Exactly.
Sarah Nicastro:
This is similar to what I said about diversity. Everyone, people first again can be looked at as sort of a buzzword. No one wants to say we are not people first.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Right.
Sarah Nicastro:
But if you're going to make that claim, you have to be ready to do the work.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah.
Sarah Nicastro:
So, explain why that is such an important point.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
I think that goes for, I mean, whatever culture you want to build. I think sometimes I think that we don't realize that even if we don't sort of state what culture we want to have, we are still creating a culture just by acting in a certain way. A people first approach is all about, to me, it's all about trust, and the people in my extended team and my closest team, they need to trust that I will put them first when the shit hits the fan and even before that. Therefore, it's about relationship, it's about trust.
If I want to earn people's trust, I have to be what I say I am, because if I'm not, it's hollow. If I state that I want to drive a people first culture and then act differently, then this is not going to have any power, rather the opposite. In my view, it's like say that you want to do it and don't do it, it's the worst thing that you can do if you want to create something like that. If you don't say it and you still do it, fine. I mean it's going to happen then.
Sarah Nicastro:
Right.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
It's about authenticity in a way I think.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah. Okay. The other really important point that you made is that I think one big myth and also one of the reasons there are still so many companies who are performance over people, is because people see a term like people first as fluffy.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Nicastro:
It's soft, something that isn't going to get the job done, right? Now, you know this isn't true.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Nicastro:
So, talk about how you have achieved concrete, bottom-line impact, and how we need to break the myth that this is something soft.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah, I have a really good example that is sort of a long story, but I'm going to try to make it a little bit shorter. So, in the beginning when I started at customer service, we had really, really poor operational results. We were far, far off from reaching our targets both on customer experience and being available for customers and hence also cost. It had been like that for quite a while. When you started to look into it, it was pretty clear that the organization was understaffed. Over years, they had made savings by just reducing the amount of people but not actually changing anything in a process or system landscape, so you were just on and on in a process of doing the same with less people. And that had eventually exploded as it will do. Not only were people tired and disengaged, but they also were not able to reach the targets.
We did quite a quick turnaround recruiting 30 people, which is quite a lot. That was 10% increase in staff in the entire organization. That's what we needed to do in order to meet the demand. The demand is also, I mean we sell when people call us, so it's also a value creation in that. We did, we had the staffing, three months later we were supposed to meet our targets, but still we were off, we didn't meet the targets. I was puzzled because you told me what you needed and you told me what you were struggling with, I gave it to you, why isn't it happening? We were a little bit closer but not as close as we were supposed to be then.
Then I had a dialogue with the entire organization, I was like, "I don't know what to do now because we have what we're supposed to need in order to deliver on these targets. Why aren't we delivering?" The gap to the targets was quite big, but every individual contribution would've been quite small, which was very interesting. In general, the customer service agents in our team, they talk to six to seven customers per hour. If they would have increased that with half, we would've reached the target on individual level. I mean it was not a lot. Then I was just like, "I don't know what to do. You need to tell me what you need."
We were at the end of the year, we had a great opportunity to close the year and be off at a really good start the year after. And then I think this organization were not used to the leader being like, "I don't know, you tell me." So people started to react and wake up a little bit and it led to us establishing an internal campaign that we called Save December; the year is fucked, but we can still save December and get a head start into the next year.
What we did was just focusing on saving December as a common goal and let go of all the processes, all the measuring our KPIs that we had, all the individual targets. I was just saying to each team that, "You need to achieve this and you just do it in whatever way you want and focus on having fun at work," basically. We invested in buying candy and the inspirational walls and where you could write quotes. We had music in the entrance when you walked into the office to get a little bit of feeling. That was basically it. That and the dialogue and putting this sort of on the organization to solve.
Sarah Nicastro:
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Come first December, we increased our reach ability from 80 to 95% from 13th of November to 1st of December. No additional resourcing, same demand, nothing different. During December we stayed above target all month and our customer experience increased with 20% during the same month. That was sort of the start of building this culture. I think that was important. It gave us a head start because it showed what we could really do if we did it together and if everybody pitched in.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
That was pretty cool. Then we didn't drop in January. We sort of stayed on target then until the next crisis hit, which it always does. Yeah.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah. I know when we were chatting, I mean I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, so just correct me if I get anything wrong, but when we were chatting, you said that when you joined the company and you had this approach, that was sort of the first test of it, right? Until that point, it had been a lot of talk in people's minds. Now you meant it, but for them it was, "Uh-huh, yeah," and that test you saying, "I don't know what to do. You tell me what you need and how you want to do this," was the first proof point of your intent and the change you were making. It really was key in starting to build that trust because that was the moment where they thought, "Yeah, I think she means what she's saying." Then from there you were able to build upon that. Again, that's evidence of needing to be willing to do the work and then giving the time to build that trust because when people have been a part of a performance first culture, they might not just buy into it right away. They might have some hesitation.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah.
