Refining Your Employer Value Proposition / Improving Engagement
Evidence shows that more engaged employees – ones that see the mutual benefits in striving for your organisational outcomes – means a higher performing business.
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If you work with us, we will ensure that you understand how to improve the proposition you can offer to employees. We'll define for you:
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levels of engagement now
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how to increase them
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how to measure that increase
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To help us do this, we have researched exactly what does engage employees. We have defined 12 important factors, the opportunity for:
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Appreciation of contributions made and expertise shown
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Clear expectations so that everyone knows how they contribute
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Colleagues that are like-minded, supportive, friendly and capable
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Developing new skills through challenges, training and chances to move on
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Doing the right thing for colleagues, customers and the community
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Environment, tools and processes that allow people to work at their best
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Flexibility for where and when the job is done, and support for work-life balance
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Freedom to use initiative, be creative and input into decisions
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Interesting and stimulating work, with control over how it is performed
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Leadership that is clear, trustworthy and inspiring
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Line management that supports, respects and encourages people
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Reputation, stability and pride in the business
Engagement Insight
In words and actions, not numbers
We truly believe in the power of the having the most, highly-engaged employees.
We don’t believe in annual engagement surveys that don’t tell you:
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why your employees think how they do
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what to do next
We absolutely do believe in human interactions.
Your people have the best insight into improving both their experience and your organisation, and we want to help unlock that.
Instead of…Lack of Voice
We will… Give your employees a true, open, uninhibited say
Instead of…Reliance on benchmarks
We will … Help you be the best you can, not just better
than average
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Instead of…Measuring the wrong thing
We will … Measure if you become a more effective organisation
What we'll do
​Every employer is different in priorities, culture, existing listening – so the exact programme will look different for everyone. But our conversations are likely to include a review of existing material, focus groups, interviews ... as well as a survey.
What we will uncover
We will design a programme of conversations to let your people express
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what’s important to them now and what they most value
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what would leave them feeling more positive and engaged
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what would create the greatest intent to innovate and improve
What it might cost
As an example prices, for our planning, listening, reporting, by size of organisation
Up to 250 people: £2,000 - £4,000
Up to 1,000 people: c£6,000
Up to 2,500 people: c£8,000
What you'll get:
What matters?
A clear portrait of what is most important to your employees
What now?
An action plan of how to improve employee engagement
What next?
A plan to continue
listening or a handover
to you
So what?
The most important measures to see the effects of action
CASE STUDY: Manufacturing
This manufacturer wanted to understand levels of engagement in their organisation. Ultimately, they wanted to improve engagement to unleash performance.
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We started with a traditional engagement survey, inheriting a question set and scoring methodology that they had run for many years.
This gave us a picture of engagement, by key topic, and by geography, function and other demographics.
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But we went further than this, and explored deeply the sentiment that was expressed in the survey: what people said, how they said it and how this linked to the other themes that we were hearing.
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It was this sentiment that enabled us to make sense of why people felt as they did, and the key actions that we could recommend to improve engagement.
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And we took that further still with targeted and bespoke listening to gain a much richer understanding of areas of particular interest.
Equipped with this insight the business could implement change, react to specific needs and desires of the workforce.
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This lead to an 8% increase in engagement scores, while over the same period profit increased by 4%.
CASE STUDY: Public Sector
This public sector organisation knew already that their staff were under strain. They knew how, but they didn’t know why, so it was hard to see where to start. Here’s how I helped.
Initially, they ran a survey that started to identify causes for the stress. Namely, unrealistic expectations, not enough time or resources, not the control people would like over their work.
But … that sounds like a lot of organisations. It didn’t help them understand their own situation and what specifically they need to resolve to ease the pressures.
I conducted a series of focus groups, based on the initial findings, probing deeper into the reasons why these pressures are felt.
Some were standalone issues. Like IT systems implemented in a piecemeal way rather than viewed collectively. There was an opportunity to gain a lot of efficiencies there.
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But I was also able to link ideas and show how pressure builds.
There were financial pressures, and they were heightened because the client group, post-Covid, now demanded more. That meant there was more change, more often. It also meant that, outside of their specialism, people’s roles were getting broader. They feel like experts less often.
And that brings us to the crux. They are totally committed to serving their clients, but feel less able in time and confident in skills to do so.
And, when everyone else is the same boat, it wasn’t OK to say “no”, because you’d possibly be letting those clients down.
There is nowhere for the pressure to go.
For all of the findings I developed an action plan to address each point, with clear next steps and a RAG rating of the Ease / Time / Cost of each action.
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On the very specific point about not wanting to speak out, it needed a clear leadership message that however much you want to support clients, you can’t be nearly as effective if you’re stressed. It’s OK to ask for help.
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The message was clear: You need to put your own oxygen mask on first.