Building Engagement to Create Improved Business Performance and Resilience
The Challenge
For all organisations, sustained growth depends not only on strategy, products and customer relationships, but also on the engagement and commitment of their people.
Balancing these priorities was increasingly important for a growing organisation operating in the consumer financial services sector. Following several years of strong performance and significant growth, the organisation was seeking to further increase its scale through a strategy centred on customer satisfaction, innovation and people.
While the leadership team recognised employee engagement as a critical contributor to organisational success, they lacked confidence in how best to measure and improve it. Several employee engagement measurement approaches had been trialled over previous years. While each provided some information, none generated sufficient insight to clearly identify the factors influencing engagement or the actions most likely to improve it.
Leaders were also unclear on the differences between the various measurement options available to them, and the validity of external benchmarks, and subsequently had reduced confidence in the results that their survey data generated.
What was consistent across all approaches, however, was that employee engagement levels were below expectations.
The organisation recognised that improving engagement would require more than simply a new approach to measuring employee sentiment. To build confidence in their employee data, and into their future action plans, leaders wanted to ensure they could identify the underlying drivers of engagement, develop their capability to address those issues, and support the organisation to benchmark itself against leading employers – all with a view of taking measurable steps which would drive business performance forward.
Recognising that their inhouse HR team needed support and specific expertise to provide strategic advice on this issue, they gave Rutherford HR a call.
Our Approach
After agreeing to work together to address the client’s requirement, we conducted initial discussions with the leadership team which highlighted two key points:
1. that the organisation understood that improving their people’s engagement would require a concerted longer-term effort; and
2. that it was vital that the leadership team developed an improved understanding of engagement measures and how to gain better value (using higher quality approaches and analytics) from their data collection and interpretation efforts.
Following our feedback and recommendations, agreement was reached to implement a more comprehensive engagement measurement approach.
Rather than focusing solely on overall engagement scores, we helped implement a methodology that identified the specific factors most strongly influencing employee engagement. In addition, to better support other organisational initiatives, we built in mechanisms to assess manager effectiveness – both as a driver of increased performance and to assess appropriate manager development investment.
The approach also laid the foundations for the organisation to track its progress over time, benchmark results externally and use a robust technology platform to reduce the time and effort taken to develop data reports and insights.
The Solution
The starting point was to design and launch the revised methodology and support our client through its initial implementation.
This was done successfully and provided an accurate baseline of data, benchmarking and insight, which generated confidence that the revised approach would add more value to the business.
Having delivered this strong start, we worked with the client over a four-year period where we supported multiple engagement assessments. These assessments generated increasingly detailed insights into employee perceptions and organisational effectiveness and enabled us to refine the survey design to gain greater insights on issues as they arose.
These insights informed a broad range of improvement initiatives designed to strengthen engagement and build organisational capability. In many cases we advised and supported the implementation of these initiatives, including:
· Developing manager capability to improve the quality of leadership and day-to-day employee experiences
· Strengthening leadership team alignment, effectiveness, and collaboration
· Increasing employee connection to the organisation's vision, purpose, and strategic direction
· Improving communication and connection between leaders and employees across the business
· Revised career development planning and reward and recognition programs
Importantly, the engagement strategy was delivered in close partnership with the organisation's HR and leadership teams.
This ensured initiatives remained aligned with broader business priorities while supporting the organisation's ambition to become recognised as one of Australia's leading employers.
Impact on the Business
The organisation achieved sustained increases in employee engagement throughout the duration of our involvement.
Over four years, engagement levels improved from below median performance to upper-quartile levels when benchmarked against comparable organisations.
As engagement improved, the organisation observed that the key factors influencing employee perceptions evolved. Areas that initially required significant attention became strengths, while new priorities emerged as employee expectations and organisational maturity increased. This enabled leaders to continually refine their focus and maintain momentum.
The organisation also tracked employee engagement alongside customer satisfaction measures and observed that both increased in parallel.
The business subsequently received significant recognition as an ‘employer of choice’ and became widely acknowledged for its customer centricity and innovation.
Perhaps most importantly, the value of the work became evident during a period of significant external disruption. Unexpected legislative changes created substantial uncertainty regarding the future viability of the business. Despite these challenges, the highly engaged workforce remained committed to customers, adapted quickly to changing circumstances, and helped the organisation navigate the disruption successfully.
Why It Worked
Several factors contributed to the success of our work with the client.
First, the organisation moved beyond measuring engagement as a standalone metric and focused on understanding the underlying factors that influenced employee engagement and performance.
Second, leaders developed a stronger understanding of engagement data and their role in shaping employee perceptions. This increased ownership and accountability for improvement actions.
Third, the organisation consistently translated insights into targeted action. Rather than attempting to improve everything simultaneously, resources were focused on the areas most likely to influence engagement outcomes based on robust analysis, rather than the raw scores alone.
Fourth, manager effectiveness was recognised as a critical lever for change over time. Investment in leadership and management capability improved the day-to-day experiences of employees and strengthened organisational culture.
Fifth, the organisation was willing to stay the course. Engagement improved but not immediately and not in a linear fashion. The confidence in our methodology and approach helped sustain effort that could have fallen away under other circumstances.
Finally, the organisation viewed engagement as an ongoing capability rather than a one-off initiative. Continuous measurement, action planning and adaptation enabled the organisation to respond to changing employee expectations and sustain improvement over time.
Is your employee engagement data giving you the insight you need?
Measuring engagement is relatively straightforward. Understanding what is driving it — and knowing where to focus effort to create meaningful and sustained improvement — is much harder. Without that insight, organisations can end up investing time and resources without being confident they are addressing the issues that matter most.
If you're looking to build a more robust approach to engagement and turn employee insight into action, we'd welcome a conversation. Get in touch to explore how we can help you strengthen employee engagement, build organisational resilience and create the conditions for stronger business performance.