Thought Leadership
Sponsored by Billing Finance
‘Getting you where you need to be’
In a world dominated by the need for growth, new innovations, and new strategies culture in an organisation is the binding that facilitates success.
I’ve always loved the quote ‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’ from Peter Drucker. It highlights that a powerful positive culture can be a key path to organisational success.
Throughout my working life I have found this to be the case and the quote rings as true today as it ever has. I have seen great culture in organisations drive exceptional results and I have seen poor cultures create toxic environments stagnate and damage companies.
Why do people truly connect with a brand or organisation and push themselves to go the extra mile? Conversely, why do they leave companies and swear to never go back? Splattered on LinkedIn and other platforms you will find statements about how individuals don’t leave jobs or roles; they leave bad bosses or indeed bad cultures.
If strategy is the brain of an organisation, then culture is definitely the heart. Culture represents the character and personality of an organisation. Culture embodies the values and objectives of your business and the affect that it has on your employees, your customers and your ESG metrics is enormous. It is a company’s reason for being and is impacted both positively and negatively by everything that happens in the workplace.
Great culture in business drives growth and performance, uplifts happiness and joy for employees and customers alike, impacts productivity and efficiency and attracts top talent and new customers. Poor cultures do the opposite, stagnating performance, draining productivity, losing talent and customers to competitors and worst of all making people miserable in the process.
As a noun the dictionary defines culture as
- The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively. “20th century popular culture”
- The ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society. “Afro-Caribbean culture”
At Billing Finance our culture is our not-so-secret sauce. The reason for the ‘not so’ part is our strategy is to shout it from the roof tops. ‘Getting you where you need to be’ is our mission statement; our purpose and the essence of our business. Those words encapsulate our purpose with our primary function being to lend to customers who have sub and near prime credit profiles to purchase a vehicle. Alongside the primary function our purpose also encompasses relationships and partnerships that assist that journey. From a financer broker who may need our market expertise to understand customer demographics in a cost-of-living crisis, to a customer who is looking for a vehicle to transport their family to work, school and recreation; our purpose is to help them all. Our culture enables us to make that experience world class.
‘Getting you where you need to be’ is about being kind and empathetic. At Billing Finance, we have instilled kindness and empathy among our people by coaching and rewarding those essential human characteristics. If you are our customer or our Broker, our Dealer you are our partner, and we are in it together. A great example of this is our attitude to a customer leaving us, clearly, we want long relationship and retention with customers however if a customer builds a credit profile to the point where they are eligible to enter the prime finance market, we are genuinely happy for them as we have helped them ‘get where they need to be’.
Internally at Billing Finance we don’t have an HR team we have a People and Culture team that are responsible for…. You guessed it our people and culture. This means keeping the culture at the forefront of what we are doing so we can translate that great feel and vibe to our customer and our partners.
A great business culture that translates to great customer and partner experience that facilitates growth isn’t about free snacks in a breakout room or getting a ping pong table. It’s about truly understanding people and understanding the point where individual motivation manifests into collective purpose.
That purpose is harnessed by our focus across the three key pillars of our environmental, social and governance strategies to ensure that we maintain our responsibilities to the UK economy, our people, our partners, our customers, and our planet.
Our organisation puts Culture at the heart of our core values and operates with kindness and empathy across our Why, our What and our How truly getting our people, partners, and customers ‘where they need to be’.
Main image: Ross Chambers, Director of New Business at Billing Finance
Contact details
Billing Finance Ltd
Billing House
The Causeway
Great Billing
Northampton NN3 9EX
+44 (0) 1604 402204
