1. Listen to understand

Establish a baseline, then the shifts in employee perceptions, behaviour and sentiment. What do people feel strongly about; what’s working and what’s getting in the way. Helping you focus on the metrics that matter.

2. Uncover

What’s influencing the employee experience and driving engagement. How does this vary across businesses and teams. Deep people insights to enable more informed decisions and drive action plans.

3. Improve

Progress towards priorities. How quickly and to what extent is change and improvement happening. Helping you to stay on track and to know where and when to adjust.

Employee engagement research

cutting through the complexity to uncover what really matters to people; knowing what to ask, where to look and how to improve.

Our client wanted to refresh their employee engagement survey after a gap of several years.

Unsure about how best to go about this – and mindful of previous ‘low value’ surveys – we set about defining clear goals and objectives.

Establishing a fresh engagement ‘baseline’ was high on the agenda. Questions were aligned to a core set of metrics and engagement indicators. Our priority was to move away from the language of a survey, to the language of ‘listening’.

With the senior leadership team actively involved, questions were thoroughly tested. A communications programme paved the way – explaining clearly to employees the importance and context for feedback and encouraging everyone in the organisation to ‘have their say’.

A response rate of over 70% provided a highly robust set of data from which the client developed targeted improvement plans.

Executive reports cut through the noise and infographics allowed rapid feedback to employees. Senior leaders took time out to understand and discuss the findings with their teams; supported by discussion guides and action planning toolkits. Low value surveys had made way for high value conversations.

Change & communications measurement

you wouldn’t want to base your business strategy on guesswork or a hunch; why should it be different when it comes to people insights.

“It’s important people understand what’s changing in our organisation.

We need to know how messages are being received; whether people are ‘on board’ and if there are gaps in our communication”

Our start point was to clarify the people insights needed and how this linked to the business transformation strategy. How the information would be used and by whom. Against a clear set of requirements, tracking questions were developed and a pulse survey sent to a sample of employees each month. Open questions to ascertain the ‘mood’ of the organisation provided further insights.

With the process established, regular people updates were provided to business leaders; tracking progress, reporting on the pace of change and flagging areas of potential risk.

Adopting a consistent approach saved time. And standardised reporting built familiarity and confidence in the data. Providing the basis for more informed decisions and ongoing adjustments to the change programme.

Employee experience research

important as ever but re-invented to ensure organisatons understand what people think and feel even when not physically together.

For the leadership team, improving the employee experience was a pre-cursor and logical extension to the customer experience. But where and how to start was far from clear.

A review of existing employee research and feedback provided important clues about how employees viewed their experience. The physical environment, the use of technology; the culture of the organisation were each examined through the lens of available data. Building a comprehensive picture of strengths and weaknesses and roadmap for where to prioritise improvement actions.

Helping our client to set the right tone and parameters was a priority. This needed to feel different – not ‘just another initiative’. Guiding and supporting the HR team through early decisions and providing challenge helped shape the strategy. Providing a clear focus and direction; and identifying the performance indicators that would allow progress to be tracked. Highlighting the need for continuous dialogue and feedback among dispersed teams so that employees would be truly involved in the design of their own experience.

Listening strategies

listening is the basis for trust; but also the capability that sets apart those organisations who truly understand themselves.

Requirement: establish and synthesise employee views from across the organisation so we can gauge how well our new business strategy is understood and what’s on people’s minds.

Solution: a locally delivered ‘listening’ approach which captured employee sentiment from across multiple operating sites. A core set of questions, facilitation guide  and ‘how to’ resource pack was produced and sent to communication leaders. Allowing local context to be added to a consistent format.

Outcome: With clear guidance on how to manage conversations locally, communications teams were able to rapidly set up, implement and run their listening sessions. Using standardised reporting to capture themes and insights. Anonymity was ensured and a commitment to feedback was made to those taking part.

Result: a rich and highly authentic snapshot of employee mood and sentiment from multiple perspectives. And a listening approach that would be replicated multiple times during the course of the year.