SUCCESS STORIES
Sparking employee conversations
Industry: Sports & Leisure
Use case: Conversations of Shared Purpose
This umbrella organisation is made up of over one hundred individual entities of various sizes (from 10 to 90 employees), each with a unifying purpose. The objective of the MirrorWave program was to spark conversations with employees and over time, to follow how engaged staff are with their organisation’s purpose, with a view to improving a problem with staff retention.
A MirrorWave parallel platform was implemented, where each organisation runs its own program very cost-effectively, but consistent with a desired overall approach.
Measuring performance against purpose
Employees are asked each 6 months about how their organisation is performing against its purpose, what helps the organisation meet the needs of its communities, but also what holds it back from meeting those needs.
Each chief executive is responsible for listening to and taking action on the feedback received. It’s a valuable opportunity for them to have conversations with staff during the initial program briefings prior to its start, to help clarify the organisation’s purpose and reinforce its importance.
Staff were highly engaged, with an excellent response rate of 85% and a very high word count in the answers they provided.
An individual approach sparks valuable conversations
Each chief executive then reviews and ‘closes the loop’ on the feedback provided. They use this to show their commitment and to engage with staff 1:1. The results challenged key notions about how they operate, where they deploy resources, how they share information and how that compares to their purpose. The program has opened their eyes to the big picture from an employee perspective, sparking valuable conversations and eliciting high quality information and ideas from their teams.
Employees felt involved and listened to as a result of the program. Initial indications show that the strengthened sense of purpose has improved employee retention.