Sarah Nicastro:
One of your other first actions was to create and enact a no assholes policy.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah.
Sarah Nicastro:
Why was that an early move and what impact did that have?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
It was coupled with another change that I did in the beginning. At first I needed to do a little bit of a structural change and move leaders that stood for the former culture basically. It was also clear that they were not willing or able to be authentic in the new world or however you put it. That was one thing. It was important in order to really establish this culture of people first, I wanted to make it really clear that harassment or any kind of demeaning behavior to others is absolutely unacceptable. We needed to move away from if you were a brilliant mind that created a lot of business, but in the process of doing so, you belittled others or stepped on others or were even mean to others, you were still sort of like a high performer. In my world, that doesn't add up. A high performer is a role model as well as delivering business value.
That's when I introduced the no asshole policy. If you're an asshole, you will not be promoted. If you act in that way, you will not be seen as a high performer. You need to be both. That was quite effective I think.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
You need to then act on it.
Sarah Nicastro:
Right.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah. That's not a thing or you'll stand behind what you say, then you need to have, when someone brings up that they have been harassed or have been in an incident or something, you need to dive into it quickly and deal with all the things that come your way then and not try to move past it.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah. I think this is an area where a lot of excuses get made in historical culture. It's, "Yes, we want to be people first and it's important to us, but this one particular person, we need to sort of make an exception," because blah, blah, blah, right?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
This was not easy. I mean it was a lot of discussion also in my management team when we did performance evaluation like, "But he's so great and then he does all of this." It was a shift. It was not easy.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah. Again, in terms of building that trust, if you come in with the aim to create this and then your actions are at odds with making that a reality, that's a problem. I want to go back to a couple of points that have been made. Trust obviously is something that we've talked about quite a bit. What have you learned about how best to build trust?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
I think that I come back to relationships all the time, but be who you are and say who you are. I mean, don't try to be something that you aren't because you will never be able to fake it in people's mind. If you are something, you will act like that. I think that self-leadership and self-knowledge is super critical. I think that if you want to lead a people first culture or lead a team, whatever team, I think you need to make sure to know what kind of culture you are actually driving or developing just by being who you are. If it is what you want it to be, then that's fine. Then you can start to talk about it, maybe there to talk about it because you feel some comfort in it. If it's not the culture that you want, then you probably need to change your behavior first. Ownership of your own behavior I think is important.
Also, for me in a people first culture, I mean I want to know my organization and I don't want to know it by PowerPoints. I want to be able to greet people and recognize them. It's getting more and more difficult the more we get, but at least meet the people in their onboarding and talk a little bit and get a connection to lower the bar for people to come to me if there's something going on that I would need to know. Getting to know people, show that you actually care if you do, if you don't, don't fake it.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah, just be there.
Sarah Nicastro:
Now we also talked about one aspect of this that people can find uncomfortable is that this really requires leaders themselves to be a bit emotional, to sort of be a bit vulnerable and tap into that. Can you talk about why there's really no way around that and what's your advice for leaders on how to sort of step out of their comfort zones?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah, I think this comes back to the sort of soft part of this as well, that you can't build a relationship based on facts. No, you don't do that. I reacted a little bit on what you talked about storytelling, how impactful it is. I think if you want to build a company culture, you need to create stories together and you need to create common memories and so on. We are back to relationships and if you want to build relationships, you need to build it on feelings. That doesn't mean that you have to be emotional in a sense that you're crying or raising your voice or whatever, not that kind of emotion, but just be aware that there are feelings all around. I mean I'm sure everybody in here has a feeling in their body at this point about something and just connect with people on that level. "You did a great job. How did you feel about it?"
Sarah Nicastro:
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Or, "I liked what you talked about, it made me feel like this." You really need to get to that level. I don't think that's soft. I mean it can be uncomfortable because you have to show who you are as well and what you are thinking or feeling about things, but you can never build a culture if you don't show who you are. You can, but it'll probably not be a positive one I think. It's just that, I mean it's not about being emotional, it is about connecting on a personal level with people's feelings, I think.
