Teleperformance's Commitment to Social Mobility: A Conversation with Lisa Dolan

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Description

In this episode of Fit For Purpose, our host, Justine Greening, sits down with Lisa Dolan, the vice president of people operations and employee experience for the UK Group of Teleperformance, a global digital business services company. In this insightful conversation, Lisa shares her journey from struggling in school to finding her passion in employee engagement at Teleperformance. She emphasises the importance of creating a supportive and inclusive environment within the company, touching on initiatives for social mobility, employee recognition, and mental and physical well-being. Lisa's enthusiasm and dedication to making a difference in people's lives at Teleperformance make for a compelling and motivational discussion. So tune in to hear about the impactful work being done at Teleperformance and the inspiring career insights from Lisa Dolan.

Transcript

Justine Greening:

Welcome to this week's Fit for Purpose podcast. This week I'm really delighted to be joined by Lisa Dolan. She's the vice president of people operations and employee experience for the UK Group of Teleperformers. She's going to tell us a little bit more about what Teleperformers does shortly. But it's a global digital business services company. It's got a global scale and presence. But I think really importantly, it's part of the Purpose coalition and we're absolutely delighted to be working with Teleperformance on all of that social mobility work. Going to hear more about that in the podcast, but we first of all, welcome Lisa.

Justine Greening:

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and this journey to becoming VP of people operations and what does it mean? Tell us a little bit about Teleperformance, your role, but how you end up in it?

Lisa Dolan:

Absolutely, so I'll start from the beginning. First of all, thank you for inviting me. It's an absolute honor to be here in terms of me. So I am one of four children and I went to school and struggled all the way through school to eventually find out that I was dyslexic, went to university, did a media and communications degree at university, came out of university and thought, what on earth am I going to do? So applied for an agent position on a utilities campaign for a contact center. And the minute that I arrived in that contact center, it was like a completely new world. I've never seen or experienced anything because I'd always worked part time in retail. So I started as an agent. I then moved from the operational teams, dealing with customers face to face into the client account management teams and absolutely loved being that voice of the customer, the voice of the employees to be able to shape obviously, what our clients.

Justine Greening:

Were seeing and did we find in that environment. Lisa, and think, I really like this. It's quite busy. There's always going on color people around you.

Lisa Dolan:

Yeah, it was amazing. It was literally people were sat in this room altogether. But it was the balls, it was the energy, it was the togetherness of everybody. Everybody was so supportive of each other that I'd never really seen that in the world of work in terms of where I'd worked. And I think as I progressed my career through doing every department possible within the contact center industry, whether it be working in recruitment or training or projects or backing client teams, I just love the industry. I love the industry because of how fast paced it is. I did a very short stint out of private sector and went into public sector and I love fast paced. And it wasn't fast paced enough for me in public sector.

Lisa Dolan:

But I absolutely loved obviously the experience that I got, obviously working in that sector. I then made a change and decided, what on earth am I going to do? I took time off to have two of my children. I came back and an opportunity presented itself to me because I am, as you can probably tell, quite a bubbly and outgoing sin. An opportunity presented itself to me to be able to help improve a project around attrition and engaging with people and making people feel valued in the workplace. So I started that journey probably about ten years ago now, 910 years ago, and absolutely found my niche, found my passion. That being in the employee engagement, the experience side, making people smile, making initiatives come to life to make a difference to the way they felt, they behaved, they reacted, was something that I absolutely love doing and still love doing to this day.

Justine Greening:

Getting up every day, all that customer focus you'd love doing, but bring it almost internally to employees. And this is all at Teleperformance and probably worth telling people a little bit about what Tele performance does as a business.

Lisa Dolan:

Absolutely, yeah. So Teleperformance, as you said, is a global organization. As you mentioned, everybody will have touch base unknowingly with Teleperformance, whether you've rung your utilities or your mobile phone contract or you've rung your bank. Nine times out of ten, you've probably touched Teleperformance. So we deal with customer interactions in various different guises, whether that be via chat, whether that be via voice, whether that be via other digital means. And we're an organization of people without people, we don't have a business. So putting our people first is absolutely center to everything that we do. And nine times out of ten, everybody that works here absolutely loves that buz, loves that vibe.

Lisa Dolan:

Changed slightly since COVID because we have quite a hefty workforce still working from home, but that camaraderie is still absolutely there.

Justine Greening:

And it sounds like for you, you find this niche then, of doing employee engagement. I know every time we've talked, I can see that you really thrive on that role, actually, because it's that contact with people. And tell me a little bit about why you love it so much.

