Creativity and the Magic of the Process

Background

An automation solutions provider approached our team with an employee experience challenge. Providing the advanced solutions you’ll find in the facilities of major brands like Nissan, Rivian and Coca-Cola, our client’s employees work in high-stakes environments with exacting standards for quality and tight-deadlines. And because they frequently contract on-site commissioning services, many employees are required to travel for their jobs on a regular basis, which contributes to job stress.

Finally, the company was in the process of rolling out a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. As with the introduction of any new technology, the training and changes to process could make communication difficult.

The Challenge

Just six months after cutting the ribbon on their new facility, business was booming and projects were booked months out.

1. Along with the size of their space, their workload was scaling rapidly, and they knew that employee engagement and cooperation were going to be key to their continued growth.

2. At the same time, it was important to them to protect and nurture the strong workplace culture that had brought them this far.

An Employee Journey visually maps out each touchpoint employees have with their organization.

Solutions

Understanding the Employee Journey

Our first task was to create clarity and understanding around employee experience using employee journey mapping. An employee journey map is a diagram that describes all of the communication touchpoints between team members of an organization throughout their employment—from the first time they hear about the brand through their exit interview and beyond. The discipline of mapping helped us identify EX strengths as well as gaps to address going forward.

Establishing Baseline Metrics

Second, we knew it was important to establish a baseline in order to measure the effectiveness of communication interventions. While EX is notoriously difficult to measure, we are fortunate to have access to industry-leading measures through Qualtrics experience management solutions, which are tested and verified by industrial and organizational (IO) psychologists. Using a blend of tried-and-true Qualtrics metrics as well as a few measures tailored to our client, we conducted a survey of the entire organization to establish our baseline and identify key opportunities for improvement.

Survey Findings

Initial analyses suggested that overall employee experience was quite good—employees were satisfied with compensation and professional development, and they felt empowered with the autonomy to do their work well. However, there were also a few areas for improvement.

  • Internal communication—particularly the transmission of information between teams and information about important activities in the company.
  • Work processes. Interestingly, this problem did not generalize to relationships with management. It was the processes themselves (not the people who run them) that individuals felt needed improvement.
  • Work-Life Balance. Some individuals also felt an impact on their work-life balance due to scaling of workload and frequent travel.
  • Company vision. Following the company’s rapid expansion, the tight-knit team was looking to leadership to learn where the company was heading in the long term.

Many team members also didn’t feel that a clear vision of the future of the company was communicated to them. Further analysis showed us that the team was lacking a clear vision of the future of the company. After the company’s rapid expansion, the tight-knit team was looking to leadership to learn where the company was heading.

Finally, statistical analysis revealed that one department in particular felt these tensions to a greater extent than other departments, which let us focus our interventions on that department specifically.

Outcomes

Six months after the initial employee experience survey, we issued the same survey once again to look for any improvements or new problem areas. Overall, the company saw improvements to EX metrics across the board, especially in the following areas:

  • Overall Employee Experience (measured with NPS)
  • Communication
  • Process (particularly in departments where it had previously been low)
  • Empowerment/authority, professional
  • Professional Development
  • Inclusion
  • Well-being
  • Work-Life Balance

 

Multiple factors contributed to the improvements in these metrics, including a seasonal slow down, which would have resulted in reduced travel for some employees.

EX Net Promoter (NPS)

An EX NPS score rates the likelihood that an employee is to recommend their place of employment as a good place to work on a scale from -100 to +100. Our client’s EX NPS score increased significantly from 25 to 39.7, which is a great indicator that employees are generally happier at the company than they were at the time of the initial survey.

Well-Being

Questions about well-being are skewing upward as compared to the initial survey. There are no longer any “disagree” responses, and the percent of people who felt “neutral” also decreased. Well-being is a great indicator of employee engagement and satisfaction. Knowing that it is trending up is encouraging.

Communication

Communication, which was one of the biggest areas of concern from the initial survey, saw huge improvement. There are no longer any employees answering that they “disagree” with any communication related questions and the percent of “neutral” voters decreased. Even more encouraging is that more people selected that they “strongly agree” that there is good communication at the company throughout a variety of questions.

Work Process

Questions that asked about work process showed improvement with “disagree” and “neutral” answers trending down and “strongly agree” answers increasing. Issues with the company’s ERP persist, and we’re encouraged that this upward trend appears to be a result of improvements in general communication.

Work-Life Balance

Work-life balance was another area that saw massive improvement. While some of this can be attributed to the seasonal slow down of work, much of the employment branding we helped to create contributed to the ability to hire more employees and ease the strain on the team.

Evidence-Based Employee Experience Solutions

After the results of the second employee experience survey, both the client and our team were extremely encouraged by the effectiveness of the communications work we did together. We’ve established a plan for phase two of improving employee experience which will include a company visioning session and more employee onboarding tools.