Coutts Woman

Romana Abdin

Romana Abdin likes a joke and a laugh.  When I speak to her on the evening before the Asian Women of Achievement Awards ceremony, she is on an away day with her team, enjoying a few well-deserved glasses of wine.  She laughs, explaining her nomination and work to me but, more importantly, her team are noisily laughing, talking and enjoying themselves in the background.  Interviews and awards come second to that. 

“I wasn’t even expecting to be short listed and am slightly surprised really,” she says.  “It was my immediate team and chief executive who put me forward for it.  And I have difficulty with things like this because I never see individual achievement, but a collective exercise.  Still, it’s a really lovely idea.”

“I have every disadvantage going!” she laughs. “I’m female, I’m Asian and I had polio as a child”

Jokes aside, what the awards do give Romana is a platform to spread her message and be a role model, whether that’s to her two children, her staff, Asian women or simply women in general.By her own admission, she has every disadvantage going.  “I’m female, I’m Asian and I had polio as a child,” she admits.  “So it’s a lovely way of showing to people what can be achieved.  I had a life time of people saying ‘You won’t be able to do that’.  When, actually, there isn’t anything I can’t do.”

Romana has certainly proved that.  Qualifying as a barrister in the 1980s - a male dominated profession even by today’s standard - she was also taking on a physically demanding job.  “Walking around the high court which is 30 miles long is not easy,” she insists.

Within years, she was onto her next challenge – leaving the bar and getting into business.  “I wanted to be part of the solution and didn’t want to walk away from some of issues I was dealing with in the court room,” she says.  So began her next ten years working for big corporations including Paramount, Universal Studios, Lloyds and Bradford and Bingley. “I did a bit of the sublime to the ridiculous from the bar to the entertainment industry.  But it was all a really good apprenticeship in terms of business.” 

In 2001, she left the world of large corporations and joined HAS, an ailing 80-year old company selling health insurance.  The staff, based primarily in call centres, had low morale and no training.  Add to that an autocratic management style and just one successful product, and Romana had a tough challenge on her hands.

Together with a new chief executive and board of executive directors, she began turning things around.  As well as improving the infrastructure and brand, she got staff trained up and established two guiding principles - serve the customer and be yourself. 

Though these principles sound simple, even compared with businesses today, they were bucking the trend.  HAS did not make their staff wear uniforms and use scripts to deal with customer queries, they were training them to trust their own instincts when dealing with customers.

“Businesses assume they can control what’s going on but, when they get to our size, they can’t.  You have to trust and rely on people,” she continues.  “Our mantra is that we are here to help our customers and you do that best by being yourself.  Don’t get me wrong, we demand performance, but that comes from teaching people properly.” 

Flexible working was also introduced on a grand scale for employees.  “We have 207 different working patterns because 70 per cent of our staff are women.  We understand that parents have children to bring up, and that life is actually much more important than work.”

On the responsibilities of management, Romana and her colleagues ensure they hire the right people.  She cites their new finance director who was recruited recently after a two year search.  “Anyone can do the numbers, we were looking for leadership and the same value set.  We don’t compromise on that.” 

They also undergo the same appraisal and feedback process as all other employees.  “It’s about treating and respecting our people.  We’re very committed to doing the right thing by them.  Our business philosophy is it matters more how good we are than how much we make.  And whatever we make is invested by into the business,” she explains.

Six years on, and the business is a huge success.  What started out as HAS has turned into ‘SimplyHealth Group’, after acquiring seven more businesses.  Turnover has increased by 111 per cent, customer numbers are up 56 per cent and reserves are up nearly £99m. 

But perhaps her proudest achievement of all is SimplyHealth Group making The Sunday Times Best 100 Companies to Work For list for a fifth consecutive year in April.  “We’re not like Microsoft or any of the others, our staff are not all earning £50K.  We are local businesses, where a lot of our work falls on the sales or call centre environment.  It’s also amazing bearing in mind the amount of change that we’ve had,” she says.

Undoubtedly, Romana Abdin plays a large part in building the environment and spirit that has resulted in this thriving and successful business.  And, with this latest award under her belt, you could say she’s having the last laugh.  But that would be wrong.  Because it’s obvious that she has plenty more laughs still in her.

The Asian Women of Achievement Awards were held on 23 May to celebrate talented, high-achieving Asian women in Britain.  For more information on the awards and winners, click on http://www.awaawards.com