That's been a journey for me personally as well, I have to say. I had a manager in Denmark a couple of years ago when I worked there and we never connected because he was a great person, but we always talked to each other about the results, about the facts and the figures, and I was uncomfortable sharing anything else because I thought that was not what you'd do in business. We never got a connection because I didn't do it and he didn't do it. Neither of us grew because of that.
Sarah Nicastro:
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah, that end.
Sarah Nicastro:
Yeah. The other leadership element you mentioned earlier is being humble. Okay. I think this is another important one because again, I think it's representative of a shift from a more old school mentality of the leader needs to be the expert, the one that's telling people what to do, that has all of the answers, et cetera. I think in today's landscape, the likelihood that any one person can fill that role is incredibly slim, right? We just live in a world where it's a collection of a lot of different talents and areas of impact and the leader is in a lot of ways more a curator of that than the sole expert, right? You shared that example and it was impactful for your team the first time you said, "I don't know what to do, you guys tell me what you need," I think being humble in that way and admitting that can be tough. Do you have any advice on learning how to do that or any other examples where it's helped you?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
I want to make another point as well on the importance of being humble. If you want to build a culture, any culture, especially a people first culture, it's that my ambition is to have a people first culture, but that doesn't mean that I will always make the right choice, right? I'm only human and I can make mistakes and I can communicate things in a way so it doesn't make sense and it absolutely doesn't feel as a people first thing that I just did or whatever. Therefore, it is really important to me that people talk to me when they feel that. We want to get to a full on people first culture, but I don't claim to be perfect and there will be mistakes along the way.
The feedback culture, the feedback loop is so critical for us to move past obstacles that come our way and for me to learn and be better. It's not just about the organization developing and growing, I need to develop and grow as well. I think that is also important feedback and if you're not humble or willing to receive feedback, you will not get it. If you never get feedback, I think that's a red flag, why aren't you getting any feedback basically? I think that is also important and yeah, what would my advice be? Well try it and see what happens.
Sarah Nicastro:
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Support almost, I mean.
Sarah Nicastro:
I mean, that's a good point though. A lot of these things that are maybe different for people, it is a matter of just push yourself to try something different and see how it goes. I also like the idea about being willing to own your mistakes goes a long way in showing your authenticity, that you genuinely are after the mission that you've set forth, and again, building that trust, right?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah.
Sarah Nicastro:
Very good. Okay. If you were to share any additional points that we haven't touched on or any closing thoughts, what would they be?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
I would love to have a dialogue about this because I think we all have different experiences with good and bad people culture, good and bad leadership, and what have you. I think that is interesting. Happy to talk. I would say that I can give an advice, I mean if you wonder what kind of culture you are driving at the moment or impacting at the moment, go back to your core values. What are the things that are really important to you, that have basically always been important with you? You were taught this when you were a kid or by a role model at school or whatever. That is a process to get close to your core values.
If you don't really know or you aren't really sure, which is pretty common, then reflect over the things that makes you really, really mad. When something ticks you off to the end that you get really mad or frustrated about it, then you've probably met someone or something that shows the opposite of what your core value actually is. For me it's about ownership.
Sarah Nicastro:
Mm-hmm.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
It is one of them. If I talk to someone and I just hear excuses and, "He did that," or, "She did that," or, "I did not get the right things," that kind of whining, it really ticks me off because for me it's about not excusing your behaviors, but owning your behaviors and ownership is a core value that I have. You can turn that around and do some self-reflection. I think that is a good start in self-leadership and then driving culture.
Sarah Nicastro:
That's good advice. It reminds me of, I interviewed on the podcast a while back, this woman Cait Donovan, who's a burnout expert, and she has a whole keynote speech recorded on the tapping into the power of resentment. Her point is when you feel that, you need to look into what's that coming from because those are the things that ultimately will lead you to become burnout. It's same idea here, what do you find frustrating and then what does that say about the values that you hold?
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Yeah. Very good.
Sarah Nicastro:
All right. Thank you for the questions. Caroline, I believe you are going to stay with us until later this afternoon. To the questions we didn't get to, you'll be around during the morning break and during lunch, but really appreciate you coming and sharing.
Caroline Häggström Marklund:
Thank you so much.