Embracing Diversity

A company in the service industry was experiencing challenges in handling the diversity within their organisation.
EngagementDriver™ made it possible for the company to identify what the different teams found to be most important and make relevant management decisions based on specific diversity inputs.
Based on the results, specific initiatives were implemented to address the specific challenges found in each team.
The work resulted in a significant improvement in engagement level, leadership and improved cooperation between the union representatives and top management.

Although the company had used traditional Engagement Surveys for a number of years, they had difficulties gleaning the knowledge that made it possible for them to solve challenges they found in some of their departments.

One of the departments consisted of more than 800 service staff, with similar job tasks, compensation, and educational background. Each team consisted of between 5 and 15 individuals. Although improvement initiatives were implemented based on the results with the traditional engagement survey, it did not improve the engagement levels as expected.

Becoming Truly Global

A company in the production industry, with production sites in Europe and Asia, found challenges in handling the diversity within their global organisation.
EngagementDriver™ gave the managers transparency into what mattered most within the teams, thereby capturing the diversity — regardless of nationality.
This enabled them to realise that "cultural differences" are general, and that they don't necessarily apply to the individual.
As a result, the company as a whole gained valuable knowledge about operating globally.

The company had many non-nationals in managerial positions. Many of these managers had a view on the country where they were stationed based on generalisations — often referred to as "cultural differences" in literature.
That made it difficult for nationals to attain higher positions in the company.
The full potential in an organisation cannot be realised without fully understanding and leveraging diversity.

Implementation of Strategic Priorities

A CEO in a company in the service industry needed to know to what extent the new strategy was being implemented in the organisation.
EngagementDriver™ made it clear that only the first 2-3 organisational levels had included the strategic priorities in their objectives. On the lower levels, the connections to the strategic priorities were sporadic, and on levels 7 and 8 there was no connection at all.
The result also showed that the company's organisational systems and processes did not support the strategic priorities.
After the first round of EngagementDriver™, the company decided to use the next 3 months to make sure that all leaders transformed the overarching strategic priorities into something meaningful for their employees, explaining how the team's tasks connected to the strategic priorities.
This meant that the strategic priorities went from something the CEO and top-level people talked about, to something that created meaning for all employees in the organisation.
Our approach allows for open ended comments. The large amounts of comments collected confirmed that the employees now had the knowledge to come up with innovative suggestions on how to improve the different processes in the company.

The company had invested much time and money in consultants, videos, posters and other media to communicate the strategic priorities.
However, the CEO was in doubt whether all the efforts had the required effect and wanted to measure the implementation level.
The challenge for all companies and organisations is that the development of the new strategic priorities is done by the top management. This means that the top management feels connected, involved, and engaged.
Until these strategic initiatives become something meaningful for the employees, the employees will not feel connected and risk being disengaged.
Meaningfulness is the strongest driver of engagement, finding meaning in the daily work tasks is therefore the foundation for engagement.
In addition, the lack of understanding of the strategic priorities can cause a disconnect between the employees and top management, effectively creating a "them and us" situation.

Business Oriented HR

The HR department in a company in the production industry found it difficult to convince the business leaders of the importance of engagement surveys.
EngagementDriver™ created ownership among the business leaders by including the business managers in the engagement process.
The top management and HR selected questions from the EngagementDriver™ template and added a few additional questions of their own. The top management also prioritised key questions as especially important for the company's current business situation.
The department leaders and frontline leaders also had the opportunity to add question that were relevant to their specific challenges.
These questions made the survey relevant and important throughout the organisation — turning the EngagementDriver™ into a management tool.
EngagementDriver™ included the company's business priorities, connected to the employees' daily work tasks.
By including the business priorities, department specific challenges and priorities, as well as asking the leaders about their perspective on their leadership role, the leaders found the result action oriented and to the point.

The HR department had during the last couple of years felt an increasing pressure from the business leaders to stop conducting engagement surveys.
The business leaders felt that the survey did not properly address the pressing business challenges.
Furthermore, the feedback sessions did not work as intended with the traditional engagement survey. This was either because employees felt that the discussion was not relevant or important, or because the leaders were too defensive in the discussion.

