CHALLENGE 

A large European financial services company had gone through a major organizational transformation over the past two years caused by factors: 

1. The company was acquired by a private equity, which resulted in many top executives leaving including a replacement of the CEO. In fact, a totally new leadership team 
2. Fast growth since the acquisition and a rapid expansion of its workforce had created a cultural divide between the “old” and the “new” staff. The fast growth was expected to continue. 

The new leadership team decided they needed an organizational baseline for its transformation activities. They had two clear ambitions. They wanted to: 

• Identify focus areas to ensure a healthy & sustainable work environment during the fast growth phase they envisioned 
• To understand how they could engage the informal influence & collaboration networks in their organizational transformation journey 

Innovisor was asked to provide a solution to deliver on these ambitions. That entailed conducting the first employee engagement survey in the company’s history and an integration of an ONA, so key actions to boost employee engagement and increase satisfaction with the workplace were identified, as well as who to engage in the subsequent activities. 

APPROACH 

The integrated solution consisted of three steps: 

1. Identification of the factors that drive employee engagement 

First, we ran a Key Driver Analysis, which enabled us to identify the areas with the biggest impact potential. We did it by first defining the critical success factor, in this case the question linked to the Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS), which measures the employees’ willingness to recommend the company to a friend as a great place to work. 

Then we identified the key drivers of the eNPS score, and lastly, we identified the sub-drivers to the key drivers. These were then the activities the company needed to prioritize to improve its employee engagement.  

2. The measurement of the different factors in different aggregated groups

Second, we took a closer look at different groups in the company – based on attributes like location, function, tenure, hierarchy, etc. – to see how they compared on engagement and satisfaction with the workplace. This allowed us to narrow down the areas to focus actions on.  

3. The identification of key people among employees 

Finally, using organizational network analysis, we identified and crystalized the cultural gap between the “new” and the “old staff, but also a gap between top leadership and middle management.  

In classic Innovisor-style we also identified the most influential employees in the informal networks. These employees were engaged to act as ‘voice of the people’, since they had access to colleagues and influence on their perceptions in the workplace. In line with the #ThreePercentRule, 3% of the employees in the organization influenced 90% of their colleagues. So, they were a really valuable asset to engage in the organizational transformation journey. 

ACTIONS 

The eNPS score of the company was far lower than the benchmark for the financial services industry in general. This indicated issues with employee engagement and satisfaction with the workplace, but surprisingly was perceived a good baseline for the CEO in the work towards improvement. 

Two key drivers were identified at the overall company level, so that all executives and managers knew what actions to take in order to improve employee engagement and position the company for its future organizational transformation.  

Specifically, they needed to improve their internal communications from being one-way focused on e-mails and sharing information on the intranet to being more two-way. Also, middle management needed to be better equipped to role model the behaviours and communicate the priorities of the future strategy.