How Samaritans’ training is transforming customer support and colleague wellbeing at Standard Life

The challenge:

Standard Life has been trusted to look after people’s life savings and retirement needs for nearly 200 years and are proud of their consistently high level of service.

Their commitment to delivering robust training to staff is vital to their delivery of exceptional customer experiences. Standard Life recognised that colleagues were at times struggling to move on from difficult conversations and events at work and this was impacting their wellbeing.

Understanding that some calls can be challenging for colleagues, they wanted to equip them with the skills required to manage these difficult conversations and their own wellbeing more effectively.

The solution:

Following a successful charity partnership with Samaritans, Standard Life engaged the charity and worked with them to create a bespoke resilience training programme.

From the partnership, Standard Life knew that Samaritans had over 70 years’ experience of supporting others and were best placed to help them better support colleagues. Working together to understand Standard Life’s organisational needs, the training programme focussed on effective “de-briefs” after challenging conversations.

The training focussed on supporting colleagues to develop their own resilience in order to improve their overall wellbeing and mitigate rising levels of absence linked to these difficult conversations and the high emotional toll they can take.

The course shared practical tips and ways to spot the signs of stress or lower levels of resilience in yourself and others and how to deal with this. It also emphasised the importance of talking and not taking concerns home with you. This was brought to life through shared experiences across the group which resonated well with colleagues.

The impact:

The Samaritans trainer was engaging and passionate and ensured that everyone in the training group was included and involved throughout.

Colleagues who attended the training said they found it beneficial and that it helped them discover new ways of coping during periods of heightened emotional anxiety or stress.

They felt better equipped to manage difficult conversations and discovered new ways to effectively de-brief after the sessions, so they are not taking problems or worries home with them at the end of the day.

Standard Life were delighted with the training delivered by Samaritans as it achieved all key objectives, and colleagues are seeing the benefit at work.