From Generic Leadership Development to Individualised Leadership Development

A company within the production industry were investing large amounts of money on developing their leaders every year. However, they were not sure that the training had enough of an impact on the leadership skills.
EngagementDriver™ made it possible to move from generic leadership development to a more individualised leadership development.
Using the EngagementDriver™ results, each leader filled out action plans and goals for their specific leadership challenges. The action plan only included areas that were under the direct influence of the leader and at the same time rated important by his or her employees, or prioritised by top management.
Most of the development areas did not need external parties involved. In fact, the leaders themselves were equipped with the date to self-manage most of the development areas.
The following year the improvement initiatives were measured with a very positive result: 80 percent of the leaders achieved improvements.

EngagementDriver™ enables individualised leadership development, focusing on the strengths and challenges of each individual leader.

Based on the feedback from managers attending their general leadership programs, the company found that the more generic programs did not sufficiently address the leaders' individual challenges.
The company decided to use the EngagementDriver™ to identify the most important development points for each leader, thereby moving from generic leadership development to a more individualised leadership development.
Leadership development based on generic leadership skills, risks being seen as irrelevant not bringing the change that is needed.
Without focus on what matters the most to each team, and a systematic follow-up, the risk is that the engagement survey ends up being a yearly exercise, that could do more harm than good.
Time and money invested in improvement initiatives might end up being wasted, if the initiatives are focused on areas that aren't prioritised by your employees or top management.
In addition to this, managers are often put in a situation where they have to make improvements on areas that are beyond their direct influence, or aren't actionable. Your employees, however, will still expect improvements within these areas.
The lack of improvement risks creating cynics among the employees, hindering engagement.

Optimising and Simplifying Leadership Evaluation

A company within the service industry had traditionally used time and energy on 360 degree and Engagement Surveys, but wanted to improve and optimize their process and results.
EngagementDriver™ made it possible to strengthen the relevance of improvement initiatives, since they were based on areas that were prioritised by employees and top management.
Additionally, it reduced time and money spent on both a 360 degree and an engagement survey.
As a result, the HR department freed up resources for both themselves and the leaders without losing important information.
EngagementDriver™ gave each leader a very strong tool that made it easy to see how others perceived him or her.

The company believed that the leader/employee relationship gave the most relevant information. They already had systems where the leader's leader gave performance ratings and the company did not find the colleague feedback important enough to warrant a separate survey.
The company therefore decided to use EngagementDriver™, getting the new generation engagement survey and the most important areas from the 360 degree.

In-Company Research

A company within the service industry had challenges with a large variation in their leaders' leadership skills.
Top management wanted to identify the reasons for the low performers and at the same time find out why the high performers did so well.

EngagementDriver™ Analysis module gave the company information that made it possible for HR to dig deeper, identifying the leadership strengths and challenges within different functions and departments, such as:

• Identifying leaders that are good at developing other leaders
• Ranking of leaders based on function and department specific leadership skills/abilities
• Questions giving the most challenges for leaders
• Number of challenges for each leader
• Leaders with challenges living the company values

The more generic approach to leadership development had not had the impact the company wanted.
The company recognised that they needed more knowledge in identifying the leadership style that fit their business challenges, values and employees.
Getting more knowledge was therefore essential in relation to recruitment, successor planning as well as training and development.

Creating a Competitive Advantage

A company in production and sales needed to improve their business results.
The company was looking for ways to identify what leadership behaviour that leads to better business performance.
EngagementDriver™ Analysis module gave the company the possibility to correlate the results of the EngagementDriver™ with a large number of business performance indicators.
The result gave the company correlations between sales figures/productivity and leadership behaviour specific to either sales or production.
This gave the company the opportunity to nurture and promote leadership styles that would increase sales and productivity.

No two organisations are the same. Getting the relevant knowledge means you have to be able to conduct research within your own organisation.
This way the conclusions and correlations will be something you can turn into focused and relevant improvements, giving you a competitive advantage.

Over the years, much research has been conducted.
Conclusions have been made and models and correlations have been argued.
The findings are general, based on averages from many organisations all over the world, over a span of many years. It is risky to assume that the findings and conclusions are relevant for your organisation and business challenges.