Managing Growth

A leading Fortune 100 financial services firm calculates an ROI of $17 million after 10 months of using the eePulse solution. The savings came from a variety of sources:

• Large-scale changes made at the corporate level in response to new opportunities uncovered via the eePulse data collection process. Employees from vastly different work groups within the organization brought up key issues for improving customer service, resulting in more loans being processed, and more than one unit increased its revenues and lowered its costs along the way.

• Managers improved their own management skills by practicing data and dialogue driven leadership. Managers attended training classes prior to receiving the reports for their group, and through the new learning, weekly review of their data, and monthly action planning and reviews, they became better managers. When managers improve their own performance, we find that employee performance improvement is magnified. Employees have a much clearer understanding of priorities, and they are focused more on doing their work well (working smarter vs. just working harder).

• Senior leaders optimized employee energy levels. Executives could quickly see which groups experienced energy levels that were too high or too low, and they responded quickly to understand the key issues that were affecting these groups. The frequent data reports, broken out for locations and business units, act like a weather map of the organization. Executives can see when "storms" are on the horizon, and rather than waiting to be hit by the storm, they are proactive and can respond quickly to issues and opportunities. This senior executive team said that they were more "proactive and responsive" than ever - because they had data about their people, combined with data about the business from their people - and those two things made them a more agile senior executive team.

• Small wins added up. Every individual manager who received his/her own report did monthly action reporting. As part of the reporting (what managers did with their own data), they reported the ROI on their own work. This work added up over 10 months, and these individual management changes contributed significantly to the $17m in savings.

New Leader Integration

A new CEO started the weekly eePulse process in order to quickly gain an understanding of the business and build trust with the new employees. Over the first 3 months, only the CEO received reports based on the data collected from the employee population. Although the CEO reported out to the management team, he decided to own the overall data for the first 90 days. This strategy allowed him to create a deep dialogue with all employees, while taking personal responsibility for responding to the data. Working closely with one of the researchers at eePulse (who reviewed the weekly data for the executive and summarized key trends and issues), the new CEO was able to quickly size up the resources he had at hand, isolate opportunities for quick action that could bring high return to the organization, and get a sense of the larger organizational barriers to change.

This newly public company subsequently saw its stock price increase significantly over the first six months of the CEO's tenure, and at the same time, commitment to the company and cooperation with the CEO's new strategic initiatives were extremely strong. According to the CEO, the data was "invaluable" in improving his ability to integrate into the new job and help the company improve performance immediately. In addition, the benefit provided by his ability to reach out to employees in a confidential manner was unmatched by any other process. The CEO had used focus groups in the past, but focus groups did not allow him to obtain representative data from all employees immediately.

CEO Turns Company Around With Monthly Data Collection Cycle

A large manufacturing company needed to improve quality, productivity, safety, employee-based metrics such as absenteeism, and overall bottom-line profitability. This was a large "turn-around" project, and in order to get the job done quickly, this group decided on a focused monthly data collection strategy. Each month, employees were asked to assess their energy levels, how well they thought the company was doing in its turn around effort, and to focus on one key performance driver. Employees rated how well they were doing personally on that performance driver (e.g. safety), shared their own "best practice" in improving that particular driver, and added new ideas for senior management's consideration. The results of the monthly Pulse Dialogs were shared with all employees via meetings, the Intranet, and via posters put up on team meeting room walls. After just the first quarter the company saw improvements in safety and quality, and over a 9-month period of time, changes in all metrics improved. The changes were not overnight; there were pockets of resistance, and some of those groups took longer to respond to the "turn-around" strategy. Now, profitability has improved, people have kept their jobs, and the plant continues to perform at a superior level.

Managing an IPO

One of our dynamic, fast growth clients noticed that their employees were leaving for other fast growth companies prior to the vesting of their options. eePulse paired the data collected from exit interviews with weekly pulse data to identify key factors in their decision to leave. Using that information, we provided training to their management team on how to prepare their employees for the impending IPO process. They were able to avoid the employee rumors that typically plague pre-IPO companies.

Developing a Strategic Alliance

The Measurecom® system was used by a large computer hardware company as it engaged in a new strategic alliance. Employees in both companies completed Pulse weekly; the weekly communication included the Pulse metric along with specific questions about the strategic alliance. Immediately, the alliance team uncovered numerous instances of miscommunication that were causing problems with the alliance. One team felt the alliance meant that they would lose their jobs, so they did not provide the other company with all necessary information. Other issues revolved around definitions of quality work, and the timetable for completion. Once Pulse identified the issues, the two companies formed teams to solve problems and clear up the miscommunications. The alliance was successful in a very short period of time.

Merging or Acquiring Organizations

The call center of one of our clients had just undergone two mergers. Their employees were still recovering from what they felt were broken promises and a pure lack of respect. eePulse helped rebuild the organization by providing the data that management needed to address rumors. They were able to focus their attention and resources on the things that they could change while communicating the things that they couldn't change and why.

In another merger, we found out that management teams from each involved company felt the other company had "taken over," and this perception was causing miscommunication and morale problems among senior managers. When the issue was revealed in the Pulse data, the senior team met with both groups and started a dialogue on the topic that led to resolution of conflicts and a successful 'merge' experience.

Executing a Systems Implementation

One of our manufacturing clients was in the process of overhauling their operations system. They used the Measurecom system to identify and consolidate training issues and usability issues. The client was able to use the information to host town hall meetings and identify roll out gaps.

Additional Case Studies