Managing People Case

Brief

At face value, this appears to be a sub-optimal work environment; staff are unhappy, turnover is high, employees start early and finish late and they score the lowest on employee engagement measures. Yet the team is meeting their KPIs so there is no managerial imperative to invest in generating change.

Analysis & Evaluation

First, it is important to better understand the problem so we can propose an adequate solution. We suggest tackling this in the following ways:

Additional staff survey - it is asserted that staff are unhappy so a survey is recommended to gather the evidence of this through measurable results.

Focus groups - we will complement these quantitative insights with qualitative insights from employees in focus group. In addition to providing us with a more holistic view of the problem, engaging staff in this way will have the secondary benefit of sending them the message that their input is valued.

We also need to establish what can be gained from a change in the staff culture. Turnover is not impacting performance, but it may very well have a negative impact on the bottom line in terms of cost of turnover. We will assess the financials to get a full view of the situation so we can understand the driver of this program.

Before making the commitment of an overhaul of the company’s culture, we recommend undertaking an experiment to test the potential return on investment on performance. While the team is meeting their KPIs, it is possible that an improvement in staff engagement will lead to further improvements in performance, as well as offset the heavy costs in human resources and constant hiring.

Recommendations

Presuming that the information gathering process supports the decision to improve staff engagement we propose the following approach:

Recognising