The HR team, which includes traditional HR departments that work in synergy, had been talking for some time about launching a survey, which ended up being put on hold due to the pandemic. At the end of 2020, the decision was made to finally launch this major HR survey at the group level and thus the comparison of digital solutions available in the market began in order to:
- allow employees to express their opinions and collect useful quantitative and qualitative data
- prioritise HR actions according to employee expectations
- give managers factual elements to (re)engage their teams
Our focus is on CSR and sustainable partnerships. We have obtained the “Numérique Responsable” (Digital Responsibility) certificate and we are in the process of obtaining the “Lucie 26000” certificate. Our CSR manager was therefore involved in the choice of the digital solution and each company had to answer a questionnaire on its practices in terms of data management, solution management, etc. Zest shared our values and that weighed in our final decision.
Laurie Albano, internal communication manager of the Isia Group
Connected to a CoRH, a collective created in 2018, the managers of the various HR departments exchange regularly on the different transversal and global HR topics. However, they lack factual elements and representative figures to prioritise their actions and determine HR strategies.
Allow employees to express their opinions and collect useful quantitative and qualitative data
Laurie Albano, the group’s internal communications manager, and Marion Roch, recruitment and integration manager, therefore conducted a benchmark of online tools to have an overview of employee engagement and well-being within the group. They chose Zest’s digital solution because of its rich employee feedback features and user-friendly design, as well as its dedicated team of experts who would assist them in all phases of the HR survey: data collection, interpretation, reporting and how to best make use of the information.
The ergonomics and features of Zest were key elements in our choice. But the fact that we had the expertise of a dedicated team, and in particular a doctor in psychometrics, before and after our survey really made the difference.”
Marion Roch, Recruitment and Integration Manager, Isia Group
With the advice of Zest’s experts, the HR manager presented the project to the Executive Committee, managers and the Work Council to explain its objectives before the launch. Indeed, the support and endorsement of senior management are essential in order to have the necessary levers to respond to the expectations or possible dissatisfaction expressed by employees.
The HR team then organised a video conference during which it presented the HR survey project to all employees along with Zest’s Engagement Meter. A Survey was sent out to assess employee satisfaction with the project presentation and invite them to create their account in Zest’s app. This allowed employees to familiarise themselves with Zest and all its features before the survey launch. Afterwards, several messages were communicated by email to explain the different steps, how to use Zest and the reasoning behind the project.
Launched in June 2021 using Zest’s Engagement Meter, nearly 80% of employees responded to the survey on their level of engagement. A subsequent survey, using another of Zest’s features “Key Drivers”, was then sent out to discover what really motivates employees, their levels of satisfaction regarding these topics in the organisation and to ultimately be able to analyse these results in relation to engagement scores.
It’s very interesting to correlate the results of the Engagement Meter and the Key Drivers to understand what really matters to employees and to see how they rate these motivation drivers within the Group Isia. Some elements had a low score in the Engagement Meter yet they were not factors which really motivated employee.
Prioritise HR actions according to employee expectations
The employee survey was an essential starting point for HR to focus on the important issues and meet employee needs and expectations. Prior to this survey, the HR team would sometimes have the impression that an issue only concerned a couple of people and believed it would be time-consuming to take action at the group level. They also thought that perhaps some issues concerning all employees could be easily overlooked. HR therefore lacked the elements to know where to focus their energy and support their choices and actions.
The results obtained from the Engagement Meter and the survey on employees’ Key Drivers allowed us to focus our energy and prioritise. Topics that seemed important or urgent to us were in fact not important to employees, or less so than others that we had placed in the background.”
Using a digital tool to measure employee engagement and satisfaction levels and discover what motivates them also allows you to keep a certain distance and remain neutral in the interpretation of the results. This can sometimes be difficult in a medium-sized company where almost everyone knows each other.
Once the results had been analysed, the HR manager drew up an action plan based on objective data, which was presented to the executive committee, managers, the work council and the “Happiness Committee”, which deals with well-being at work. The HR team then organised a video conference for a more concise presentation to all employees.
The feedback from employees was very positive following the presentation of survey results. Presenting them with clear graphs and showing them how the data collected had been translated into an action plan proved to them that their opinions had been taken into account, that they had been listened to.
Give managers factual elements to (re)engage their teams
Thanks to the analytic features included in Zest’s platform, the HR team could identify priority issues common to all employees and those specific to certain regions or departments, with different levels of urgency. They were therefore able to provide managers with concrete elements to help them maintain their teams’ motivation and improve their well-being within the Group.
Meetings were thus organised with each manager in order to compare the group data with the data from their department, and to highlight the strengths and areas for improvement. Certain subjects were easily identifiable because they were common to all departments. However, specific actions by site or department were sometimes necessary.
Zest makes life easier for HR because it allows them to structure and exploit information. This cannot be done with a simple Google Form! For example, we were able to group information by theme or set up filters for more local analyses. The support of our dedicated Client Success Manager and Zest’s experts in workplace psychology who analysed the results gave us a qualitative aspect that was much more important than just numbers.
Group action plans are driven by HR, but managers are regularly involved in certain actions that concern them more directly (for example, leadership issues). Zest’s team assisted HR in setting up their action plans and alerted them to the fact that there were simply too many separate actions and that certain subjects could be addressed together. This prompted them to work in subgroups in a collaborative manner to deal with the subjects more holistically & efficiently.
Isa Group’s HR team plans to launch an annual Engagement Meter to be able to observe the effects, evolutions and impact of the action plans. Its objective is to launch the assessment at the end of the fiscal year to have time to analyse the elements and prepare the action plans for the new fiscal year.
We were ready to listen to our employees, to know everything that could be reported back from the field. A digital tool like Zest gives us valuable insight into employees’ levels of engagement and satisfaction and the support of Zest’s experts provides substance to our HR strategy.
