How Marston’s developed programmes to implement change

• Employee engagement is not just a tick the box exercise. Chose an agency that not only delivers a survey, but explains what it tells you and works with you to develop strategies to implement change.
• When heading into action planning, make sure that managers lead from the front. Ensure they understand the importance of engagement, and work as a team to decide what to do, when and who will take responsibility.
• Whether you like the survey results or not, this is what the people that work for you think. You need to be a good proposition for employees, rather than viewing people as lucky to work for you.

We carried out a lot of research before embarking on this project. We looked at about 12 companies online and then brought in five to talk to us at head office. People Insight stood out for a number of reasons. Firstly, they listened to what we wanted. A lot of companies came in telling us what we needed, but People Insight’s strengths lay in the fact they could create a bespoke model based on our needs.

Secondly, they weren’t just going to collect the data and give it back to us. This had to be more than just a ‘tick the box’ exercise and People Insight stood out because they are action planners. Not only did they collect the data but they explained what that data told us and then worked with us to develop programmes and strategies to implement change.

Lastly, we chose People Insight for the team. They are credible, know about the trade and are passionate about the subject area. Anything we asked for we got back promptly and it’s a huge credit to the People Insight team.

We had done a lot of work on developing the Marston’s career path as well as other pieces of training and development. But it was really important for us to have a piece not just about awareness but to get a real flavour of what people thought of the company on the ground, and to give staff the chance to have their say. So we asked them a range of questions as well as giving them the opportunity to put down one negative and one positive open text comment.  Everyone has different views, which is one of the most important things to realise, especially in a big PLC, but you do get collective themes.

Admittedly when we started this process we did not know what we were going to get back. In some ways it was daunting but we were determined to ensure any findings did not get stuffed into a bottom drawer and forgotten about. Whatever came out of the survey we were going to tackle head on and, more importantly, act on.
We decided to use a benchmark across all industries, rather than just compare us to other organisations in our own sector. That way we could see how we operated on a wider scale.

The figures certainly made interesting reading. The feedback around our career path was quite amazing in that people really did feel they receive recognition and development within the business.

But there was definitely a feeling that we could do more to improve the rewards and incentives that we offered to our pub teams and People Insight worked with to develop a range of programmes to answer those points. 50% of our pub staff are 25 or under – some of them wouldn’t be here to collect their gold watch as they work with us part time whilst at university or college but we wanted to show that we valued them all the same. Using the data supplied by People Insight we were able to bring in a new long-service scheme which recognised people from five years upwards.