Background
As a multi-disciplined building services company who design, install and maintain heating, air conditioning, mechanical, electrical and fabric building services, Ergro was identified as a “Critical Worker” during the pandemic.
After an uncertain year where Ergro has had to maintain turnover and adapt to working from home, Managing Director Paul Martin wanted to put a people strategy in place that would ensure engagement and team relationships were a priority for his employees in 2021.
We spoke with Paul to see how Ergro adapted to the difficulties of Covid-19, and how WeThrive has helped support these goals since completing their first survey in January
Identifying challenges at Ergro
Having no prior engagement strategy in place or experience with managing an entire company of remote-workers, developing a suitable plan of action to tackle these challenges was critical for Ergro.
Paul comments:
“WeThrive just got us from the start. We tendered WeThrive against two other large, international organisations. WeThrive was competitive but they took the time to understand Ergro and our needs from the outset.”
With WeThrive, Ergro received an impressive completion rate of 100%, which was a surprise to Paul as they’d never had this level of response in the past. Their people were also thriving 76% of the time spent at work, meaning that despite the challenges of the pandemic, they were still working hard and receiving a strong level of support.
Furthermore, the large amount of optional free text responses clearly indicated this wasn’t just a top-level investment. There was a distinct level of enthusiasm for change amongst the teams.
A deeper understanding
Where Ergro really started to see valuable insights in their survey feedback was the multiple ways to segment their data. At Ergro, reporting is done by department, so for Paul “the ability to drill down into an individual manager’s team is invaluable.”
For example, while Finance scored an impressive 95% in their feelings of meaning and purpose at Ergro, this score was significantly lower for the Small Works team. This information gave Paul and his line managers the ability to instantly get to work on areas of concern specific to each department.
As Paul expected, Ergro’s results revealed that consistency of team understanding and a shared vision was one of the organisation’s priorities. This has been a common issue for many companies having to adapt to remote working and the data backed up Paul’s impression that his teams’ relationships were struggling. WeThrive revealed that 49% of the time their employees wished there was more agreement or meeting of minds. One of the action recommendations suggested that ahead of team meetings managers could crowdsource ideas for the agenda, and let everyone know that any subject goes.
Since reviewing each department’s results, Paul tells us that all the managers have started working through their action recommendations with their individual teams. Each manager dashboard is optimised with their own action plans and goals to mark their progress. This tool also keeps managers fully accountable for their team’s progress, by giving Paul an insight into how each department is managing these changes.
While it’s still too early to review the impact of these changes with a second survey, Paul remarks that each manager is fully committed to improving the engagement of their departments.
Strategy. Sales. Success.
What’s next for Ergro?
As life transitions back to normality for Ergro, both business and people strategy are a priority in 2021. A focus and commitment to improving the workplace experience as a result of their renewed strategies with WeThrive will help lead productivity, sales and success at Ergro.
WeThrive and Ergro both look forward to completing their second survey later this year and seeing how they can continue to build on their people strategy and engagement.
“WeThrive was extremely easy to deal with from the outset. The set up of the system and formulation of the survey questions very straightforward, our 100% completion rate being testament to this. Our staff have given us an amazing amount of information to work with over the next few months to increase their engagement and autonomy. Thank you to WeThrive for their platform and to all our staff who took the time to respond, which will be repaid in making Ergro an even better workplace of choice.”
