Clarios celebrates 5 years on the Slovak market as an independent brand. Its local financial center revamped an outdated service mentality to utilise culture despite pandemic lockdowns.
No doubt we were in troubled waters when we separated from Johnson Controls just months before the pandemic locked us all down. We made a tough decision to rewire ourselves from within by understanding that even a good unbundling strategy was not enough. A company’s culture eats strategy for lunch. Culture was our first and foremost objective. We dared to be different from other centers by not only providing good service but being good business partners that can think one step ahead.
What were the fundamentals of this cultural change?
The technical competence of our people was the first goal to meet. It went hand in hand with the sense of belonging. No school or university, local or global can make you ready for this. First, we invested in the automation of all mundane processes to give our teammates time and space to develop personally. Second, we made sure everyone had their skills measured against the ideal business partnership model and career growth plan tailored to meet the criteria. Third, we developed our own state-of-the-art Finance Academy to teach the craft of technical excellence and empathetic communication.
Sounds very rational, but how did you overcome status quo bias?
You can’t have culture without a conscious narrative so at the very beginning we defined and visualized what our team should be proud of following up on the richness of one hundred-plus years of making batteries, even though we do not process them in Bratislava. We started with a rich community program concentrated on building relationships across departments, charity work, and a sense of helping the wider community. We also worked on building awareness of green strategies, which is aligned to our goal of manufacturing zero emission energy solutions worldwide. Our teammates like to spend time together, which moves mountains. Our cultural shift was noticed on a global scale in Clarios so new interesting global roles are moving to Bratislava as we speak.
This article has been brought to you by Clarios.
