I finally got around to watching Bohemian Rhapsody the other day and it reminded me about a story I once heard about Freddie Mercury.
In the 1980s Freddie found himself on a trans-American flight, sat behind the infamous billionaire record company owner, David Geffen. During the flight Geffen, somewhat ostentatiously, turned to Freddie, throwing his cheque book open and said:
“I want you to sign to my label, just fill in the amount yourself…”
Freddie declined the offer…. Why? Because he was loyal to the band.
Being in Queen with his bandmates was what it was all about for him. I’ve no idea if this story is true and whilst the film paints a slightly different picture, the loyalty and love between the members of Queen shines through.
Hearing this story made me think about why employees are loyal to a company or, on the flipside, why they decide to leave. It’s very rare the decision is just about the money, there are a range of other factors involved, including the people they work with.
Here at People Lab we’ve worked with lots of well-known companies to help them understand how to improve employee loyalty. Here’s how we helped a well-known financial services company:
The Issue:
Employee turnover was at an all time high, with 56% of employees leaving over the past 12 months. The engagement survey showed that employee engagement continued to decline. So we were asked if we could help.
The Objectives:
- Improve employee engagement
- Reduce employee attrition and absenteeism
- Create a sustainable solution
What we did and what happened:
- We devised an approach to understand what engagement looked like for employees and how to improve it – we didn’t make assumptions
- We encouraged employees to co-create solutions, we didn’t rely on senior leaders in an ivory tower to fix everything
- We set up a team involving HR, L&D, Facilities and Internal Communications to facilitate the programme, but critically, the process was owned and delivered by the engagement champions and managers
- The MD personally sponsored the programme, which demonstrated a commitment to the changes
- We designed and delivered activities such as:
- Recruiting and training engagement champions
- Running leadership workshops to help them get better at engaging their teams
- Created an ‘employee voice’ approach to ensure people felt listened to and that they had a voice
The Results:
- In less than 12 months, employee turnover reduced from 56% to 21%, saving the company over £800,000
- Employee absence fell by 6%
- Employees started to take accountability for their own engagement: the sheer volume of activity owned and actioned by employees demonstrated the success of the programme
That’s how we helped this company.
If you’re interested in finding out how employee engagement can transform your business, please click the link below and we’ll call you back.
https://peoplelab.co.uk/contact-us/
You can read more about the work we do with other clients on our website here.
@Emma
