About This Practice
You can always tell when your employees are engaged and when they are not. Engaged employees are enthusiastic and absorbed in their work; they actually care about their work and their company. Because they feel a strong commitment and connection to the organization they will act to further your organization’s reputation and interests and will stay the course. These employees are a powerful influence on others because of their passion to achieve desired results and meet stakeholder expectations. And their engagement drives better business results and shareholder returns. Sadly, trends in global employee engagement show that six employees out of ten are not engaged.
How We Can Help
There are many related factors that contribute to high employee engagement levels. These drivers do not operate in isolation. Career opportunities, recognition and organization reputation are the ones that are consistently on top of the list. What actions can you take to improve engagement levels in your organization and position yourself for future success? We’ll help you develop your plan for increasing employee engagement in a way that engages your people.
Develop Objectives and Understand Needs
With their help and our guidance your leadership will develop objectives and gain an understanding of the needs of your employees.
Achieving an Engagement System for Your Organization
This will lead to the creation of an engagement system that will engage employees in the right behaviors for the future.
Your staff may participate in focus groups, customized surveys and training sessions as part of the strategy to achieve your employee engagement goals.
Getting Started
Contact us to discuss your requirements.
Success Stories
Government Department with Low Morale
This Government department was operating reasonably well but employee morale was low, staff turnover was high and employees were not always managing customer complaints well. The CEO believed that the employees needed to be fully engaged in identifying the sources of these problems and the solutions to them. He called us in to work with the employees and put the questions to them. We undertook employee engagement sessions that challenged them to identify the root causes of the problems and determine possible solutions to increase employee morale, staff retention and customer satisfaction. We then took these suggestions to the management team with a recommendation that they create employee groups to be responsible to implement the recommendations. The result was extremely positive and far more successful than management expected because employees had never been engaged in problem solving before and the impact it had on them was tremendous. Employee morale exploded.
Overcoming Employee Resistance to Change
The President of our client organization had a vision; it was a great and powerful new direction that would bring about a big change in their way of doing business. It would change their customers and the products and services they created for the market. The outcome would require changes in how employees interacted with each other. Unfortunately, employees did not readily accept the President’s new vision for the organization. So the client brought us in to help overcome employee resistance and identify what actions were necessary to increase employee support. As part of our review we held a number of full-day sessions with employees to hear their point of view about the President’s new direction and allow them to express their personal concerns and frustrations. We insisted that all employees would attend. At the sessions, we asked them to tell us about their previous personal experiences with changes that they had seen implemented; what they found difficult to deal with and what could have been done to make these changes happen more successfully. We also explored ideas for how to engage them in creating a future vision for the organization. We presented this employee input in a final report to the management team. This report had a big impact on them. The management team revised their execution plan to include these employee recommendations. And when the new plan was delivered, employees felt motivated and engaged in the execution because they could see how their contribution had impacted the plan.
Testimonials
This chain of convenience stores has worked with Business Improvement Architects (bia™) for over 10 years. bia™ has worked with the executive team on leadership and coaching, including a 360-degree feedback process. We have also worked with staff through major change initiatives brought about by integration of other organizations that Couche-Tard purchased as well as training on a new Performance Management System.
"Business Improvement Architects helped us to significantly reduce the impact of integrating employees between two diverse cultures into one organization. Previously we suffered a loss of staff and a slow amalgamation of processes. Their approach brought significant change in a relatively short span of time."
DNR hired Business Improvement Architects to help them implement innovation. We trained most of the employees in the Forestry Branch. They were very excited about the possibilities that Innovation has for them and so we then took a select group of individuals through a session to explore innovation more deeply through a process in which they developed their vision, strategy and culture.
"Taking your advice, we conducted our launch in a 'Town Hall' setting, which provided an opportunity for committee members to inform the region about the overall committee structure, ongoing upcoming initiatives, and the process to contribute ideas and get involved. We are excited about the level of engagement we have sustained through this process, and there have been lots of discussions/ideas around improving the way in which we conduct business which, at the end of the day is our main priority."
Business Improvement Architects has worked with retailer Hudson Bay Company for many years in the areas of Critical Thinking, Impact and Influence, Process Management and Project Management.
"We have worked with Business Improvement Architects on previous occasions and they have always exceeded our expectations. They have demonstrated excellent responsiveness and management of expectations (always got back to you with an answer). It has been a pleasure to work with bia™ overall"
Business Improvement Architects (bia™) has worked in a variety of areas of the Ontario Public Service including several Ministries and Leadership Centers. Our work has covered a broad range of consulting and training assignments including: research on Benchmarking within a government environment, customer service training, coaching project managers and teams through major government initiatives, training the leadership in the areas of quality and project management and training staff on the skills of Kaizen (process management) and project management.
"Business Improvement Architect's facilitation and processes have effectively met our needs. The training has been engaging as well as practical and informative. We have found that our people are able to apply the learning to their workplace."
Nike wanted to create more teamwork and improve overall communication between staff in an effort to capitalize on ideas and suggestions that were always being raised but rarely captured. They brought in bia™ to train and coach staff on a Critical Thinking Process. This led to a number of new ideas being generated and implemented that improved the organizations bottom-line. As well, staff began to use the process on their own, almost immediately, in order improve their own decision-making process.
"The Critical Thinking Process helped the teams to be more strategic in their thinking and improved their overall decision-making and communication effectiveness. Michael's energy and passion contributed to the overall positive results. We now have a lot of solid decisions to review which will help Nike to continue to be innovative."