Lisa Dolan:

Yeah, so I love the fact that myself and the team that obviously works for me and the extended team can make a difference to the way somebody feels working at Teleperformance. Oh, absolutely. This is working at Teleperformance, the team can make a huge difference to everybody. Whether that's as simple as somebody that's brand new, that's coming to the door, that's come from a background that's quite challenging to come in and then feel like they've got a family network around them of support and support. From a mental health point of view, but also to be able to make people smile. To give people that opportunity to not just come into this industry, but come into teleperformance, but to progress. We have hundreds and hundreds of success stories of people coming into Teleperformance that started as an agent, that are now running sites, that are now lead trainers and because the opportunities are so vast within the industry but also within Tele performance because of our size, it's just lovely to see people progress and give them that confidence to progress as well.

Justine Greening:

I think it's brilliant. You talked about opportunities and we'll come on to almost that progression point within tele Performance, but obviously for you, social mobility really matters and I know that as a business, that outreach that you do within the communities that you touch is a big part of what you do.

Lisa Dolan:

You obviously have a lot of jobs.

Justine Greening:

And it's about that access to education, job opportunities. Tell us a little bit about some of those initiatives and that impact that tele performance has and in a sense why it matters, why you're so proud about it.

Lisa Dolan:

Yeah, absolutely. In terms of that impact on communities so globally, we have a program called Citizens of the World and that initiative is about doing the best that we possibly can as an organization, being as big as we are for communities. So whether that be going out and supporting communities within schools or within nurseries or within care homes, we do that constantly and it's something that everybody loves because it creates that sense of belonging within the organization. But what we do really well, and we've really started to accelerate, especially with the guidance of purpose, is how we create those life partnerships with partners outside of teleperformance, partners that are experts within giving people opportunities. So currently two of our five locations within the UK, we have formed affiliations now from an education point of view. School visits to going to schools to give skills for the world of work to year ten students to give people.

Justine Greening:

The opportunities of project skills and present.

Lisa Dolan:

Back to us to have the opportunity to come in and do apprenticeships with us. So there's that side of things that we want to do to support and especially support in areas within obviously the radius of our locations where it may not be as much of an affluent area and we want to give everybody the same opportunity to be able to thrive in the workplace. So there's lots and lots of stuff that we're working on. What we want to absolutely do is we're working with part of the DWP, the connected with the sector based academy programs that they have to be able to make sure we're really helping to give our younger generation the qualifications and the skills that they need to thrive in work. And we're working not just from a school point of view, but we're then working with lone parents, single parents, to offer those shift patterns between ten and two in order to give them the flexibility, but that they can. Still come back into the world of work and working on plans for people with disabilities based on those with really severe disabilities that can't leave their homes. Well, we have work at home, so it opens up an avenue of opportunities for people that never thought they could work for this industry, within this industry, by us giving them the tools and the skills in order to be able to do that. So it's amazing the work that we're doing, it's going to accelerate even more as we move into 2024 and our main focus is how we set people up for success as we move into the latter part of 24.

Justine Greening:

Because I guess there's one thing about doing a brilliant job as you are, and it's fantastic that you're looking at.

Lisa Dolan:

How you do more to sort of.

Justine Greening:

Create that bridge, frankly, for someone to be able to get an opportunity who.

Lisa Dolan:

Perhaps had thought, I just don't know.

Justine Greening:

What I can do or whether I can do anything, and all of that. But there's one thing doing that and then there's another thing having the right supportive environment, isn't there? So presumably you talked about your role in teleperformance itself is to make sure that once people get into the business, as you say, it really does feel like a supportive family. That means they can genuinely thrive.

Lisa Dolan:

Yeah, absolutely. And I think when I look, because I constantly within the world of work, will reevaluate based on if I was a new person coming into the business, how would I see this experience? So we're constantly tweaking and taking that feedback through from our employees as to how we can make a difference and actually how we make a difference to our generations in the way they want to see it because it only takes you the time. Oh, absolutely. And also as well, because we have quite a few so a few people that have worked with us for 20 plus years that are coming to the end of their careers. But actually what we can do is we can say, well, it doesn't need to be the end of your career because we've got options and flexibility and we can make accommodations for you to if you wished for you to decide to continue to work for us. So that's why we're focusing on each of our demographics that we have within the organization, but also tailoring our approach based on their wants, their needs and how they want to progress, obviously their careers within Teleperformance as well.

Justine Greening:

And that means, doesn't it, that I think what's really interesting to me because it's easy to talk about social mobility and think we're just talking about young people, but actually it's about opportunity right the way through your life. And it's worth saying that part of this flexibility that you've built in, whether actually it's for single moms or carers, or whether it's actually for somebody who really is at that age where they've retired, but it turns out they don't want to just not do anything, they want to actually keep going. I can really relate to that because I think I'm someone who I'll always.

