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HDA OVERVIEW
HDA Case Studies

Engaging Internal Stakeholders – Automotive Industry

 

Business Context

The organisation brand has a fantastic reputation, (innovation, integrity, sustainability…the list goes on…) and few would not want to be associated with it, whether outside or inside the organisation.

The organisation’s Europe, UK and Finance Europe divisions experienced a major organisational restructuring as part of a general rationalisation of the region, and HDA partnered with them through this process to manage the people component of the change process; particularly focused on ensuring alignment between business's needs and values and the needs and values of staff.

The positive effects of any organisational transition always go hand in hand with a degree of fear for the future within an organisation, resistance to change where that change is not well understood, or not considered valid, and possible disengagement with the objectives of the organisation; particularly where staff cannot identify clear points of alignment between outcomes of the transformation process and personal values. This has potential to impact team morale, performance and subscription to organisational values and forward strategy.

Whilst the organisation restructuring was handled particularly well, in accordance with an organisation which was proud to be voted in the top-40 Sunday Times 100 Best Companies to Work For organisations between 2003 to 2006, and despite excellent results achieved in 2003,4,5 from the organisation’s own internal European ‘Spirited Independence’ survey, the organisation’s leadership nevertheless believed that engaging more closely with staff needs including a targeted survey of engagement levels across the organisation, post transition, would be an essential initiative to positively take the business forward with firm commitment to agreed principles after a brief period of dissonance.

Whilst not specifically articulating the initiative as an employee value proposition (EVP) development process, the organisation was nevertheless focused on ensuring that staff would be engaged to consider and answer the very personal question arising from recent organisational transition; 'What's in it for me?'

HDA Project

Following initial stakeholder conversations and alignment with senior management, employee representatives and the broader HR and Communications teams, HDA and the organisation communicated the objectives of an engagement measurement process to associates and contractors under the following key headlines:

• We are setting out  to ‘pulse test’ the degree to which people across the organisation are ‘engaged’ with the objectives of the organisation, and the degree to which there are any specific factors across the organisation which need to be managed to improve Associate engagement levels.

• We are aware that there are many creative minds working within the organisation and this survey provides the opportunity to capture and nurture some of your ideas.

• We are keen to identify manageable issues which can be constructively dealt with – despite the organisation conducting regular internal surveys, we are not about measuring opinion, or creating metrics, or creating benchmarks(*) in the first instance, but, rather, we want to get a feel for how engaged people are with the objectives of the organisation during 2007 and moving forward, (with specific reference to the organisation’s '84ki strategy'). (*Bearing in mind that any internal engagement benchmarks will of course be referenced in future surveys by the organisation)

• For this reason, the stakeholder feedback process is not overly complex, and it is intended that the results of the survey are capable of being followed up in a managed, systematic fashion

• We want to place ourselves in a position to comprehensively manage reasonable continuous improvement in the organisation, based on stakeholder feedback outcomes

Our Objective then was to measure and deliver meaningful feedback on Associate engagement across the organisation, diagnose the real situation, and take measurable actions to continuously improve the organisation.

The Project

HDA worked with the organisation to identify an optimal question set to measure key responses across a number of key components of the business, including, views on:

• How easily things get done
• Satisfaction with role
• Values
• Work-life balance
• Information
• Rewards & Recognition
• Management
• Work Environment
• Products and Service

An HDA survey was conducted 100% online across the UK and Finance Europe divisions under a general ‘More Forwards'’ theme, and included all Associates and contractors.

Both quantitative and qualitative questions were included; the latter adding rich verbatim accounts of life within the organisation.

Whilst participation was on a strictly voluntary basis, 85% of the UK division and targeted the Europe devision’s Associates and contractors participated in the initial survey process, and 89% of the Finance Europe division’s Associates and contractors participated. This very pleasing response rate was driven by a highly transparent process and committed communication within the organisation.

Results

The survey results provided rich insights into levels of organisational engagement, and guidance was provided by HDA for the organisation to independently move forward as follows:

1. Agree a Strategic Response to the Survey:

• with regards to talent attraction,
• with regards to talent engagement,
• with regards to talent retention,
• with regards to a sensible combination of these, in line with existing strategies in these areas

2. Acknowledge the most likely Associate engagement opportunities and threats for the organisation as a whole and focus managerial attention on these.

3. Agree on areas that are commercially out-of-bounds.

4. Identify potential ‘quick wins’.

5. Openly communicate company-wide feedback outcomes with the Associate team, and agree a manageable mechanism for tracking ‘More Forwards’ progress against those outcomes which the organisation believes are manageable.

6. Engage a cross-functional team to consider implications of the survey, and opportunities for addressing company-wide issues via intelligent quick wins which are indicative of positive intent around the ‘More Forwards’ theme.

7. Identify any demographic exceptions of interest / concern, assess and manage these.

Whereas many organisations undertaking staff surveys set out to benchmark themselves against other organisations and within sectors, with little context as to why results across different organisations may be different; HDA strongly discourages organisations it partners with from taking this largely academic approach where the survey itself is seen as the end in itself, rather than a means to a more valuable end which commits the organisation’s leadership to transparently act on the results of any survey conducted, given the commitment that respondents are putting into participating in the survey.

One of HDA’s key themes therefore in working with the organisation, was that the organisation should seek to identify and feed off of internal benchmarks for the organisation – ie. engagement exemplars for the organisation as a whole, whether these be at business unit level, at departmental level, or whether these exemplars are located within a specific demographic group, eg. short-service staff within customer services with less than 2 years’ service, etc.

On this basis, HDA identified a number of exemplars of notably high engagement levels within the organisation, including within the UK division’s Press & PR and Customer Service (Cars), the Finance Europe division’s New Business & Customer Service and HR Operations. The organisation was encouraged to consider what qualities stand out in these areas across the engagement components measured, and to feed any internal learnings from this process across the organisation.

The organisation has gone on to transparently address key issues identified by the feedback process, with reference back to key survey outputs, and the organisation has encouraged staff to discuss how their personal interests and values match those of the business.

 

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