For Danielle Harmer, Chief People Officer at Aviva, culture quite simply means: “The way we do things around here – especially when no-one is watching.”

There have been plenty of eyes on Aviva throughout the years – the insurer can trace its origins back to London at the end of the 17th century, having undergone numerous evolutions throughout the course of its history. 

Today, Aviva counts 23,000 employees across its operations in the UK, Ireland and Canada, offering various financial products and policies across its insurance, investments, retirement and health insurance businesses.

Having joined the insurer in early 2020, Harmer describes her role as “being accountable for helping Aviva to be better through its people.” 

In practice, this means she is responsible for Aviva’s people and creating an inclusive culture that enables employees to perform while keeping the focus on the organisation’s customers. 

Luckily, she has a leadership team that supports these core tenants of the business – led by the formidable CEO, Dame Amanda Blanc.

“I have to say that it’s rather wonderful when you have somebody around you – and I would say this of the whole leadership team – that is brilliant about doing the right thing for people. Everyone understands that the business is its people,” Harmer explains.

“Amanda is smart, but she’s also incredibly human. That’s what we’re talking about here; just being human with people. 

It makes your job so much easier when the CEO, the leadership and the board understand that at the end of the day, we’re only as good as our people.”

Creating a culture of care

Danielle Harmer, CPO at Aviva

Inclusion forms a key tenant for creating a culture of care at Aviva.

In this arena, Harmer highlights the scale the insurer possesses to ensure there is “something for everyone”, both from an inclusion perspective and regarding career development opportunities.

“I want to widen the doors so that people want to come and join us,” she says.

Harmer is one of the executive sponsors of Pride at Aviva and says she has been “very privileged” to support the LGBTQ+ community, having been named as an ‘OUTstanding’ LGBTQ+ ally by the Financial Times.

However, she is also quick to highlight the work done by “people who’ve previously led the charge” in this space.

“When I talk to people in the LGBTQ+ community about things like opposition to Pride and us being out there to support it…they feel like it will be okay, they will be safe within our company,” she details.

“Let’s remember, this is a community where sometimes people don’t feel welcome.” 

Looking after employee wellbeing is “at the heart of culture” at Aviva, Harmer states, with a group of employees that “want to do the right thing and look after each other.”

She points out that one of the best indicators of employees who love their workplace, are engaged and want to stay is having a boss that cares about them. Therefore, it is vital to see employees as “more than what you do at work.”

“We understand that life is made up of work and ‘not work’, and that really matters,” she adds.

This foundation has helped build a high-performance culture where people want to do well and enjoy their success, Harmer details, creating an “energy around recognition” and what can be achieved.

“It can be hard to see it when you are in it, but I have a sense of people being excited about what Aviva can achieve,” she explains.

“How we’ve done that is being clear about our purpose and strategy; everybody in the organization understanding that we are successful if we work together and what their role is in helping Aviva be successful.”

Adapting to new challenges

Life at Aviva didn’t begin in either a calm or usual fashion for Harmer as CPO. 

She joined in February 2020, shortly before the country entered its first COVID-19 lockdown when employers and employees alike were forced to adapt to full remote working.

This meant initial goals of getting to know the company and its people had to evolve: “When I first started, I said I needed to visit every site in the UK within six months and every site globally within the year,” she explains.

“I clearly couldn’t do that, so I was working with the comms team to understand what’s going on, and engage with people and keep them happy in a smart way.”

Another factor at play was that Harmer was new to the insurance sector, having previously worked in banking “pretty much my whole career” with institutions such as Barclays, Metro Bank and Lloyds Banking Group.

The starting point of adaptability means being “commercial first”, in understanding how the organization operates and what helps it to be successful.

“Then you overlay your expertise about people interventions that can help achieve that success,” she says.

“If you’re not starting with what is it the business needs, what’s the strategy the customers need and then going into the people side – interesting approaches to people leadership and management, talent and succession – how do you know they’re the right ones for the business?”

One of the key elements Harmer has taken from the banking world is that the employees closest to the customer are “brilliant at understanding what customers want and that’s ultimately what we’re here for.”

“As long as you ensure you can hear them, engage with them and that their voice gets through,” she says.

Effecting change through the people function

The hard work of affecting change for both the business and its people then got underway. First on the agenda were “some of the basics”, as Harmer puts it. 

She explains that performance management had been taken out of the business prior to her arrival and that her task was to “put some of the wiring back in” to better correlate business performance with people performance.

“Aviva is a wonderful business but we might have lost sight of that a little bit organizationally,” Harmer adds.

She describes the process as “fascinating”. Employees were working fully remotely during the lockdown period, but Harmer says the “whole organization just embraced it – they wanted to know how they were doing, wanted to have those types of conversations with their boss.”

At the same time the company’s in-house learning platform, Aviva University, was established, to curate online learning materials in a “sensible” way.

Aviva’s HR technology was also due a refresh, starting with decluttering its existing stack.

“We got rid of some of those peripheral systems, so the number of HR systems was reduced dramatically,” she explains. 

“The way we’re using and leveraging channel technology now is much more sensible.”

Harmer explains that alongside updating the infrastructure of how Aviva used Workday more effectively, it also implemented ServiceNow to enhance simplicity of use.

“Workday is our default,” she details. “We start with – is it available on Workday, do we need it and which system integrates well with Workday? Simple things, like single sign-on for Workday, that actually really make a difference to people using these systems.”

Aviva is also preparing to implement Microsoft’s generative AI assistant, Copilot, later in the year and is currently training towards roll out across the organization “because we all know automation and AI is about doing the heavy lifting, and the people skills are becoming more about being human.”

The push and pull of future needs

Much like any HR leader worth their salt, Harmer is also looking towards the future of work and Aviva’s needs.

She describes these needs as a “push and pull” dynamic, where both the needs of the overall business and personal development needs must be considered.

While things like training on Gen AI forms part of this dynamic, it’s also about developing broader data and technology skills across the business through an initiative dubbed ‘The Foundry’.

“So far, we’ve moved around 50 people from customer-focused and customer service roles, and equipped them to be able to do roles like software engineer or digital data roles, because every organization knows they need more of those skills,” Harmer explains.

Aviva has also taken steps to aid the growth of its wealth business through the foundation of a Wealth Academy, upskilling more employees to be able to offer wealth advice to customers – “that’s an example of business pull and demand.” 

When you’ve got the people that care about your organization and understand your ethos, customer and culture, giving them skills is the easy bit.”

Talent acquisition is another item on the agenda for Aviva’s future. 

The insurance sector often struggles to attract new blood compared to industries that young people are more familiar with or are perceived to offer more dynamic careers.

Harmer explains that Aviva began engaging with schools in the areas in which it is “quite big in the community” and improving its colleague value proposition – using real employee stories – to better demonstrate the breadth of its talent offering.

“For young people and school leavers, it’s generally not a product that they need to engage with,” she explains, pointing out that sectors like banking or hospitality are far more familiar to people first entering the workforce.

“One of the amazing things about insurance is because it’s actually quite complex; we can offer amazing careers.”

But, again, this comes back to “widening the doors” as much as possible to attract the best talent and subsequently look after them as employees. 

Then, Harmer concludes, it’s about making sure they “understand absolutely” what Aviva stands, the part they play in the business and what it delivers for customers.

“That’s our job as a leadership team.”