7 learnings from The 2019 Employee Engagement Awards Conference

We had a great time at The 2019 Employee Engagement Awards Conference, learning what made the awards winners so successful, with key themes such as culture and values, disruption, employee experience and internal comms being the most popular. Read on for our key insights from the event.

1. Employee Engagement is more than money at Lincoln University

The public sector can’t rest on their laurels when it comes to attracting and keeping top talent. Ian Lincoln, University of Lincoln’s Head of Rewards talked us through their rejuvenated perks programme. Their data showed that good pay wasn’t enough to keep people engaged and their current recognition scheme felt out of touch. They came up with a new programme, tailored to staff needs. A visual portal lets employees navigate around a University campus to choose benefits including Financial Wellbeing support, Freecycle scheme and Book clubs.

2. Get the employee experience right from the start at Ocado

Ocado’s Team Manager, Anna Krzak won the ‘Unsung Hero’ award for her work helping new starters settle in. They created a portal designed to make their onboarding journey that little bit smoother. New employees can explore their benefits programme, see progression examples from across the business, access training videos and hear messages from management. Getting the employee experience right from the start can improve retention rates and customer satisfaction whereas the price of a bad hire can be at least 30 percent of the employee’s first-year earnings.

Find out how a new joiner at People Insight found their onboarding experience here.

3. Take risks, but take your people with you too at Last Minute

As businesses grow and change at a faster pace than ever, taking employees with you is key to making this change a success. Last Minute’s Chief of Culture, Stuart Bagnell, reflected on how to help people cope with disruption. Evaluating your culture and values is the first step; a strong set of values can guide business decisions and how people respond to change. Last Minute’s values of Communicate, Collaborate and Motivate act as a reference point during times of significant change – a good example is how they helped people adjust to a change in leadership. They introduced a live webcast Q&A where employees could ask questions directly to their new CEO, a forum now held regularly to share why changes are happening.

4. Bringing the right energy to work at Hive helps employee engagement

Smart home provider Hive talked about a different kind of energy control that can help eliminate ‘bad’ work days. Their Director of People Science discussed how the energy around you at work can mean the difference between a good or a bad day. ‘Physical Energy’ is influenced by sleep, health and exercise – we all know the drill for these. But ‘Emotional Energy’ is influenced by more intangible things like sense of achievement, pride, workplace relationships and expectations of wellbeing. Getting the balance right between these to add up to make your day a ‘good’ (or even a great) one. And there’s a role here for the employer too, we noticed parallels with the emotional influencers and the factors our PEARL^TM engagement model measures to determine how engaged an employee is.

Our infographic will whizz you through how PEARL^TM  works.

5. Culture pays off at PKF Cooper Parry

Culture dominated the conversation this year, with public and private sector organisations sharing their challenges and experiences. Financial Services have been at the centre of talk about Culture change, so it was interesting to hear PKF Cooper Parry talk about their cultural transformation. Focusing on culture helped double their revenue in three years and create a place where employees are more engaged and motivated. They came up with new values to define their culture and introduced initiatives that help them ‘live these’ every day. For example, their culture is defined by trust & accountability, so the company introduced unlimited holiday giving employees more control over their time. We also love the idea of a company bucket list!

6. Your internal newsroom improves employee engagement at Unicef

Everyone is drowning in content but you’ve got announcements that are crucial to get through to your people. Social work channels like Slack and Skype for Business are on the rise, giving people access to short bursts of information in real-time. Unicef took this one step further and created UUK News, an interactive news channel based on Facebook Workplace:

• Their news channel uses live streams, videos and polls to share content
• Employees receive alerts about relevant or important posts
• Content is tailored to staff feedback.

It’s also proved an important tool for opening up conversations about stress and wellbeing. Following a post from a member of staff sharing her struggles, Unicef set up a Health & Wellbeing Group to carry on the conversation in a safe place.

7. Treat your employee experience like your customer experience

 We were delighted to hear of more organisations shifting to approach their employee experience as a lifecycle at the Employee Engagement Awards Conference. This merger of Employee and Customer Experience looks at every encounter with an organisation to maximise the experience from both perspectives. At People Insight, we’re champions of this approach, helping clients to measure and enhance the employee experience from the moment candidacy begins to when they exit the company.

Treating employees like customers or ambassadors is a useful shift for organisations, helping to cultivate pride, boost engagement and improve performance. Take a look at how our client Arrow Communications use their engagement programme to personalise the employee experience through perks, training and recognition.

Head over to the Employee Engagement Awards’ blog to see more photos and highlights from the conference.

All photo credits: Employee Engagement Awards @ee_awards.