Learning from your mistakes
How do financial companies deal with mistakes? Is there a corporate culture in which employees feel secure enough to report when things accidentally go wrong? Or are mistakes swept under the rug instead? That is the subject of a joint research project being conducted by Utrecht University and the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets (AFM). So far, the participating institutions have already received initial results.
The research consists of a survey among employees at 13 financial companies, in addition to interviews with management and a selection of employees, researcher Elianne van Steenbergen says. ‘We researched what the cultural attitude was with regard to mistakes. Did people tend to speak openly about things they did wrong, and would a thorough analysis be carried out? Were mistakes always reported? Or were errors concealed out of fear of losing face and negative career impact, and was the “fire” simply put out as quickly as possible? How did supervisors respond to mistakes and did those at the top of the organisation share a clear vision for this? Did people feel like mistakes were something to be learned from; for instance, were specific improvements observed?’
Collaboration
The project with the AFM falls within the Institutions strategic theme; Distinguished professor Naomi Ellemers initiated the collaboration. The AFM has established a centre of expertise aimed at innovating its methods and knowledge in areas including behaviour and culture. Van Steenbergen: ‘Each week, I work two days at UU and two days at the AFM. PhD candidate Tessa Coffeng works at the AFM one day per week. On the UU side, we have multiple researchers and interns participating in the project; the entire team of researchers from the AFM and UU comes together twice a year. These meetings are extremely valuable and inspiring. Simply by exchanging perspectives, we arrive at ideas and solutions we wouldn't have been able to find within a single team.’
Ethical behaviour
Research into the culture of mistakes is important because organisations that deal with mistakes out in the open tend to perform better, offer a higher quality of service and display more ethical behaviour in general. In an article in Dutch daily Trouw, AFM supervisor Danny van Dijk explains that financial institutions never have any difficulty writing out their good intentions. But after that? ‘For a long time, the thinking went: as long as there's policy in place, it will take care of itself. Many institutions have no idea how to apply such policy in practice.’
Impact
UU and the AFM have reported the results of their research to the participating businesses. Elianne van Steenbergen: ‘Some of these companies are responding so pro-actively that they have asked for another evaluation to see if their efforts have started to pay dividends yet. The results were also added to the account file that the AFM keeps on every company, in order to ensure these findings are used to learn something, too.’ And has the research project concluded? Elianne van Steenbergen says she hopes to inspire financial companies to investigate how openly mistakes are being handled under their own roofs. ‘Besides, proper management of mistakes is merely a first step towards a healthy corporate culture. The AFM and UU intend to explore this subject further by working together to identify other specific elements.’