HDA

Employee Engagement and Key Skills Retention in a High-Speed Environment - Technology

Background

A rapidly changing technology company had delayed its commercial launch in the UK given software development delays. The business’s investors were keen to keep the organisation fully engaged, within a highly constrained budget:

• Developing its world-first technology at high speed for an accelerated launch within the next four months,

• Retaining key technology skills and expertise within the business,

• Developing global partnerships,

• Ensuring that its intellectual property was protected,

• Ensuring that key quality processes were introduced,

• Ensuring that a new CEO was hired within the next 3 months

• Ensuring that cash spend was maintained at X, despite high levels of commercial activity

Given these objectives, the company demanded a lot from its people, (eg. the London office was often almost fully staffed two or three hours after the close of ‘’normal business hours’’ for at least the first year after funding, as a ‘’’normal’’ day’s work could not fit into a typical 8-hour day. It was also the norm to ‘’find’’ Palo Alto colleagues online, completing their previous day’s work at 10 or 11 a.m. each morning).

The company also had very little to offer people as a lean venture capital funded company, other than a future stake in the company (via stock options), and via actively seeking opportunities to leverage careers by encouraging people to get involved in areas of the business that they would not typically get involved in within more established businesses (Notwithstanding the fact that, for the most part, people in new or newly restructured organisations are often required to spend much of their time working well within their capabilities, ensuring that the basics are done within the constraints of the situation, without the typical levels of support available within established companies).

HDA Intervention

An internal, holistic survey was conducted on all staff across the organisation, both in the UK and the USA. The survey measured the following predictors of team satisfaction:

• Process – are the right processes in place to support the business?

• Role Challenge – are roles challenging and motivating?

• Values – are company values clear, and are they clearly subscribed to by management?

• Work-life balance – are workloads full but not excessive?

• Information – do senior managers provide the business with an appropriate level of information?

• Stake/Leverage/Reward/Recognition – do people have significant long-term stakes in the business, and are rewards, recognition and career leverage opportunities with the organisation competitive?

• Management – are performance objectives clear, and is performance regularly reviewed and fairly managed for ongoing personal improvement?

• Work Environment – is the work environment supportive and empowering?

• Product - do solutions, products and services continue to excite and challenge?

Detailed and headline feedback results were then systematically used over the next six months as a key driver for:

• Facilitated objective-setting

• Management meeting actions

• Management interventions

• Process adjustments

• Company meeting agendas

Results

The process was repeated after 6 months, and again six months later, with focus on continuous improvement in all measures, and the facilitation of change where operational and managerial weaknesses were identified. As expected, improvements in certain measures, impacted negatively on others.

During the 18 month period the company successfully launched its technology in the UK and in Germany, and licenced its technology in Japan, whilst extending its cash reserves for four months longer than budgeted. During the period, the company experienced only one resignation (in the US), and was considered to be very stable, despite its various financial constraints, the marketability of the talent within the organisation, and significant differences of opinion across the organisation about future directions of the business.

The management team agreed that managing within a clearly defined framework for measuring the team’s temperature, and for informing management team actions, (followed by concrete - and clearly communicated - responses to areas of weakness) was a useful approach to setting the agenda for managing the key people component of the business within a highly constrained environment; specifically:

• key skills retention,

• intellectual property protection, and

• optimization of employment costs

• development of quality culture