Client Stories > Improving Employee Engagement: F500 Industrial Manufacturer

Improving Employee Engagement: F500 Industrial Manufacturer

Improving Manufacturing Employee Engagement

Increasing Employee Engagement 19% at a Fortune 500 Industrial Manufacturer

Situation: Improving Manufacturing Employee Engagement

This $12 billion Fortune 500 industrial manufacturing leader with offices in over 60 countries started a broad initiative to grow revenue, create operational excellence, and build a winning culture.  One of their key success metrics identified for the initiative was increased employee engagement.  As part of the strategy, they ran an employee engagement survey and implemented broad engagement actions across the company based upon the results.

Complications: Improving Manufacturing Employee Engagement

  • Many Actions but Little Improvement
    Despite some sweeping actions over a four year period based upon the employee engagement survey feedback and some tangible improvement in discreet engagement categories, overall engagement scores remained flat.
  • Global Company with Diversified Needs
    With over 40,000 employees in 600 locations any solution must be able to scale operationally and culturally while making sense for all 11 strategic business units.

Objective

Raise overall employee engagement scores by at least 2 points.

Approach

After four years of little progress, the senior leadership team decided to hold managers accountable for demonstrating authentic leadership and driving engagement locally.  This new approach included making sure that leaders at all levels are accountable for doing the right things to manage performance, communicate important messages, and to develop and reward their people.  Leaders were expected to be role models for the values of the organization and hold their teams accountable for hitting specific metrics against business outcomes and key leadership competencies throughout the performance management and leadership review cycles.

Additionally, the company created the following seven overarching engagement guiding principles to consistently drive the initiative forward across the globe:

  1. Managers Matter
    The person with the greatest impact on an individual’s engagement is that person’s immediate manager. This is where the real employee engagement happens — not at the enterprise, business unit, region or function.
  2. Strategic Priority
    Employee engagement must be integrated into the company’s key strategic priorities; it is not a standalone initiative.
  3. Active Involvement
    Managers must continually identify engagement gaps and define solutions with their teams. This will, in turn, build trust and increase discretionary effort among employees.
  4. Data Driven
    Employee engagement is a key enabler to the business strategy. Data will give insights on our organizational and cultural health enabling the business to diagnose where it can be more effective.
  5. Prioritize Engagement Drivers
    In order to significantly improve engagement, it is imperative that there are clear priorities, a laser like focus and strong leadership.
  6. Performance Coaching
    Leaders must coach each other through support, helping them understand their data, and by keeping a very strong focus on what’s within their control to make better.
  7. Leverage Strengths
    There is a lot that is going well with engagement — continue to build on those strengths.

Solution

In support of the seven guiding engagement principles, the company developed a comprehensive Employee Engagement strategy focused on enterprise and business-led activities with a constant emphasis on two-way communication and continuous improvement.

  • Initial Leadership Workshops
    Kicking off its global, enterprise-­led effort, the company rapidly developed and deployed a leadership and engagement workshop to its global audience. The customized engagement workshop was designed to equip managers with practical strategies they can use to retain, engage, and encourage the talents of their people.  It also addressed leader/manager behaviors such as coaching and communication that are critical drivers of engagement at the company.
  • Reinforcement
    As part of its overall strategy post­ workshop actions were identified to maintain momentum, further learning and drive sustainable change including:

    (1) An Online Employee Engagement Manager Toolkit with a Talent Risk Assessment, a template to a Stay Interview conversation plan, a one ­page What Matters Most survey, and links to best practice tools and articles.

    (2)  Executive Overviews detailing the critical business case for engagement across the organization and setting the expectation to model engagement and retention behaviors.

    (3)  Human Resource Coaching and Training designed specifically for Human Resources personnel to coach on engagement and promote use of Manager Toolkit resources.

    (4) A series of targeted career development workshops for employees and managers.

    (5) Best Practice Sharing of top ­quartile engagement managers as lessons learned from project postmortems across the organization.

Results

  • 19% increase in overall employee engagement in two years – (from 63% to 75%)
  • 2.2-to-1 difference between managers who completed the course (11% engagement improvement average) compared to those who did not complete the entire program (5%  engagement improvement average)
  • Recognized as one of the top 50 Most Engaged Workplaces
  • Named one of FORTUNE Magazines’ World’s Most Admired Companies
  • Listed as one of the 100 Best Corporate Citizens

employee-engagement-improvement

Related Information

The refreshing thing about LSA is that they focus on understanding our business situation and helping me succeed instead of selling stuff. Their experts are an invaluable resource that help me deliver higher quality results faster. I recommend them to anyone looking to improve the performance of their workforce.

Stacie Rodgers
VP of Human Resources

Cutera

We have had a very beneficial partnership with LSA. Their recent Leadership Development Program helped us to identify, develop, and retain top leaders. It was instrumental in helping take our company and our key people to the next level. I would recommend them to anyone looking to truly develop and retain top talent.

Steve Janowsky
Vice President of Operations

Proxicom

We turned to LSA Global to help take our behavioral interviewing process to the next level in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness. LSA quickly understood our unique culture and challenging requirements.

