Our clients and partners are always giving us the most incredible feedback, and it’s thanks to them that we get to see the real impact our work has on their lives – and the lives of their employees. It’s an incredible feeling to know we’re contributing to so much positive change, to so much open and honest communication.
Here are some of the best quotes we’ve gathered from our clients and partners in 2018 that really show how employee engagement – and Engagement Multiplier – can change lives and businesses for the better.
Bravery
“Measuring employee engagement is a scary endeavor when you first begin, because you don’t quite know what you are going to get back. Once you get going and have been through a few cycles, you begin to understand what is driving responses, especially the comments, and you begin to look in the mirror realizing that the organization needs more. More communication, more encouragement, more training, more staff, more fun …. More of you as a leader and an owner. That is when change happens and that is when the fun begins.”
– Gonzalo Garcia, CLU for AgencyOne
Engaged Leadership
“I’ve actually become more engaged in my own company. When you do something for forty years you can get a little stale and Engagement Multiplier has made me or allowed me to become more engaged in my own company. I mean I’ve got more employee contact than I can remember. . . . So I’ll just say, for somebody that has been doing what they’ve been doing for a long time, if you need a new shot of adrenaline, or if you’re looking for what I’ll call a breakthrough for your company, I firmly believe this is one of the best steps you could take.”
– Lee Schull, President and CEO of Building Products
“As a caring and open CEO, I always liked to think that my team would feel comfortable in approaching me if they were in any way unhappy or had any concerns or issues they wanted to address (no matter how big or small).
However, I also realised that to a certain extent, there was an element of wishful thinking in feeling that my team would provide me with unfiltered feedback. This is where Engagement Multiplier has made a big difference. It has provided them with a system they can implicitly trust as being totally confidential and anonymous in expressing their views.
Every quarter I am able to share the most common areas highlighted and agree an action plan. This has had a great effect on team morale and brings everyone together in a way I could not have imagined at the start. The result has been a happier, more engaged and productive team.”
– Matt Kendrick, CEO of MK Health Hub
“As a leadership team, it’s also made us shift our focus from how we’re going to manage the business to how we’re going to support people. So, we’ve been doing a lot more work on mindful leadership as a kind of way into how we can release the capability of the people who work here. I think that’s directly related to people saying ‘We need more and we need more room to do it.’ And that our ability to come towards that in a confident way because of the Engagement Multiplier Program.”
– Linda Wallace, Chief Executive at CDS Co-operatives
Engagement’s Real Impact
“In July we had zero turnover. That was huge, we had a little bit more turnover in August because we kind of cleaned house with some of the people. But now what we’ve got, we’ve increased salaries for everyone who is still there, we hired a whole bunch of rock stars, which is really, really exciting. And a lot of them were based around those core values that we identified in the engaged purpose piece of the survey. The owners are just beside themselves happy because I think everybody comes into work now really excited to be there.”
– Amy Riccardi, Chief People Officer and Founder of HCM2020 (EM Partner)
“I am not sure that you ever have an organization COMPLETELY filled with engaged team members; there is always someone who is not quite right for the organization and the team or vice-versa. However, encouraging strong communication and teamwork across the organization weeds out those people or, better yet, helps them find a path to engagement. At the end of the day, having an Engaged team, that believes in the corporate culture and mission, creates a highly functioning team that will serve customers at extraordinary levels. This in turn creates customer loyalty, retention and satisfaction, ultimately producing meaningful financial results.”
– Gonzalo Garcia, CLU for AgencyOne
“Sometimes, you get caught chasing things that don’t necessarily exist. Like you’ll hear, ‘Hey, the entire company is upset over A, B or C.’ And you’re thinking, ‘Oh man, should I create an entire plan or something to address this issue that everybody’s upset about?’ When we started using Engagement Multiplier, we found we weren’t just chasing our tails, because now if somebody mentions ‘Hey, I’m upset about X, Y, or Z,’ we can send them a direct message and ask about it – while keeping their identity anonymous so they feel safe responding honestly.
That’s been a good tool to help us identify what issues aren’t company-wide. Then we can dive into specific departments or locations to see what’s going on with those teams.
We’ve definitely been able to see that teams where we’ve had the most turnover are usually the ones where we find the least engagement.”
– Guy Berry, COO of Redirect Health
“As soon as the survey is done, we’ll go through it in our staff meeting, and I’ll read the results to everybody. Even though it’s anonymous, every single time we do that, someone will raise their hand and say ‘I’m the one who said that, and this is why.’ It opens up a dialogue and creates a very comfortable atmosphere to have an open discussion.”
– Tim Conn, Founder and President of Image One
“It also gives [stakeholders] some really granular feedback about what works. When we want to invest in something like an employee conference or creating volunteering opportunities for employees, they naturally want to know that the ROI is and look at whether or not it’s moving the culture forward.
The fact that engaged employees have a positive impact on the bottom line of a business is now known but evidencing that the things that you’re doing are having that impact is much more difficult to do, and that’s what Engagement Multiplier offers us.”
– Linda Wallace, Chief Executive at CDS Co-operatives
Advice on Improving Engagement
“Stick with it …. Do it regularly for at least a year or two. Engage yourself in the process, engage the company’s leadership team in the process and ultimately engage the employees in the process. You MUST communicate the findings and you MUST act on the feedback that you get. Once the employees know you take it seriously and care about their feelings of engagement, everything begins to change.”
– Gonzalo Garcia, CLU for AgencyOne
“The most important thing by far is transparency. Develop the action items and make sure that you follow through and live up to what you’re committing to do. What’s important is that you pick a couple things and you deliver on them. Then your employees can see the change because now they really feel part of things. It’s like, ‘Wow. We’ve got a new way of communicating. We’ve got job descriptions for everyone. We have a new performance system. We’ve got a new compensation model.’ I mean, that’s a lot and only in three surveys.”
– Mark White, Senior Vice President of Valmark Financial Testimonial
“Well this one is pretty simple, I would tell them to use Engagement Multiplier. It’s certainly one of the best investments that I’ve made and I’m going to go so far as to say it’s one of the top ten best things I’ve done in my forty years with the company. Now forty years is a long time, and to say it’s in the top ten, I don’t know what better recommendation I can give it than that.”
– Lee Schull, President and CEO of Building Products
Thank you to everyone who took the time to share your thoughts with us this year. Keep it coming – because you know better than most how important open, honest, and regular feedback can be!
