Case Example – Employee Engagement, Team & Leadership Development
Case Background & Situation Analysis
- The client is an integrated food services provider with a full line of quality products including meat, poultry, dairy, ingredients, vegetables, fruits and groceries to over 3,000 customers in the Southeast Asia region.
- Customers include food service, wholesale retail, ship chandelling and others including local and overseas airline flight kitchens, overseas resorts, cruise liners. With 220 employees, annual revenue has grown from S$80 million in the mid-1900s to S$350 million today.
- The company became part of a larger regional company that comprises Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China and Singapore. In addition it is also part of a larger conglomerate located in the UK, Europe, Middle East and South Africa.
- The organization experienced major transformational changes and growth over the last two decades. These included new shareholders, new business demands, new and wider customer base doing cross border trades, more diverse management & staff as well as new value-added services to handle customers’ various processing specifications to provide an integrated food services business.
Needs Analysis
Given the volatility of the situation, there is a need for the management to:
- Revisit the organization’s vision, mission, values and strategies to develop new business directions to better prepare for the future, both for the employees and the company
- Measure current level of employee engagement at all levels of the workforce
- Prepare both the leadership and workforce for more changes ahead
Recommendations
To conduct various human resource interventions as follows:
- Employee engagement survey – To cover all 220 employees to measure various facets of organizational climate that are most closely linked to employee engagement. Insights gathered from the survey will then be analyzed and recommendations made to address relevant areas of concern.
- Company team development retreat - To share renewed company directions with all employees. This will provide an informal setting and opportunity for participants to share their feelings, thoughts and concerns in a safe, fun and supportive environment and to gain their buy-in for the renewed company directions.
- Leadership development – To develop key leaders and managers via personality analysis to shed insights on their leadership and management styles. This will be followed by individual coaching to address areas of development.
An Employee Engagement Survey was conducted throughout the organization to achieve the following:
Benefits
- Gain insights on the engagement levels of various workforce segments in the organization.
- Prioritize action items for boosting engagement levels, retaining employees that make a difference, and ultimately, enhancing organizational effectiveness.
A Team Development Company Retreat was conducted to achieve the following:
Benefits
- Provide an opportunity to share renewed organization vision, mission, values and strategic directions in a safe, fun and informal setting.
- Build teamwork and align all employees towards achieving shared business objectives & goals
A Leadership Development initiative utilizing via personality analysis was conducted to achieve the following:
Benefits
- Enable leaders to gain insights into their own personality style as well we leadership & management style.
- Provide leaders with the basis to develop a behavioral action plan to develop on key areas to be a more effective leader/manager.
Post-Intervention Highlights
The Employee Engagement, Team & Leadership Development: “Engaging to Win!” initiatives resulted in deep-reaching organisation wide results both qualitative and quantitative including:
- Increased Employee Engagement: Employee engagement survey provided an overview of the engagement levels of various workforce segments and deeper insights into areas of concern which facilitated the prioritisation of various action items to bolster engagement levels including key talent retention and commissioning of various organizational effectiveness initiatives to increase workforce productivity, leadership competency as well as operations efficiency.
- Renewed Strategic Alignment of Key Leaders & Managers: A Senior Leadership & Management retreat provided an opportunity to share the renewed organization vision, mission, values and strategic. Additional positive returns included refocusing on high performance teaming and alignment of key leadership & management members to that of renewed business objectives & goals.
- Increased Leadership Competency: High-level leadership development (including personality profiling & leadership competency profile) initiative provided leaders & managers to gain deep insights into their own personality style as well we leadership & management style. Action planning follow-through also ensured continued emphasis on the development of the individual focusing on critical developmental areas.
- Embracing the Future…Today: Various Organisation Effectiveness, Employee Engagement and Leadership & Workforce initiatives conducted also provided an opportunity to emphasize on the need to embrace change, adapt to fast changing market dynamics, innovation and need for increased efficiency & productivity; setting the stage for more positive changes as the client organisation introduces more measures to competitive in the ever-changing dynamics of their key markets.