We’re listening!
There was once a Greek philosopher named Epictetus who said:
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we can speak”
It is a wonderful expression which helps us to think about the proportion in which we listen versus speak. This is a great skill and one of the most powerful tools we have as it allows us to learn more about the people in our business and the challenges which may exist. This is why we implemented our HiveHR employee engagement survey which gives us the chance to get your feedback in a safe and anonymous way. As part of our People Promise: Creating the moments that matter, we promised to give you a voice and, more importantly listen and act upon your feedback.
Our first survey of the year is live at the end of this month and I remain committed that your feedback is important and will help shape our fantastic business. As a reminder, in our surveys last year we improved our eNPS, which tells us if you would recommend us as an employer, from +6 to +39 (+38 in our last survey). You also let us know that you think our strengths are:
Our organisation treats everybody with dignity and respect, regardless of gender, race, sexuality, age etc. (8.8)
I know how my specific role contributes to the success of this organisation (8.4)
My manager gives me positive feedback/praise when I perform well in my job (8.3)
You told us that you thought no action would be taken off the back of the surveys (lowest scoring response) and we started to do more to let you know this was happening.
Some of the things we did, following your feedback, included:
• Changing our communication – reducing our volume of emails, introducing the People Team Newsletter, launching a Group onboarding call and we still have more to do
• Working with local leaders to help create engagement action plans so that local feedback is addressed locally.
• Making some of our locations, including our amazing new HQ, better suited to collaboration and we will keep working on this.
• Approved the implementation of a new Learning Management System to help give you more opportunity to get access to development and this will be launching in Q1
• Identified opportunities to support work life balance
• Launched a wellbeing hub to help provide more options to help support your wellbeing
In 2022 we would like to improve participation to ensure that every employee's voice is heard. When you receive the survey invite on Monday 31st January 2022, please do take the time to give us your feedback and help us shape the future of Harvey Nash Group. I certainly will be.
Lastly, lets continue to learn and grow from each other by really listening… think about this the next time you have conversations with clients, colleagues and candidates.