Lisa Dolan:

Need to keep busy.

Justine Greening:

That means your span of age is huge, isn't it? It's probably worth just explaining that to people who are watching.

Lisa Dolan:

Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I know we've spoken a couple of times, haven't we? And we've mentioned this. So we absolutely have five generations working side by side every day. So our youngest employee is 17, who came straight out of school and got a job with us. And our oldest employee is 84. She's just heard 84. So each of those individuals and the people in between all want different things, all need different things, all need different levels of support.

Justine Greening:

And we give that support.

Lisa Dolan:

We give that support based on the needs of our employees. Because without our employees, we don't have an organization, we don't have a business. So our employees are what make the revenue for our business and without them, then we have no revenue. So they absolutely are our priority and absolutely their health, their well being and how they feel. Working at Teleperformance is at the top of our agenda always.

Justine Greening:

And so let's kind of talk about some of the things that you actually do, then almost bring your role alive. So a lot of people and the thing about careers is, who would have known that there's a role that you're doing that's all around employee engagement and all of that. Some of the things that you might be doing in a typical week, typical month to help make sure you've got that inclusion that you want, give people what that can evolve for you.

Lisa Dolan:

Oh my goodness, where do I start? So we could talk for hours about all of this, because again, hugely, hugely passionate about it. So it's everything from recognizing and showing gratitude to our employees, which is absolutely top at the agenda in terms of making sure that everybody gets a thank you, making sure that everybody's recognized for the work they do, no matter how small. So we have a recognition program that awards and recognizes and gives everybody the opportunity to nominate their colleagues, but also recognizes people for what they do in the community, what they do about going above and beyond, what they do. And feedback that comes through from our clients and our customers and also those that we have. One award category. That's called caring people. Because without kindness, without caring people in our society, then we'd absolutely be at ODS in terms of just that rhythm and that kindness element. So that's one aspect which is huge for us, keeping spirits high, which is always a big thing for us as a team in terms of making sure that we have dedicated groups and channels where people can form smaller communities.

Lisa Dolan:

So we have many different community network groups that have been formed. Whether it be community group that we have called disability, which is people with disabilities or want to be part of that network because they associate or want to be an ally to somebody with a disability, they all come together every single month. And we've got the same for menopause and more. We've got the same for TP women, we've got the same for TP men, we've got an ethnicity one, we've got culture corner, you name it, we absolutely have it. And it's amazing because those groups are led by our people for the people and then they have exec sponsors in there to be able to help them. So that's one of the elements that we look at and that we support on. And then the third element is then all around health and well being, how we keep people physically, emotionally and mentally healthy. Because if we've not got that then we won't thrive in the workplace.

Lisa Dolan:

So we have webinars for well being, we have subscriptions to mindfulness apps that we have, we have sessions, yoga sessions, fitness sessions, we have the ten at ten every Monday, which is just ten minutes of mindfulness for people to get their headspace right. You name it, we've absolutely got it. And there's so much opportunity and we take ideas and listen to our employees and that's how we then push and drive some of that with the executive team being part of those sessions as well, which is always really great because our people absolutely come up with the ideas as to what they would like. We make it happen and our executive team then support that as well. So it's amazing, really amazing.

Justine Greening:

I think it's really interesting because it genuinely sees teleperformance as a community, first of all, of a community of people and therefore actually you end up with these groups within the community who have particular interests, like any community and bringing them together. And when you look ahead, I mean obviously there's the work that you do in communities outside of teleperformance, there's the opportunities within and everyone, that's part of the actual business itself. Looking ahead, where do you think you take this next? I mean, obviously a big part of our work with you and having you part of the purpose guarantee is helping to shape all of that thinking, that opportunity, but where would you ideally like to see it go? What are you really excited about when you think about where you can take things?

Lisa Dolan:

Absolutely the future priorities of tele performance as we think about 24 and 25 are how we take the foundations that we have and how we grow them. But we grow them with partnerships, with the experts, as we were saying, those individuals, also those organizations that can open doors for us in order to better support our employees. So by that I mean things like for example, if we hold open days within our contact centers and our sites, that actually those open days are for people to come in and get jobs. But actually we bring a hub of providers in that can help give them that support, whether it be work clothes that people would need or whether it would be food tokens that people would need or whether it would be transport requirements that we bring all of those experts together in order to give the best possible experience. So that's absolutely on our to do list. And an actual commitment for 2024 that we're going to do. We're going to do with one of our key lines of business in terms of where else obviously we see the priorities is we as an organization understand that every single person is an individual. And it's understanding how we set everybody up for success.

