Organizations reveal employee engagement findings

Conference delegates learn how to take employee research to the next level.

At organizational research company, ORC International's 12th Annual Employee Research conference in London at the end of last month, speakers from UK supermarket chain Sainsbury's, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (NSPCC), UK chemist chain Boots, the Office of Rail Regulations (ORR) Hanover Housing and the British Airports Association (BAA) all shared their stories on how they've made employee research a priority and have increased engagement in their organizations by acting on the results.

Making perception and reality meet
Catherine Easey (pictured in Figure 1, below), internal communications manager at the NSPCC, admitted that the not-for-profit organization had a head start in terms of employee engagement.

Figure 1. Catherine Easey, on measuring engagement

"People had a strong connection to the cause that the NSPCC exists for, but we wanted to make sure that the external image of the organization matched the internal reality," she said.


So, three biennial surveys, plus a pulse survey later, the NSPCC decided that engagement could be improved by supporting and encouraging senior management to communicate better with employees and continue to listen, measure and respond to staff feedback.

If you fall, get up and try again
Helen Rendell, colleague insights manager at Sainsbury's, explained that falling under the shadow of competitor UK supermarket Tesco's mighty growth over recent years, Sainsbury's had lost its way with customers and employee morale was at an all time low. The staff "Talkback" survey provided vital employee feedback in the quest to "Make Sainsbury's great again".

Positive responses to the statement 'My manager cares about how satisfied I am
in my job' increased
by 5%.

Sainsbury's had previously attempted morale-boosting programs to change its employees' attitudes and behavior, but its most recent survey had found that employees continued to feel a lack of identity and direction at work.

Line manager and colleague relationships were also an issue of concern. In a bid to tackle this issue, Sainsbury's introduced a list of key leadership behaviors:
Winning.
Commitment is earned.
On my watch.
Try something new.
Tough love.
Customers pay our wages.

The "Tell Justin" initiative was launched for employees to write to their CEO, Justin King, about whatever's bugging them. "Staff love this and Justin has been fantastic in replying to messages," said Rendell. "Employees have reported feeling that the culture has improved and in the company's 2007 'My Manager' survey, positive responses to the statement 'My manager cares about how satisfied I am in my job' increased by 5% from 2006."

Taking the employee survey to new horizons
Stuart Branch, director of organizational development at Boots, talked about its "Great Place to Work" (GPTW) survey, explaining how it has moved from a staff satisfaction survey to an engagement survey, a transition that all speakers thought was important.

Boots found that the most engaged stores showed great Q1 counter sales and were out-performing their targets.

For all those engagement cynics out there, Branch highlighted that when analyzing the results Boots found that the most engaged stores showed great Q1 counter sales and were out-performing their targets. Absence was 10% lower in stores with high colleague engagement. But one delegate suggested that this could simply be a correlation and not a cause-and-effect relationship.

By 2008, Boots' research team hope to establish the GPTW survey as the key measure of leadership, using the scores as an explicit measure of performance for senior and middle managers.