Features
Summit Heads: Suncorp’s Mim Haysom on breeding a culture of innovation
Ahead of her masterclass on using creativity as a growth lever at this week's Finance Marketing Summit, Mim Haysom, executive general manager of brand and customer experience at Suncorp, talks to Mumbrella about building operating models around the customer, how to breed a culture of innovation, and why giving back helps broaden the perspective she brings to Suncorp.
Marketers within the financial services industry are navigating choppy waters. How are you staying focused on the customer experience?
Customer experience is at the core of our strategy, and we have a range of tools we use to monitor and track the experience we are delivering to our customers. My role includes accountability for customer experience so it’s always top of mind for me and I’ve built our operating model around the customer. Our performance meetings start with our customer metrics, and we interrogate the results we are seeing and build action plans to ensure we are always improving the experience we provide, outcomes for our customers.
Having led M&C Saatchi to be named the most innovative company in Australia, how do you foster a culture of innovation within Suncorp?
In my experience, if you build a high performance culture anchored around a clear ambition, that in turn breeds a culture of innovation.
If your team is empowered to continually think about how we can do things differently to improve business outcomes, and they are encouraged and rewarded to test, learn and innovate, then it becomes something that is highly engaging and energising for teams and they naturally gravitate towards innovation.
When new ideas are coming from all around your team or business, not just tech teams or an ‘innovation team’, then you know you’ve built a culture of innovation.
In NAIDOC Week 2024, Suncorp Group invited all employees to a special Reconciliation Action Plan launch featuring a panel discussion on the importance of reconciliation, achievements to date, and the commitments made under Suncorp’s new Innovate RAP 2024-2026. What does this mean to you?
Suncorp prioritises and invests in diversity and inclusion in all its forms, and it’s one of the reasons I’m so proud to be part of the organisation. I sit on the Sustainability and Diversity committee, and I’m proud of the work we do to make Suncorp a great place to work and one where diversity is celebrated.
Our Reconciliation Action plan plays in an important role in that work, so to elevate it and ensure all of our team members are part of the conversation and aware of our commitment and the work we do is important.
Outside Suncorp, you have been involved with organisations like Wheelchair Rugby Australia and the Australian Chamber Orchestra. How do these passions influence your professional life and marketing approach?
I’m a big believer that we all have a role to play in creating positive impact on the world around us, and when we can use our skills and expertise to give back to the community more broadly than our paid day job then we should do that.
The experience of engaging with disability sports and the arts helps to broaden my perspective on what’s happening in different industries and organisations, and that helps broaden the perspective I bring into my role at Suncorp.
Working with Wheelchair Rugby in particular has really influenced me to insist that we have representation of diversity in all it’s forms in the work we do when marketing our brands and engaging with our customers. It’s been an amazing experience and incredibly rewarding.
The Mumbrella Finance Marketing Summit takes place 25 July, 2024 at 12-Micron Sydney. Get your tickets here.
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Nathan Jolly is the Features Editor at Mumbrella. He joined the team in July, 2023.
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