Creating ‘joyful’ experiences for all

intu owns and manages some of the UK’s and Spain’s busiest shopping destinations, so they’re all about great customer experiences. But the brand no longer felt ‘standout’ for its 3,000 colleagues. By refreshing and reinvigorating their understanding of its ‘joy’ principles, the company wanted to encourage behaviours that would create better experiences for all.

We collaborated with intu to develop a continuous engagement campaign. In the first phase, we planned and led ‘We make joy’ workshops for managers, creating activities such as an over-sized board game to help them understand the four ‘joy’ pillars. Phase two enabled managers to run their own sessions and lead a 12-week programme of pillar-themed engagement activities for teams.

Managers responded extremely positively to the phase one workshops, 93% stating that they had made changes to their work as a result. Following the phase two sessions, colleagues pledged to ‘make joy’, something now integrated into the annual, personal development process. All teams have since been taking part in regular activities designed to bring joy to their work and to customers.