ING Direct Canada CEO Peter Aceto on Engagement

Incentive online columnist Roy Sanderson, founder and president of the Recognition Management Institute, recently spoke with Peter Aceto, president and CEO of ING Direct Canada, about his own as well as his company’s employee recognition and leadership engagement philosophy, one of the banking firm’s cornerstones of success.

Peter Aceto: I work for a public company, and even more difficult, a financial services company in a regulatory environment that is changing. So yes, I have every bit of the same pressures in terms of results that any business has. I’ve got rigorous profit targets, costs targets, and growth targets.  

But the thing about employee engagement is I do absolutely believe that companies with the most engaged employees are the companies that perform over the long run. I truly believe that. The thing I can control is employee engagement, so I need to make sure that is high. We have to be better than our competition if everyone gives us 110 percent. 

PA: I actually spend an inordinate amount of my time on this particular matter. I do spend a fair bit of my time connecting with people at all different levels of the organization. 

Of course, there is the team that reports Directly to me, and we have the typical one-on-one and team meetings. It is very important to me that I have regular meetings with the direct reports of the people who report directly to me. 

 

I also have regular town halls with departments. We all need to have lunch, so we’ll just sit in a room, bring our lunch, and talk about the business. It is a great way for me to share information with employees at all levels, on a more intimate basis, about what is going on in the organization. I can learn an awful lot from them about what they know about the organization, and I can judge how well their managers are doing in terms of our philosophy. We believe that every one of our employees needs to know as much about our business as possible, whether it appears relevant to his or her specific job or not.  

 

It is my belief that if you have the right people, and if they know everything possible about your organization and are empowered enough that they can actually take action, they will do a much better job than if you just tell them the 10 things they need to do. The key to that is they need to understand the business so that they can think. And that is why my team and I spend an inordinate amount of time making sure that our leaders and all of our associates understand what is going on in our business.  

 

PA: I have obviously a lot to share and a lot of passion. I also want to show that to the leaders of the organization, and many of them got it from the very beginning, about what it means to be a leader at ING Direct. Being a passionate leader and being able to explain a vision to employees that inspires and motivates them is part of the job. 

Now it doesn’t mean you have to be the kind of person that stands up on a table and waves their arms around, like I do. There are plenty of people on our team who are much quieter. They prefer to do it on a one-on-one basis, or with a group of five people. And you have to be real; it has to be authentic, you can’t fake it.

So this is something that is in all the discussions I have with people in leadership roles, which we have on a regular basis, and certainly the people that report to me. Performance evaluations even have a leadership and cultural component, where we actually evaluate behavior in accordance with the values of the organization. 

And, most recently, we have added some structure to it called the Leadership Blueprint, which is actually writing down the competencies, the things that are unique to being a leader at ING Direct, and then providing coaching, mentorship, and even curriculum to help people strengthen these pillars. We are actually going to be building these into performance appraisals and systems for how our people get feedback about their performance, particularly with regard to a leadership role.  

PA: It is hot off the press for us in terms of really applying some resources to making sure we are driving this throughout the organization.

Let me begin by saying that when we say leadership, what we call the Leadership Blueprint, it doesn’t just apply to people who have leadership titles; it actually applies to every single person in the organization. So you could be an associate, but you are a leader, too; maybe it’s a leader of yourself, but it certainly applies. And the key attributes that we have decided, the ones we really want to focus on, are ones you typically expect, like a leader at ING Direct should be results-oriented. A leader at ING Direct should focus on the customer; a leader at ING Direct should build high-performing teams. But the other thing that I think is really important to us too is maintaining an entrepreneurial spirit, so leaders at ING Direct have to behave like entrepreneurs, not bureaucrats.

And the last one—and I will argue may be the most important one when we are talking about leadership—is the development of self and others. Leaders at ING Direct need to be self-evaluating; they need to always be aware of what their strengths and weaknesses are and be willing to be self-improving. But, also, there is a huge role in developing others in the organization, and that is something I particularly enjoy being a part of and watching—people who have lots of energy and desire given the opportunity to grow and try new things. 