They immediately helped us to improve our ability to continue to hire top talent that fits our culture and talent management strategy as we rapidly scale.  Thank you!

Julie Pearl
Technical Program Manager

Google

LSA helped us to create the strategic clarity and alignment we needed for our team to thrive.

The practical, no-nonsense, and outcome-oriented approach really helped us all get on the same page and set us up to be a high performing leadership team to focus on what matters most.

Michael Carter
VP Human Resources

Samsung

The quality of LSA’s Leadership Training Programs and facilitators is always top notch. We recognize and appreciate the hard work LSA always goes through to align to our unique culture and meet our specific requirements. Thank you for regularly going above and beyond. Your support and dedication, both on the strategic and tactical side, have been outstanding!

Anna Meyer
Leadership Development

Intuit

Thank you! Your learning strategy insights flipped our approach from a content-driven design to one where business strategy and relevancy drives the leadership programs we aimed to redesign.

This investment more than proved its worth – not only did it improve our leadership development program redesign, but it also was like a mini executive seminar that stretched our experienced L&D team’s thinking.

Richard Morse
Senior Director Talent Management

Gilead

We hired LSA Global to design and deliver a customized outdoor experiential new employee orientation program for our recent group of MBA new hires.

The program reinforced WIPRO core values, helped to build relationships with fellow associates, and enhanced the group’s ability to operate successfully in the global world.

I definitely recommend LSA for effective employee onboarding of top talent.

Vishu Venkat, PHR
Talent Acquisition

LSA has a very unique and powerful methodology regarding learning. Their ability to overcome skepticism, obtain executive support, and create an aligned learning strategy that provides measurable business impact is second to none.

They understand your goals, flex to your needs, and solve problems. They certainly help make my job easier and are a pleasure to work with.

I highly recommend LSA to anyone trying to connect the dots between strategy, skills, knowledge, and results.

Noelle Van Vlierbergen
Human Resources Director

AKQA

As a Training Outsourcing Partner, LSA consistently saves me time and money by understanding what matters to our strategy and what works in our unique culture.

Their practical and outcome-oriented methodology is fantastic and allows us to deploy better solutions faster.

I highly recommend them to anyone looking to raise the talent bar with a true strategic partner.

Tim Bonnet
Director of Training and Organizational Development

Dimension Data

We have partnered with LSA for years.  Our organization’s learning needs have increased, decreased, and increased again over time.

The beauty of LSA’s business model is its flexibility and depth of their expertise.

When we need strategic or tactical outside help that we can trust, we use LSA knowing that we can depend on outstanding quality advice and targeted solutions every time.  You cannot go wrong with LSA.

Margie Bunting
HR Manager

We have worked with LSA Global for our learning and development needs and have always had great success.

They helped us recently with targeted and customized Management Training Workshops to fit our unique situation, and they were fantastic.

I highly recommend LSA to anyone that is attempting to help take their leadership and management talent to the next level.

Mary Johnston
HR Manager, BU Radiology Informatics

We partnered with LSA to help custom design, deliver, and measure an advanced new employee on-boarding process. It was well thought out and bought into by sales leadership.  The combination of targeted sales tools, technology, coaching, performance plans, training, and reinforcement made all the difference.  The solution quantifiably improved new employee and hiring manager satisfaction and increased the speed to sales quota for new hires.

I would highly recommend LSA Global for any sales enablement team looking to increase the engagement and speed to productivity of their sales force. We are excited to implement the program globally as we continue to scale.

Rochana Golani
Director, Global Sales & Technical Field Enablement

We partnered with LSA Global to help us invest in our people. LSA custom designed an impactful management curriculum to help upskill our key managers and leaders.

We consider LSA to be our trusted learning and development partner and a valued extension of our team as we rapidly scale.  Thank you LSA!

Lisa Bruun
SVP Human Resources

Ellie Mae

Congratulations on your pro-activity in establishing this program and developing such an effective New Employee Orientation course.

Farhat Ali
President and Chief Executive Office

Fujitsu

I’m not sure if I’ve run across a company that can match the depth and quality of LSA’s consultants and facilitators.

I highly recommend LSA to anyone seeking a trusted training, coaching, and consulting partner to improve performance – at both a tactical and strategic level.

They really get talent, learning, and performance.

Jeff Coon
VP Human Resources

Exelixis

Evaluate your Performance

Toolkits

Get key strategy, culture, and talent tools from industry experts that work

More

Health Checks

Assess how you stack up against leading organizations in areas matter most

More

Whitepapers

Download published articles from experts to stay ahead of the competition

More

Methodologies

Review proven research-backed approaches to get aligned

More

Blogs

Stay up to do date on the latest best practices that drive higher performance

More

Client Case Studies

Explore real world results for clients like you striving to create higher performance

More

Top 10 Ways to Boost Engagement

Top 10 Ways to Boost Engagement

Research-backed lessons from over 500,000 engagement surveys responses per year

Way to take the first step to higher engagement!