‘I need to be out with customers and frontline colleagues for Benenden Health to grow’

“A lot of the successful retailers have that connection to frontline colleagues, who understand what their customers want, are strongly engaged and it stood me in good stead to come here and understand what our members want.

“Mutuals are just as commercial as any other business. The way we measure success is different but fundamentally you have to be commercial, and we have to be custodians of our membership funds.”

Woolgrove is also driving awareness of the Benenden name against its bigger competitors and believes its membership offering “is a very strong and affordable proposition”.

“A corporate could pay the same price, basically £15.50 a month for their employees, and that gives them access to GPs 24/7, diagnostic tests and treatments.

“We don’t medically underwrite if you make a claim, premiums don’t go up but we are there in that mutual idea of providing affordable healthcare to all.”

Inclusivity is also at the heart of Benenden Health’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DE&I) awareness, which was implemented before Woolgrove came into the post. He will continue to build on being an inclusive employer, a practice which US president Donald Trump has called an end to stateside in the federal government.

“The UK on balance is a very diverse and inclusive country and my sense is that the US has become divided and gone too far with the pendulum,” says Woolgrove.

“We don’t operate in the US but it’s interesting for those businesses who have US subsidiaries and how they are reacting. It’s a core part of our mutuality that we are inclusive and serve a diverse membership base.

Read More: ‘It was scary writing a £80k cheque for our sparkling rhubarb idea

“Creating a diverse and inclusive workforce, you want them to feel connected and serve the organisation.”

Woolgrove highlights a company value — ‘bring all your staff to work’ — during his four years at Direct Line. “What we really wanted was for people to feel comfortable but to bring their big characters and not be afraid to mask it,” he adds.

“It’s about getting the most out of our colleagues but we should reflect our diverse membership internally as well.”

With digital sales now accounting for 80% of Benenden’s business, the healthcare provider, which employs 800 staff, is now aiming towards 1 million members.

“It’s about allowing the organisation to deliver at pace and also attempting to identify the opportunities,” says Woolgrove. “One of the challenges is visibility and awareness and it’s how you enforce our challenger status.”

Understanding leadership

I nearly went into the Army and a strong view there is that leadership is about servant leadership and you are empowering everyone underneath you.

My first job in industry was at Halifax Bank of Scotland. Andy Hornby [former HBOS boss] has had a mixed press in how he worked, but the one thing you learned from him is the visibility he had in all the branches, the way he understood what was and wasn’t working and he then took that back into head office and really drove change. It was all about making the experience better for customers.

It was quite a flat organisation, very much about empowering each of the business units to deliver and that has really stuck with me today.

Read more:

Download the Yahoo Finance app, available for Apple and Android.