                                                                                                                                 

PA: It is slightly more than 50 percent of my day. I spend maybe 30 percent of my day doing stuff that’s, let’s say, “anti-social,” like reading memos, writing documents, reading presentations. But pretty much every other interaction is relationship building.  

I do not conduct meetings as taught. Yes, I have agendas, and yes, you need to stay on time, but I also enjoy the camaraderie of the first five minutes of the meeting and connecting with the people in the room. I love learning about people. 

For example, our Ottawa call center received an award [2010 Contact Centre of the Year by the Ottawa Regional Contact Centre Association]. They had a party, and I actually flew out to spend time with 100 people in Ottawa and see how proud they were and to learn about their families and career aspirations. 

I think it is very, very fundamental connecting with people at all levels of the organization. I am lucky in that I actually enjoy it. That’s the person I am. It is not hard work for me. But I think it is a very important investment. Relationship building is very, very important for me. 

PA: We regularly have a variety of surveys and get tangible results that we can act on. And these are updated regularly. We take it very seriously; the leaders of each of the business lines are held accountable for their results on a regular basis.

Just to add to that, there is a risk to all this survey activity. If you ask employees to tell you the truth about what is going well and what is not going well, that is great, but they do expect for that effort they are going to get something. And if they tell you what’s wrong, they expect that you are going to be honest with them and tell them the cumulative view of what is wrong, and then they expect you to do something about it. You have to be willing to listen, no matter what they say, and take action. And you have to be willing to share the results with employees. 

We get departmental-level engagement information on every single department. The scores are actually not the most important thing, but they show us which departments are lagging behind. Our team goes into the weeds, finds out what are the top reasons why the employees are less engaged than they ought to be, and then attack those reasons. It is pretty systematic. 

 

PA: I don’t want to make it sound like everything is perfect and rosy all the time because I don’t think that would be an accurate reflection of what it is actually like to have 1,000 employees and 2 million customers.

Not every leader in our organization gets it. I think we have an inordinate amount of people in our organization who do get it, but you know there is always residual people who are sort of slow on the take-up or use the typical excuses: “Well I am too busy,” “I don’t have time for this.” 

We have resources in the organization to make sure that leaders who don’t think they have time for it, realize that they are responsible and accountable, and we have ways of measuring it to make sure that they keep their eye on the ball. We actually have resources and teams who make sure this issue is on the top of the list regularly. When I have one-on-ones with individuals, I am talking about these issues, I am trying to figure out what is going on and providing regular feedback.  

I try to lead by example. I write personal letters to people, which I love to do, although as you can imagine in our organization there are a lot of great people who are doing a lot of great things, which means a lot of handwritten letters. It is still worth the time because the reaction I get is pretty over the top. But there are easier ways to give recognition, as well. Sometimes I will send e-mails: “I heard you did this or this got done on time—great job.” It is not difficult to give recognition. 

You know whenever you do engagement work, not feeling appreciated or not being thanked enough is always in the top things that show up. And it has to be the easiest thing to fix. It is not expensive; it is easy to give the type of recognition that people really want. It is not necessarily about money or material things. They just want to feel, for all the effort they gave you, that you notice it and appreciated it.

On the other side of things, you can’t be flippant with it either. People actually have to earn the recognition because it doesn’t mean anything anymore if you just hand it out to anyone. So there is a balance there too.  

Peter Aceto has been with ING Direct for nearly 14 years, most recently as a  member of ING Direct USA’s executive committee and responsible for sales, marketing, and corporate communications, before he became CEO of ING Direct Canada. An attorney, he also has been chief risk officer, chief of staff, and chief lending officer for the company. 

Roy Saunderson is president of the Recognition Management Institute, which consults firms on employee motivation to increase productivity and profitability. He is also author of Giving the Real Recognition Way and can be reached at roysaunderson@realrecognition.com. Tune in each Tuesday to his Internet radio show, Real Recognition Radio.

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