“The best leaders set a clear direction and empower staff”

“I’ve been incredibly blessed in my career and have worked for some phenomenally good leaders,” says Andrew Stephenson CMgr FCMI, chief people officer at financial services company Equiniti. 

“I worked for [senior leaders] like Richard Branson at Virgin, Lord Graham Kirkham at [furniture giant] DFS and James Daunt at Waterstones. They are all leaders who had huge ambition, but who also managed to make everyone else believe that achieving it was possible. How? Clarity of purpose. 

“In my experience, the best leaders set a clear direction and are unambiguous about it. On the other hand, they are ambiguous about how people reach the destination, which empowers staff. That’s the trick.”

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Today, Andrew is using these lessons at Equiniti, which employs more than 6,500 people and has offices in Bangalore, London and New York City. 

A simple plan

“When I joined Equiniti in 2020,” he says, “it was very poor for employee engagement. That is why I joined. We had little two-way communication and high staff turnover. But we had a plan to turn it around, and now we’re one of the top companies to work for in financial services and we win awards for our approach to HR. 

“Actually, it’s all based on a simple plan: engaging with employees and taking action based on their feedback. It helps us attract top talent and retain great people.

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“I’d go as far as saying that our success as a business is predicated on employee engagement. We survey all our staff every month, and around 90% respond. We listen to what they have to say, good and bad. Today, we are one of the best at communicating with colleagues and we have built a reputation for treating people well and fairly.