Lisa Dolan:

And actually as soon as somebody comes into the organization as a new employee, how do we make sure they're going to thrive in the workplace place but get the best possible outcome for them. Not everybody will want to progress, not everybody will want to take part in the employee engagement activities that happen. But it's about making sure that there's a balance between what people want, what people need and also that enrichment side of things as well. So focusing on our community groups, focusing on how we leverage our partnerships with Disability Confident Employer Award or with the Arms Force Covenant that we've pledged to, or whether it be with Henpex that we were going through our menopause accreditation to be a Menopause friendly. We've got lots and lots of partnerships that are forming that will help strengthen our proposition and also strengthen our employee brand to why somebody should come and join teleperformance versus joining a competitor within the same area.

Justine Greening:

And if you were talking to somebody about obviously all of this great work that Teleperformance does and someone was thinking this feels quite interesting actually, I think this might be a sector that I didn't really know much about but sounds good to me. What advice would you give to people who are thinking about a career in this sort of organization?

Lisa Dolan:

Yeah, absolutely. Being really honest, if I could have my time again, I'd have not gone to university, I would have immediately have joined this industry because the career progression opportunities are so vast and the opportunities within this industry are endless. So every day is different. You meet amazing people from all different backgrounds. The diversity of the teams that you work with is mind blowing in terms of you're constantly learning on your day to day. It's the old phrase of every day is a school day. Absolutely it is. In this industry, people are developed, people are given the opportunities.

Lisa Dolan:

If you are hungry and determined and you want to succeed, you can succeed and move up the ladder very quickly within this industry. And that's where I think somebody looking to come into the industry or even to decide to join Teleperformance. Culturally it's very different to places that have worked before in the fact that everybody does look out for everybody. Everybody does work as one team. They do absolutely put people at the forefront of everything that we're doing. They do put employee engagement and experience at the forefront. And I know that because obviously I'm the one that's driving it for the team in the UK. And it does absolutely every so we have a strap line, each interaction matters.

Lisa Dolan:

For teleperformance, the way I see it is every interaction absolutely makes a difference to somebody's day that we have within teleperformance. So that's what we always strive for. If I can go home at the end of every day and log off and I have made a difference to somebody, made them smile, made people feel recognized, I've absolutely done my job brilliant.

Justine Greening:

It's really inspiring. And so, final three quick five questions to close. Lisa, first of all, best piece of advice ever received, what would she say?

Lisa Dolan:

Oh, yes. So I would say my best piece of advice is don't try and please others every day. You need to choose to be good, nice and kind. First of all to yourself and then to the people that you meet. Because kindness has that ripple effect that it's something that everybody can do, it doesn't cost anything, everybody can choose to be kind. So that absolutely is the best advice. Definitely.

Justine Greening:

Brilliant. Next one is proudest career moment.

Lisa Dolan:

That's a really tough one, I'd probably say. It was when I realized and moved from a project driven work to be force of good in terms of putting the right and driving the right initiatives within the workplace for employee engagement and experience, seeing the impact that positive act can have on the way somebody feels, behaves, reacts, it comes alive. It's like the age old saying from Maya Angelo, which is people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget the way you made them feel. And I see that every single day and I feel that every day. People tell me that every day, which is really good. And that's the culture that we absolutely want within teleperformance.

Justine Greening:

And final question slightly more random, if you've got a favorite book, favorite movie, what is it?

Lisa Dolan:

So I do. So I have a favorite movie, which absolutely is Mary Poppins. I am a huge Mary Poppins fan. It reminds me of being a child and that everybody should be open to a little bit of magic and being imaginative and creative in their thoughts.

Justine Greening:

Even as an adult?

Lisa Dolan:

Oh, absolutely, as an adult. And then my favorite book is I remember reading it at school doing English literature, and it's a book called Pygmalion, which others would know as My Fair Lady, as the film version. And the reason why is, the way I see it is it's the view that anything is possible, that it's not about where you come from or your background, but with the right level of an individual's potential and their personal growth, anything's possible for anybody to do and to succeed in. So that's why that's my favorite book.

Justine Greening:

Brilliant. And a great point on which to start. And I think your point about how you make people feel mattering so much ties absolutely back to everything that you do every day, really. It's high performance. We're so delighted to have you as part of the purpose ocean, because I think that Ethos. Can spread far and wide, actually, through working more collectively. So Lisa Dolan, vice president of people operations and employee experience at Teleperformance. Thanks so much for doing the podcast.

Justine Greening:

It's been an absolute pleasure and a brilliant one.

Lisa Dolan:

Thank you. No, you're very welcome. And thank you for having me.