Sarah Davies heads up the Customer Services team at Oliver Bonas. She has led the team through much change as well as rapid growth in the last couple of years. Before joining Oliver Bonas, Sarah led teams providing great service in a variety of industries across private, government and charity sectors.
I asked Sarah what soul means to her…
SD: I think there’s a daytime soul and a night-time soul. It’s about where you are ‘at’ in your head, it’s not a static thing. Fundamentally, it’s about what drives you, the meaning of what you do, more than just the money.
Business can have its own soul, which is very much driven from the top. The best businesses are ones that allow people to bring their own soul to work. This is because what drives one person is not the same as what drives the next. So as long as you give people a framework, they can easily adapt it themselves to get to the goal. It’s not the money, it’s about making sure the customer can feel that soul when they do business with us.
Where we work there is such a strong ethos. Our people will all respond to customers their own way. If you allow people to flourish, so long as you’ve got open communication, they can achieve things you never dreamt were possible.
There does need to be a balance between personal freedom and some structure of course. Autonomy is a key word, to give people the freedom to make decisions. As a leader, we can ask questions such as “What would you want in this situation?” or “What would your family want?” to explore what really drives people.
Unfortunately, the bigger the business the greater the risk of things becoming quite corporate and disconnected. And big businesses can lose the sense of who they are, and ultimately their soul.
NB: Can you share an example of a business that you feel does have soul?
SD: Oliver Bonas is a great example of a company with soul, for example the level of open communication we have. Right up to the most senior leaders and owners.
They talk about values all the time, and you know they genuinely believe it. It’s not just trite nonsense on a poster on a wall. When they talk to people, they come through the office and genuinely want to know how people are doing, what is happening in the business and what Iessons they can take away and act on.
At Oliver Bonas, we have three values:
1. Work hard
2. Play hard
3. Be kind
These values really do come through, we talk about them a lot. Pretty much every communication has some version in it. In bigger organisations you often lose that focus. I can’t tell you what some of my previous company values were, but I know the Oliver Bonas values by heart. I’m never going to lose that.
Kindness is a word we use a lot at Oliver Bonas. It’s also something we think should extend far beyond our day-to-day, affecting people who don’t directly work or shop with us. With the COVID challenge, we’ve been offering 25% off to our NHS, police, emergency services, armed forces, carers in social care and teachers. We’ve also been sending care parcels to the loved ones of our own team who are working on the frontline. As well as NHS and social care organisations.
UK Youth are our Be Kind Charity Partner and a number of our products will be sold in aid of UK Youth across this 2-year partnership. We love to spread the kindness as far as possible. As well as our work with larger charities, we are also keen to support charities and schools local to our stores.
Part of the uniqueness of our environment is that you need to be open to being an ambassador of our values. People who don’t want to work this way don’t stay here too long. We have a high number of people who’ve been here 10 years+, even though we’ve only been around for 25 years. Everyone is expected to be champions of the values, top to bottom. Everyone is expected to embody and embrace the essence of who we are: Work hard, play hard and be kind.
NB: What do you do to maintain soul – in yourself and your business?
SD: I never stop asking questions of myself, the industry, suppliers, and the teams I work with in every situation. This helps us to keep evolving to fix the problems and answer the questions we are faced with every day.
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