The lifeline of any organization is its people. If employees are happy, productivity will be at its best. Experience has taught us that an organisation producing $10 billion per annum can increase its productivity by 30% by simply creating a supportive work atmosphere. Hence, to make our operations and services more employee-centric, we recently partnered with the Hay Group to conduct our first employee engagement survey. All the employees of Initto took part in the online survey from January 12 to January 27.
HAY Group is a global leader in employee opinion research for the past 35 years. Established in 1975 in Philadelphia, the organization has 88 offices, with approximately 2,600 employees, in 47 countries. Hay Group has assisted over 10,000 clients survey millions of respondents, creating one of the world’s largest database of employee opinion that covers over 20 major industry groups and 40 countries.
Over the years, Hay Group has been an insightful partner to several complex organizations such as Barclays Regional, Deutsche Bank, Bombardier Inc Global, Walt Disney, MetLife Global, Mattel Global, National Australia Bank Global, Renault Global, Vodafone, Nissan and Nestle Global. The company’s USP lies in their thoroughly researched and validated survey tools that can measure an employee’s entire life cycle; secure web-based survey administration tools in multiple languages; rapid results, powerful reporting tools for senior executives and line managers and action planning tools and support from training workshops.
Hay Group taught us six basic rules to achieve successful engagement of employees. Ensure that there is a clearly communicated link between performance and rewards within the organization; make a proper differentiation in performance ratings between employees; root out bad business practices such as unnecessary work and duplication that can adversely affect employee morale; appoint the right people in the right job; monitor and improve the work culture by ensuring that the leaders have the ability to motivate employees and lastly, focus on non-monetary rewards such as awards and recognition
It was not that simple though. Every organization has its individual requirements and quirks and we, too, had ours. Hay Group took care of all that with their flexible research framework that provided a 360 degree perspective on employees and organisational effectiveness.
The survey was an exhaustive process, with a meticulous four-stage method followed. In the first stage, a project governance team was set up. Then, the project was finalized with the management, which included agreeing on the scope, commercials and timelines. Separate templates were created for the employees, HR and leadership teams. With the pre-survey work done, a half-day workshop for stakeholders, management and HR team was held in the second stage to explain the need and benefits of the survey.
In the third stage, Hay Group launched the project by sending an e-mail communication to all the employees. Every day, the responses were tracked. At the end of the survey, all the responses were collated, validated and then presented before the project governance team. In the last stage, the report was analysed. Two half-day workshops on action planning were held with the senior leadership team and the managers, where Hay Group recommended business critical development areas.
The survey was an enriching exercise. We now plan a full-day action planning workshop to make Initto a better place for employees. Watch this space for more news.
