Overview
Pepper Money is an award-winning specialised mortgage lender based in the UK, and part of the global Pepper Financial Services Group.
In 2021, they completed the acquisition of Cardiff-based company Optimum Credit. But the M&A process had revealed a series of cultural challenges – the existing cultures at Pepper and Optimum, whilst on paper looking very similar, in reality had very different ways of working and cultural norms. Applying the global group’s values wouldn’t resonate or solve the challenge for the newly merged UK business.
In order to make their acquisition of Optimum a lasting success, Pepper Money needed a cultural integration strategy – a way to bridge the gap between the two existing company cultures.
Threading that needle wouldn’t be straightforward. The goal of the merger was to integrate Optimum Credit with Pepper Money, and so there needed to be a strong thread of consistency between them and the wider group.
That meant they needed to dig deep into the current cultures at both Pepper and Optimum, understand where they were similar and where they diverged, and develop new behaviours, ways of working and cultural priorities that would knit the new entity together.
Our approach
Our work with Pepper Money followed our award-winning 3-stage culture change methodology. Here’s how that looked in practice.
With two very different workplace cultures at play, understanding the lived realities of both Optimum and Pepper Money was a crucial first step to unpacking the complexity of their challenge.
We engaged with senior leadership and employee teams at both Pepper Money and Optimum Credit to really get under the skin of both cultures, encouraging openness and honesty in every interview, focus group and survey.
To focus these discussions, we developed a bespoke Cultural Assessment Framework. This enabled us to:
After the Insight phase, we facilitated two senior leadership workshops to validate the conclusions we’d drawn, and agree on a cultural change journey that would better align both businesses.
That journey resulted in the Pepper Way: a set of 4 cultural principles that would shape the culture of Pepper Money UK, whilst retaining alignment with the Pepper Group’s global values. These principles could underpin the culture of the new, post-M&A business, and help to create a more consistent thread between behaviours and ways of working between legacy Optimum Credit and Pepper Money.
To cement the Pepper Way, we created a culture narrative to link up the past of both companies with their present dynamic and their future strategic goals.
We also designed a practical framework of expected behaviours that translated the culture into day-to-day situations. This also included the essential FCA regulation requirements, which would help Pepper Money guarantee a compliance culture across the business.
Finally, we helped Pepper Money identify anywhere that policies, processes, governance or work practices could be changed to better align with the new cultural principles. As well as reinforcing the Pepper Way, this also helped redesign the employee experience – a critical factor in attracting and retaining talent in the future.
Once Pepper Money’s redefined culture was ready to launch, we worked with their HR, leadership and management teams to embed the Pepper Way as a lived reality.
We co-faciliated Team-Based Embedding workshops at scale. During these sessions we:
Since launching their new culture, Pepper Money has seen its positive impact right across the business.
Employee Morale is higher than ever
Values are embedded in the everyday
Communications and development pathways have improved
What the clients said
How to get started
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