Winning Together with Rolls-Royce
THE IMPACT IN NUMBERS
42,000 Global employees engaged in a new strategy and culture
Benchmark beating levels of pride despite a transformative period
Approach delivered for
1,200 Change Makers
In a nutshell
We helped revitalise performance and pride at an iconic global brand when the chips were down. Taking a collaborative approach by working closely with other agency partners, such as Teneo, and Rolls-Royce teams. We took a bottom-up approach to business transformation, helping to relaunch their vision and strategy, rebuild their culture and reengage employees through a Winning Together mindset.
The challenge
When new CEO Tufan Erginbilgiç took the wheel in 2023, he told employees that the engineering company is a “burning platform” that must transform to survive. For Rolls-Royce, a celebrated brand and beacon of engineering excellence, there were two options: slide into obscurity or rise from the ashes of the Covid-era aviation crash.
Rolls-Royce chose the latter.
Their regeneration required a complete reinvention, challenging them to redefine their culture and transform to meet their strategic ambitions. They needed advisory and tactical support to identify and embed a new purpose, rewire their behaviours, initiate change and cultivate a winning mindset.
That’s where we came in.
The response
First, we assembled our team, drawing on our collective expertise in research, strategy and behavioural science to commence with a comprehensive exploration phase. To gather input into the new purpose and behaviours, we involved Rolls-Royce employees around the world in surveys, focus groups and in-depth interviews. We worked with the Rolls-Royce team and another partner to take the insights and lay the foundation for creating and testing the new direction.
Then we partnered with Rolls-Royce’s People and Communication teams to deliver Winning Together: a campaign to start shifting behaviour, stepping up performance and igniting change. We kicked-off by framing our activity around their Capital Markets Day strategy announcement: before, our bespoke digital communications and tabloid-style newspapers built the rationale for transformation and our tailored tools supported leaders to manage change; on launch day, our interactive intranet portal drove awareness and understanding; after, our creative content further embedded the strategy.
Kicking off cultural transformation was the next challenge. We teamed up with the team and another partner, to root our work in change philosophy, with communications to help employees get it and believe it and activity to help them act on it. With Rolls-Royce’s vision of becoming a high performing, competitive, resilient and growing business at the core of everything.
Get it
We delivered a robust internal communications campaign featuring content to introduce a new purpose and set of behaviours, TV screens, posters and flyers to raise awareness and strengthen understanding across the business.
In partnership with another agency, Teneo, we helped develop content for executive-level workshops and group sessions to engage senior leaders with tailored activations.
Believe it
We supported team conversations around behavioural change to bring the new purpose to life for employees.
Act on it
We developed an approach to equip over 1,000 newly recruited change makers (behaviours advocates) to carry the desired culture to the rest of the business.
We developed a business-wide approach, and delivered a series of fun and interactive conversations, about the role employees played globally in the new purpose and behaviours, to align teams with the new culture.
Finally, we supported the redevelopment of their core employee experience research and planned a regular cadence of actionable insight to help Rolls-Royce employees keep getting it, believing it and acting on it.
The impact
The overall impact of Rolls-Royce’s ongoing strategy and culture transformation is there for all to see. They have nearly doubled their business profitability and trebled their share price in the same two years. We’re also pleased that our employee engagement surveys reflected high levels of pride and increasing engagement despite significant change, underscoring our success in connecting the past, present and future of Rolls-Royce.
Sarah Birtwistle
MD, Consulting at Ipsos Karian and Box
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Get it
We delivered a robust internal communications campaign featuring content to introduce a new purpose and set of behaviours, TV screens, posters and flyers to raise awareness and strengthen understanding across the business.
In partnership with another agency, Teneo, we helped develop content for executive-level workshops and group sessions to engage senior leaders with tailored activations.
Get it
We delivered a robust internal communications campaign featuring content to introduce a new purpose and set of behaviours, TV screens, posters and flyers to raise awareness and strengthen understanding across the business.
In partnership with another agency, Teneo, we helped develop content for executive-level workshops and group sessions to engage senior leaders with tailored activations.
We’d love to hear from you to discuss your challenges and to share our views on how we could work together to solve them.
Get in touch today to discover
what we can do for you.
GET IN TOUCH
Richard Widdowson
Managing Director Consultancy at Ipsos Karian and Box
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A MASSIVE thank you for all the time, creativity, thought, energy and passion that has gone into our new purpose and behaviours. It has been a long but really positive journey and all of you have contributed significantly. Thank you for your partnership and insight at every turn. It has been a pleasure working with you all.
Alice Hunt
Group Corporate Communications Director at Rolls-Royce
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Sean Beck
Creative Director at Ipsos Karian and Box
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A MASSIVE thank you for all the time, creativity, thought, energy and passion that has gone into our new purpose and behaviours. It has been a long but really positive journey and all of you have contributed significantly. Thank you for your partnership and insight at every turn. It has been a pleasure working with you all.
Alice Hunt
Group Corporate Communications Director at Rolls-Royce
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It’s been great to see the impact of insight at Rolls-Royce. Firstly, in shaping the new purpose and behaviours, using a bottom-up approach. Secondly, kicking off their new core EX research which is already helping Rolls-Royce chart their best course with confidence.
Richard Widdowson
Managing Director Consultancy at Ipsos Karian and Box
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It’s been great to see the impact of insight at Rolls-Royce. Firstly, in shaping the new purpose and behaviours, using a bottom-up approach. Secondly, kicking off their new core EX research which is already helping Rolls-Royce chart their best course with confidence.
Richard Widdowson
Managing Director Consultancy at Ipsos Karian and Box
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It’s been great to see the impact of insight at Rolls-Royce. Firstly, in shaping the new purpose and behaviours, using a bottom-up approach. Secondly, kicking off their new core EX research which is already helping Rolls-Royce chart their best course with confidence.
Collaboration sits at the heart of everything we do at IK&B, so it was exciting to have the opportunity to involve the full team to deliver this work holistically. From research insight, platform teams and reporting, through to strategy, creative, activation and internal comms, we brought the best of our experience and expertise to partner with the Rolls-Royce people and communications team and agency partner, delivering high-quality work together.
The Rolls-Royce brand is iconic, and it was an absolute pleasure working with the global teams that help power, protect and connect people everywhere. Feeling the culture first hand and working as a true partner allowed us to craft and communicate the transformation with intention. It was really important for us to connect the aspirational purpose statement with the iconic brand identity, giving it meaning and life into the future.
