Background
Personal Group help UK businesses improve productivity through better engagement with their employees using simple and easy to use employee services, for example, employee benefits, health and wellbeing programmes and employee related insurance products.
Increasing turnover, varying levels of productivity in a remote team meant there was little visibility on how individuals were feeling on a day to day basis.
The Personal Group Benefits Employee Engagement Execs had always been an interesting group of employees, being an employee engagement business Personal Group wanted to set an example in ensuring they understood the motivations of this team. With an increasing labour turnover within the department, particularly in some of our newer members, and a remote team that wasn’t easily accessible Personal Group wanted to ensure they were doing the right things to motivate the team and take care of their welfare. The business wanted to get to the root of any issues and understand the emotions and states of mind that could drive changes in performance.
Rebekah Tapping, HR Director comments:
“Although proficient at the task in hand, the productivity levels could vary, but we didn’t know why as we had good incentives and reward structures. The Regional Managers had been with the business a long time and there was a tendency to assume they knew the reasons why people were leaving so we wanted a tool that would allow us more insight into issues that might result in someone resigning.”
Previously Personal Group had used corporate annual employee surveys. These surveys were reviewed with action plans within the department. The business had to wait until a selected cut off point for the results to be sent in a lengthy report, they were not instantaneous. The annual survey was also a review of the year before and not necessarily about how they felt in that moment so it was difficult to identify current issues. Finally, the previous solution was anonymous so there was no way of knowing how individuals felt.
A new solution was needed
Quickly addressing issues before they are escalated with instant action plan
“We wanted a more agile employee engagement solution which would enable use to address any issues before they resulted in a person resigning. We chose WeThrive because it was simple to use and gave results instantaneously. Managers were able to assess the easy to read graphs and create a clear action plan with their team members, making it focused and relevant”
Utilising WeThrive managers were able to quickly use the tool which produced instant action point suggestions for the team and individuals. Utilising the comparison by survey functionality made it easy to review against and continually identify areas to work on or where strengths have been maintained.
WeThrive gave Personal Group the ability to match the outcomes of the survey to the actual results of performance meaning they were able to quickly manage concerns before they are escalated. Rebekah comments:
“The Team Manager of the team with the highest engagement scores and the highest business results was feeling disengaged in certain areas which may not have come to light because on the face of it their team was performing well.”
Staff retention is up by 19% and there’s more…
By using WeThrive Personal Group have seen a number of benefits and results which have transformed the sales team and the way it operates.
- Personal Group can now respond to risk areas, where low results may show and manage any concerns
- HR has used it as an opportunity to work closely with new line managers to build their skills and confidence around people management, forming effective business partnering and having good quality conversations
- Managers were able to ask the right questions to tease out the root cause of any issues or understand why things were going well, in particular for new trainees
- WeThrive helped educate the managers on the new process, with simple language about how to the platform and automated action plans as a result
- Team dynamics became closer with more awareness of how others were feeling
- A rise in employee engagement Feb 17 versus November 17
- Staff retention is up 19% because individuals feel as though they are having more attention and their views are being listened to
Engagement scores Q1 2017 vs Q4
“Most strikingly there was a strong correlation with low scores and low productivity and high scores and high productivity. Proving that the more engaged the workforce is, the better they perform.”
Improved engagement = improved productivity
“The process was simple, the support throughout has been quick and the results are easy to view and interpret. I would definitely recommend WeThrive to anyone looking for an employee engagement survey tool with a difference.”