Improved employee engagement: Positioned for the future

Note: This article was first published in 2021 when Aptella was known as Position Partners. At that time, Bernadette Taoro Ashin, the leading spokesperson referenced below, served as the Strategic Head of People and Culture for Position Partners. Additionally, Voice Project has since rebranded to Xref Engage. 

Position Partners is a positioning solutions provider offering a wide range of intelligent systems that increase productivity and safety in surveying, civil construction, building, and mining applications. 

The company’s 300+ employees work across every state and territory of Australia, along with New Zealand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Position Partners worked with Voice Project to conduct their first engagement survey in 2014. The team won its first Change Champion Award in 2021 after improving its overall employee engagement survey scores by 9%.

Strategic Head of People and Culture, Bernadette Taoro Ashin was delighted to see the significant growth in engagement and wellbeing reflected in their survey scores.

‍Supporting a learning environment

Position Partners has strategically focused on organisational development, which has included offering employees all-new continued learning opportunities.

Bernadette discusses how, as an organisation, they want to create a continuous learning environment that assists in achieving growth, sets them apart from their competitors, and fosters an enriching team culture with highly skilled and engaged employees.

The new learning opportunities aim to improve employees' abilities in their current jobs and provide development opportunities appropriate to their future careers.

‍Nurturing success for leaders and their teams

We are also actively investing in our leadership capability - to provide them with the confidence to engage and lead thriving, diverse and growing teams - Bernadette 

As the Head of People and Culture, Bernadette, shares how Position Partners have made deliberate efforts to recognise and celebrate success and communicate a bright and prosperous future. 

Additionally, they have been taking a more considered approach to reward and resourcing, ensuring they are rewarding employees for discretionary effort and that they actively build teams to meet demands.

The organisation is happy to see improvements in the employees’ perception of business progress – as well as how it compares favourably to industry peers.

There was a significant improvement in survey scores around learning and development, leadership ability and perceptions of leadership, as well as improved cross-unit cooperation.

We also achieved high scores on items measuring workplace practices related to organisational purpose - which is testimony to our great ability to retain talent.‍

Working well together across locations

For managers who lead teams that regularly work from customer sites, Position Partners’ philosophy of ‘hands-on leadership’ is central. These team leaders have dedicated days to meet and work with each of their team members onsite, have regular toolbox meetings, and allocate days where they hold team breakfasts/barbeques.

Leaders of remote teams have also been taught more deliberate ways of remaining connected beyond just the regular team meetings with:

• Virtual games and other activities
• Meetings unrelated to work that simply focus on the team’s weekend/personal life
• Weekly one-on-ones with the agenda set by the employee
• Utilisation of Microsoft Planner/Teams to manage priorities
• Connection days/hybrid working model - office-based days

From a company-wide perspective, unique approaches have been implemented to help with the challenges of engaging a whole business that cannot physically meet all of the time. These include:

• Connection Squads – one hour of power around a topic where people across the organisation come together to discuss an area of interest with a view to learn from each other and implement ‘quick wins’
• Technology that helps facilitate virtual learning
• ‘Unmissable’ meetings where all employees within a region must attend a meeting once a month where business updates are shared and where participation extends to many employees across that region.
• Virtual quarterly whole-of-business updates which are led by the CEO and Executive team

Listening to staff

Bernadette said the organisation takes a very collaborative approach to any new initiatives, so the significant changes they’ve achieved have been an outcome of listening to feedback on what the business needs and wants.

As we’ve implemented initiatives, they also have been built with either project teams or representatives from within the organisation, as per best practice.

The leadership team implemented the following key initiatives that supported these strong results:

• A dedicated People and Culture team focusing on learning
• Career and Learning pathways for key groups of positions
• A new Learning Experience Platform with AI and on-the-job training capability
• Subscription to business learning and safety platforms
• Sales and negotiation training
• Leadership training with a focus on leading thriving teams and recognition
• Change management training
• Leadership coaching and mentoring
• Agile performance review process with an active focus on development
• Succession planning for 2/3 layers within the business
• New Strategic Objectives and a new Strategic Planning process
• Actively promoting current employees into new/available positions
• A new incentive program
• Quarterly company updates
• A wellbeing programme

Conclusion

The employee engagement survey results highlighted key areas for growth, and the organisation has taken significant steps to actively listen to their team and implement meaningful changes that prioritise employee wellbeing.

If you would like to know more about employee engagement surveys or conduct one for your organisation, contact us for a free demo.