Are your employees engaged?

According to Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace 2023 Report, only 10% of UK employees are engaged and thriving in the workplace. This should be a wake-up call to all business leaders, as employee engagement is a significant contributor to the success of any business. Gaining feedback directly from your people offers valuable insight that can be used to retain talent, drive development, and maximise growth.

The Context

An ambitious telecoms company was at a crucial point in its development. We had already conducted an engagement survey in its start-up phase. Now in a stage of rapid growth, with a significantly larger workforce, our engagement needed to consider not only the changes in personnel but also glean the insight necessary to inform the next step of the development journey.

Our Approach

Are your employees engaged? Although designed specifically for our telecoms client, we have outlined our process, below, to help you find out:

• Consultation with the executive and senior management teams to determine the areas of focus that the survey should explore, developing specific questions that would provide the desired insights
• Answers from the previous survey and focus groups were reviewed to influence the delivery of the new survey, ensuring ease of completion for the field team without access to desktops
• A proposal was written with the following elements: Options for delivery, a project plan, and a question-set rationale, with questions broken down into four focus areas
• After acceptance of the proposal and our plan for delivery, the survey was created, using their preferred online software, and tested to ensure that all questions were phrased and formatted correctly
• Communication to the whole team to introduce the survey and its purpose
• Survey sent out, one focus area at a time, over four weeks with completion reminders sent at intervals to the team
• The response rates were monitored, and on the fifth week all surveys were reopened to give all team members the opportunity to complete any missed sections
• The results of the surveys were collated, analysed, and presented as a report with suggestions for initiatives / actions and topics that could be further explored by focus groups
• The report was shared across the business and was also presented at an all-company meeting; divisional reports were created for divisional directors / managers to enable them to address any local feedback
• Volunteers were interviewed in focus groups by focus area to enable managers to gain more in-depth insight
• The insights gained were then collated in a final report with additional recommendations for action
• A plan was put in place to carry out the suggested improvement initiatives and was communicated to the team.

Communication with the wider team was crucial in engaging them in the process. We recognise the need to show team members that engagement surveys are not a tick-box exercise but an opportunity to give them a voice and be heard. Seeing initiatives being put into practice help employees feel empowered, meaning they will provide feedback willingly in the future.

The Outcome

The survey had a good percentage of respondents (an average of 62%), and more volunteers than requested came forward to be involved in the focus groups than were required. The overall picture of engagement was excellent, with the NPS score* of 68 – only slightly lower than that of the previous survey (75). The high-level results gave the management reassurance that, though the company had grown significantly, they had not lost hold of their desired culture and values.

The in-depth focus groups provided deeper insight into the areas for improvement that were identified from the survey, enabling us to work with the executive and senior management team to create a set of actionable initiatives, in areas such as:

• Enhancing employee voice
• Defining of communication processes
• Knowledge sharing and access of information.

Next Steps

We are providing ongoing support in the development and delivery of a range of initiatives set out in a project plan, all with the desired outcomes of retaining talent, enhancing systems and processes, and maintaining employee engagement for the future. The next survey is planned for 18 months’ time and will follow a similar process.

*NPS explained: NPS Calculator: Find Your Net Promoter Score | SurveyMonkey 

• Motivation
• Business growth
• Employee Engagement