Genos Employee Engagement Case Studies

Refocusing culture, direction & operations: A fast moving technology company

The Genos engagement survey and implementation process helps a fast moving technology company solve growing pains in their business.

Background

Following three years of quick successive growth, an information technology company was facing growing pains. Everything from the size of their office space to their systems and processes had not kept pace with the growth of the business. People were constantly working at a fast pace and had little to no development and less care had been taken in the recruitment process. There was a need to refocus the culture, direction and operations of the business. There was much debate amongst the executive team on the order and priority of what to address to continue to scale up their platform.

The Genos Solution

To help the executive team simplify, focus and prioritize what needed to be done to build a more scalable business platform and drive profit growth on that basis, Genos implemented our engagement and organizational effectiveness survey.

The executive team were brought together for a half day offsite with a Genos engagement facilitator. For the first part of the day the facilitator worked with the executive team to get a clear consensual view and description of the market conditions they were operating in and the strategy they were trying to execute. With these clearly defined, for the second part of the day the facilitator worked with the executive team to choose the factors and items from the organizational effectiveness survey they needed to measure. In total ten organizational effectiveness factors were chosen.

Results

The engagement survey results revealed that the growing pains the business was experiencing were starting to have an impact on employee engagement. There was a lower percentage of people engaged in the business than at any other time. The organizational effectiveness survey revealed what was impacting on engagement and what could be done to improve it. More specifically, the organizational effectiveness survey revealed:

1. Frontline to middle level staff were not clear on the strategy and direction of the company. This was reducing employees’ tendency to Praise the organization to others as a great place to work, and Perfect, that is continuously look to improve their work. To address this issue the executive team performed a road show question and answer forum with all staff right across the business to communicate the strategy and future direction of the business.
2. Employees clearly didn’t feel they were experiencing good leadership and leaders didn’t feel they had adequate support to effectively lead people in the business. This was reducing employee’s tendency to Persist with their work in the face of difficulties and was driving retention issues (i.e., some leaders and people were actively looking to leave the organization). To address this issue the organization put a leadership development program based on emotional intelligence in place. This program was designed to improve leaders’ self-awareness, understanding of others and how to motivate and inspire them on that basis.
3. Finally, the organizational effectiveness survey revealed that employee’s performance was not being managed effectively. Focus groups on this data point revealed there was no system for tracking performance, no tools for having the conversation and indeed little if any conversations on performance were occurring. This was reducing Perform, that is employees’ willingness to work above and beyond what was expected of them. As one employee put it in a focus group, “why should I go above and beyond if it’s not recognized and my colleagues who don’t go unnoticed”. To address this issue the organization procured a cloud-based performance management system with People Soft, put in a one-day program for all managers on how to conduct effective performance management conversations and drove a performance and recognition initiative throughout the entire business.

In summary, the engagement and organizational effectiveness survey helped the executive focus, prioritize and put in place initiatives the organization needed to scale to the next level, and importantly drive up engagement and performance in their workforce. The impact of these initiatives are currently being measured.