Citigroup Inc. is today’s pre-eminent financial services company, with some 200 million customer accounts in more than 100 countries. Russia is one of the high priority countries for Citigroup. Citigroup Russia has a relatively young population, with 40% of the group having been with the Bank for less than a year. Historically, there has been little organised activity to reinforce the corporate culture and last year saw a 61% turnover of staff.

Objective

To address these issues, the CEO sponsored a team-building programme for all 500 Corporate and Investment Banking employees. The aim was to create a highly engaging and motivational shared experience that allowed people to:
•    Get to know each other better and build strong relationships and networks
•    Breathe life into the corporate culture
•    Have a lot of fun together

Solution

The program consisted of 10 one-day events, each for 50 people from across the business, taking place over a 2-week period.

Impact created a series of experiential events at Le Meridien Country Club, Moscow. Facilitated learning capture sessions enabled participants to identify their learning points and to develop appropriate team skills and behaviours to take back to the workplace.

The events were carefully linked so that by the end of the program the group of 500 had created something tangible as a whole team. To reinforce the culture, photographs taken throughout the programme were used to create their 2007 team calendar featuring people from each of the 10 events.

An ideas board was used to identify business improvements and commitments for behaviour change to increase individual engagement for making things happen. By the end of the 10 days, the noticeboard was covered with ideas and personal statements of intent, and formed the basis of an impressive manifesto, owned by the whole team.

Result

Through this process, the participants experienced teamwork in action and, in so doing, brought the culture to life. The ideas generated on the program were worked up into an aggregate report and presented at the Moscow CIB Town Hall Meeting, with the most realistic of them to be further implemented in due course.

"Impact created an exciting and engaging series of events as the kick start of a longer term process to involve and engage people in the future of the business. It was great to see people at all levels of the business working together, building relationships and creating a culture that they want to be a part of."

Ivan Scalfarotto
Citigroup Corporate & Investment  Banking
Cluster HR Head, Russia and CIS

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