As huge fans of human-centred design, we are constantly in awe of the power of design thinking to transform the employee experience. So we were delighted to see multi-national consulting firm everis (an NTT DATA Company) scoop two accolades at the recent EX Awards – Gold award winner in the use of technology to enhance the employee experience and Silver award winner in employee engagement.
Dina Álvarez, Head of Culture & Employee Experience, explains a little about the people-centric approach taken to reimagine the HR model and the employee experience. It is a transformation that has not only improved the experience of people in the everis business, but positively impacted business goals.
Hi Dina, can you give us a summary of your approach in a nutshell?
Our vision and purpose as an organisation, is to drive our people’s integral development and we needed a new HR approach to help us achieve that. An approach that put our people at the centre of everything. We wanted to move beyond the engagement process (which is often tied to the idea that providing the right perks and environment for your workers will boost engagement), to intentionally trying to create an experience that transcends beyond our company. For this, we needed to evolve from a regular model that supports employees’ basic needs, to a sophisticated people model that empowers our employees to reach their maximum potential. We define this new approach as ‘everis Magic’. It’s all about creating engagement, empowerment and inspiration, by always starting with what our people want and need to be happy at work.
How did you get started?
The diagnosis stage to better understand our people consisted of three elements: Individual interviews, focus groups and surveys. Because we wanted to involve our employees and work closely with them from the beginning, we also ran workshops, using empathy maps to understand more about what creates happiness for our people at work. We used this information to redefine the culture we want at everis, because culture is fundamental in creating a great EX.
And what did you discover?
The research identified what we call five truth moments within the employee journey – these are the moments our people highlighted as the most important experiences they have with us. We then created a plan for each moment to give employees a memorable experience. We call these five moments:
- Falling in love
- Feeling welcomed
- Enjoying the walk
- Growing
- Seeing You Soon
What have you developed as a result of this insight?
Since defining these moments, we’ve focused on a number of initiatives to make sure we are providing employees with what is important to them. Involving employees in the design and implementation, and using their knowledge and expertise, to create internal tools to improve the experience has helped us promote our plan and get a lot of buy-in. There are too many things going on to capture here, so I’ll just pull out a few.
In falling in love we’ve redefined the recruitment experience to create a truly-differentiated experience that covers everything from a new way of interviewing, to offer letters and much more besides.
In feeling welcome we’ve recreated our onboarding based on social psychology fundamentals. The 100-day onboarding plan now includes buddies, mentors, and social activities to create a really personalised approach. We wanted to smooth their integration with the company by facilitating networking from the very first day. To achieve that we’ve developed an internal app – everbuddy. The app matches every new joiner with a buddy that will help them during their first days in the company. New joiners match with their buddy by answering five simple questions.
In enjoying the walk we have implemented our #enjoy#live#celebrate programme, a new approach focused on improving the quality of life, giving more autonomy to employees and encouraging healthy habits like sports, leisure, charity work… aiming to create a space for enjoying, living and celebrating.
We believe that promoting an environment where we empower professional development and improve careers is key. In growing we have developed an app to support our culture of continuous feedback. The app encourages everyone to provide developmental feedback as a powerful tool to help people grow.
The magic shouldn’t end when an employee decides to leave. In seeing you soon initiatives we see our former employees as ambassadors and future candidates. Therefore we provide a unique experience as they leave the company.
That’s fantastic – and finally, what impact have you seen?
We ask employees to complete short surveys around these key moments. This gives us real-time feedback allowing us to continuously improve to meet the high expectations employees have of their experience here. One example of how the everis Magic has impacted our employees’ experience is in onboarding. It was rated –13 below the neutral benchmarking line during the diagnosis research, and is now rated as +29%, only a year after being launched. Moreover, the satisfaction rates for the different phases of onboarding are all above 96%.
But for us, the most important KPI is attrition rate. The everis AR has decreased by five points in the year. We are now able to promote our people model as part of our value proposition to clients. The everis Magic plan adds a real differentiator to our business and helps position the company in the UK market.
Thanks so much for talking to us today – and congratulations again on both your award wins and the success of everis Magic
Have you got a story you’d like to share with us? Contact info@peoplelab.co.uk
