Best embodiment of corporate purpose

Lloyds Banking Group has an ambition to become a truly purpose-driven organisation, by bringing its long-standing purpose Helping Britain Prosper to life in ways that benefit society and create a better, more sustainable business. However, to achieve such an impact, the bank realised that there needed to be greater clarity on what its purpose meant and how that could be translated into daily decision-making.

To achieve this, Lloyds Banking Group decided to focus on the biggest societal issues that the country is facing where it can drive significant positive impact while achieving profit with purpose through its core business, innovative solutions and cross-group collaborations.

Working with purpose agency Given, Lloyds Banking Group first sought to understand what its purpose meant to its employees and its customers. It launched the biggest purpose conversation in its history. Using online surveys and workshops, together with face-to-face interviews, Given gathered thousands of perspectives from across the banking group, including all its 300 senior leaders.

It also engaged 2,500 retail and banking customers in the conversation. More than 100 customers participated in six co-creation workshops, alongside more than 50 stakeholders.

These discussions revealed what Helping Britain Prosper really meant to all the bank’s stakeholders, which led to its new purpose-driven mission: We help Britain prosper by creating a more sustainable and inclusive future for people and businesses – shaping finance as a force for good.

This mission underpins the corporate purpose, providing it with substance, while also setting out the role that Lloyds Banking Group wants to play in the world and how it can get there.

To ensure that its mission stood for more than just words on a wall, Lloyds Banking Group worked with Given to hardwire its purpose and values into its systems and processes, to help the organisation make decisions differently. For example, committee templates, policies and design frameworks all now incorporate purpose, making sure that all decisions are weighed up against that.

Immersive workshops with senior leaders helped them to practice purpose-driven decision making using live scenarios, which led to a six-point uptick in engagement metrics. But to softwire purpose into the hearts and minds of all colleagues, tools, such as ‘session in a box’, were created, which allows anybody within the bank to run purpose-decision making sessions.

But Lloyds Banking Group also recognised that it had to be seen to make tough decisions, which demonstrated its purpose in action. It subsequently became the first British bank to stop direct financing to new oil and gas exploration projects. Working with new strategic charity partner Crisis, it has called for one million additional social and affordable homes and is now working with other partners to unlock supply. Through its new division Citra Living, Lloyds is expanding the availability of rental homes and has launched Citra Pathways to help more people onto the property ladder through shared ownership.

It is also launching strategic partnerships and convening other industry players to pilot solutions to create greener infrastructure and real estate, such as Local Low Carbon Accelerator, while engaging with local authorities to identify opportunities to drive regional regeneration.

But the bank has also not forgotten its customers and is proactively supporting them through the cost-of-living crisis and helping them to rebuild and improve their financial resilience.

The judges described the entry as demonstrating ‘real commitment, with some good first starter actions’, adding: ‘This is a brilliant example of inside out thinking to build an authentic brand purpose, aligning everyone from chairman to retail staff and then building externally.’