If you wanted to know about the impact of a purpose for a business, you’d be disappointed with the amount of data and insights you can find. We have set out to find executives and business owners who lead purpose-driven businesses to dig into this impact. The following reflection is the first in a series of conversations.
We are kicking this one off with Michelle Toner, Director of Corporate Communications and Sustainability at the Irish Telecommunications giant eir.
A Brief History
eir formerly known as Telecom Éireann has a tumultuous history from privatisation through floatation in 1999; to an application of examinership in 2012 after various shareholders continued to strip the company of assets. In 2017, the company seemed to have turned a corner when French businessman Xavier Niel’s telco investment firm NJJ Telecom negotiated to acquire a majority share.
The new shareholders have brought many positive changes, most importantly the significant ongoing investment into Ireland’s broadband and mobile networks. In 2018, they also brought eir’s customer care in-house, opening care centres in Sligo, Cork, Limerick, and Waterford. However, when COVID-19 struck, these teams had to transition to remote work, a shift they were not prepared for. As a result, satisfaction ratings dropped, and they struggled to meet the growing connectivity demands of customers juggling work, school, and a health crisis at home, dealing a blow to eir’s reputation.
Due to eir’s turbulent history and the challenges faced through the pandemic, employee pride was not something eir’s people could carry into their lives outside of work. A corporate cognitive dissonance started to become clear and a solution had to be found.
Defining Eir’s purpose
At this point, Michelle and a team of directors, including Nicola Mortimer, Oisin Masterson, and Orlagh Nevin were asked to tackle the question: how can we build up employee pride again? The team were selected as senior representatives of each part of the organisation. They began their work in 2020 with an ultimate goal of restoring eir’s public reputation for the sake of the fundamentally important work employees were doing.
The team decided that defining eir’s purpose would be the best way to find an answer. Instead of hiring an external consultancy, they took on the task themselves, recognising that a clear and well-understood purpose serves as a strong focal point for the organisation.
The journey to discovering eir’s purpose began, as is often the case, by looking inward to uncover the company’s “why.” The team examined what was already in place, the role of the company in Ireland, what their people were doing, and the values that guided them. eir’s purpose was shaped by leveraging its deep understanding of Irish consumers and their evolving needs. Additionally, research highlighted that, in the wake of the pandemic, people were eager to reconnect and rebuild lost connections after a time of pause.
This understanding refined the company’s purpose: to provide telecommunications services that connect the people and businesses of Ireland to what matters most. By combining market knowledge with these insights, the team crafted a unifying purpose that serves as a rallying cry for the entire organisation.
A crucial element in this process was examining the company’s values and how they aligned with daily behaviours. The directors engaged a team of purpose-driven ambassadors, who gathered vital insights from employees across the country about what mattered to them. Through town halls, surveys, and many conversations, a core group of directors, with input from approximately 150 employees, crafted a new set of values and a purpose statement:
“Connecting for a Better Ireland”
The statement encompasses the importance of connecting that became apparent during the pandemic, from providing fundamental fibre broadband infrastructure to the human connection a customer care agent needs to have. As part of the purpose statement, the group developed a new set of values that would guide employees on how to live this purpose in the context of the company. One that was added through the work of the purpose ambassadors was ‘Pride’ which emerged as an important behaviour for employees at eir.
Integrating Purpose: Training, Communication, and more
Excavating and defining the purpose statement and corresponding values was done. Now the real work began: integrating this newfound purpose into the business. There are several ways in which the team at eir began to look at where the purpose would require updates to processes. First and foremost, the purpose was put front and centre on the company’s one-page business strategy that everyone in the company received. Employees were now able to see eir’s purpose right from the start.
Another opportunity for integration arose in the performance measurement process in which, working with their HR colleagues, the team highlighted the new set of values as important evaluation criteria across all business segments. In addition, leadership gatherings start with a focus on the purpose, and Michelle and her team evaluate partnership opportunities based on purpose alignment.
Acting on Purpose
While the new purpose made a big difference in internal processes, each strategic director had to find ways to express the company’s purpose to external stakeholders. A purpose that does not inspire action couldn’t be called such. For eir, expressing the purpose meant that the statement is foregrounded in all press releases, the performance evaluation process in the company changed, and the purpose focused conversations further evolved to a renewed focus on the eir brand.
This powerful sense of purpose, which was widely embraced across the company, became the foundation for developing a new brand platform. Following a year of research, engagement and the appointment of a new brand and marketing company the consumer division launched a new brand positioning, ‘eir for all’.
Today the work continues to find the ways to express eir’s purpose across all business units. “Connecting for a better Ireland” informs and guides strategic conversations and provides inspiration for new initiatives and campaigns.
The Results
Michelle and the team have been looking at the results of defining, integrating, and expressing eir’s purpose over the past three years and the positive impact couldn’t be more apparent. Employee engagement during the articulation stage was extremely high and after integrating the purpose across the one-pager business strategy and in the performance measurement process, more than 90% of employees said they understood eir’s strategy and their role in its delivery. In addition, the team was able to unlock additional investment at a shareholder level to support the next phase of work, focusing on aligning eir’s purpose with brand research and driving its integration into the business strategy.
The Work Continues
That’s only the start. While the initial work might have been born out of a reputation crisis and a misalignment between employee and public perception, eir’s experience in articulating their purpose has turned into a much more fundamental shift. What began as an internal challenge to restore employee pride has become a much larger conversation around reshaping company culture, processes, and even its external partnerships.
One of the main lessons that business owners and executives can draw from eir’s experience is that articulating a purpose is much more than a communications activity. A purpose, when defined properly, is a crucial lever that will fundamentally reorient an organisation’s priorities, change employee relationships with the company, and unlock the potential to engage shareholders in a much more meaningful conversation around the business’ future.
A big thank you to Michelle Toner for sharing her insights and eir’s story around purpose.