As its employees began returning to the workplace after 18 months at home, management at Transinstitutional Brokers of Mobile, Alabama observed that most went right back to their comfort zones – despite repeated warnings to get out of them.
Thus, effective May 1, the bank assigned new comfort zones to all 2800 employees.
“They were just too comfortable going back to their old zones,” says Human Resources VP Celia Minninger, who spearheaded the project. “We figured it would be best to assign them to new zones they weren’t so comfortable with.”
With so many staffers spread among 17 different locations, re-assigning the zones was a major undertaking – requiring over 50 programmers and analysts to work around the clock for two months straight.
“We had to identify the zones, verify who was in them, and then make sure we weren’t assigning someone a zone he or she was already in, or to a zone someone else was supposed to be in,” says Minninger.
There were only a few minor glitches. At one branch, for instance, three tellers were mistakenly assigned the same zone, resulting in some bruised ribs. At another, a marketer was assigned a zone in Beijing – costing over $30,000 in travel and lodging before the mistake was discovered, an amount the company has thus far been able to recover from the employee.
On the whole, however, things have gone smoothly. According to an internal survey, 87 percent of employees are happy in their new zones.
“At first I resisted but I feel much more positive and productive in this zone,” says analyst Gina Sims. Plus, she says, there’s an extra electrical outlet.
