The challenge of employee engagement (Part two: The feedback)
12th May 2015
In a business spread over approximately 300 locations around the country, the logistics of feeding back the results of surveys to all employees is quite a challenge. While we spent time considering how to convey the feedback, and when to do it, there is one principle that is paramount to us – the belief that each and every line manager ought to discuss his/her results with their team.
In the Best Companies (the workplace engagement specialists) model of engagement that we employ, of the eight factors of engagement, we believe that the line manager has the greatest impact on the engagement level of an employee.
After all, who decides whether you can have the holiday dates you want, who holds your annual appraisal and who allocates the overtime?! Here, at SITA UK or as we are now known – SUEZ environnement, each line manager (all the way to the top) gets his/her own results and holds a meeting with their team. The line manager is usually supported by their HR representative, and talks through what he/she does to engage the team and what they could improve.
This is quite a commitment from the company and it shows the level to which we believe in engagement as a business objective – as critical to the success of the company and the wellbeing of our employees.
Best Companies stated that, in their years of running engagement surveys, no other company had made such a commitment to this level of follow up. Many companies talk of the overall company results, which can hide a multitude of different local results, not to mention those of individual managers. There is no doubt that some of the managers and supervisors find these meetings a little daunting and certainly, some of the meetings have not been easy, but we believe this is the only way to truly impact on the engagement of our employees.
Good line managers welcome this process and if you believe in this commitment and approach, SUEZ environnement might just be the company for you!
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