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Engaging with a Sense of Purpose: Improve Employee Engagement, a Case Study of TELUS, with Dan Pontefract, Chief Envisioner, TELUS
TELUS where I’ve worked since December of 2008 is a telecommunications company in eight different countries with almost 60,000 employees globally. But back in the summer of 2008 our employee engagement score was 53 percent. Now happily after the journey of matching an open culture, a transparent culture and delivering on a higher purpose where we believe we serve the employee, the customer, the business and the community. Our employee engagement score now sits at 87 percent. And every business metric you can possibly imagine has gone through the roof. We’ve had over 300 percent shareholder return. We have our absenteeism rate has gone down by 2.5 days in that period. We see our resumes come into the organization from 100,000 a year to almost 400,000 a year. So people want to join this organization because we believe that we are here to serve society but in so too our shareholders have resulted in a great effect as well.
Use culture to create competitive advantage
At TELUS one of the fundamental principles we believe in is that culture is our competitive advantage. And so over a period of time somewhat speaking we had to unlearn what we’ve learned to then learn a new way to sort of invoke a little bit of Toffler. And so that means that we had to go through and sort of ask leaders, all right, who are we here to serve? You or altruistically the organization itself and our customers? So we had a rally cry. Put customers first. And when we all sang to that one choir sheet through new behaviors like being more collaborative. Like transparently asking people questions before doing something. We invoked something called fair process where we engage and explore with people first and then go and explain and execute on what it is that we were doing. We use all sorts of new technologies like Wiki’s and microblogging and video platforms just to sort of get the sense of when you’re in eight countries how do we unite all these divides?
So it took time. Again we had to unlearn a few things and then relearn a few things as well. But we ultimately use leadership as a way in which to demonstrate that you can be kind and open and transparent to achieve your business results.
Promote virtual collaboration
We use all sorts of new technologies like Wiki’s and microblogging and video platforms just to sort of get the sense of when you’re in eight countries how do we unite all these divides?
It took time. Again we had to unlearn a few things and then relearn a few things as well. But we ultimately use leadership as a way in which to demonstrate that you can be kind and open and transparent to achieve your business results. For me it’s just been a wonderful time over the past eight years to be part of that journey.
The one thing to keep in mind with these collaboration technologies is it’s not the field of dreams. You don’t build it and hope that people come. Otherwise it turns into a ghost town. What you must to is to weave these collaborative technologies into your existing processes. So, for example, if you have an orientation program and it is two days of come here and listen to 15 PowerPoints over a 48 hour period it’s not really the best experience for a new employee. But if you use some of these collaborative technologies to allow people over let’s say the first 60 or 90 days to exhibit and understand what the company is about through let’s say a Wiki platform that has the history of the company. Or that they must go find a mate inside the company using one of the discussion forums. Or perhaps they have to set up their own microblog personality or profile and then engage with some of the discussion forums on the microblogging platform. Or to view some of the videos on your own YouTube. Something we call habitat video. When you weave these technologies into existing processes or at least change the processes somewhat then people start sort of invisibly recognizing that oh, this is how we’ve always done it. So it’s not drop tools on a company just because. It’s weaving them in to those processes.
Slow down
Being more collaborative, being more open, transparent, that actually has a consequence. And the consequence is time. So far too many organizations because they’re steadfast approach is to do more with less in a quicker amount of time, some call short terminism. So the ability then to play to the markets and say look, here’s where we are. Here’s where we’re going to be. Here’s our result this quarter. That’s short terminism. So when you’re working in a global scale whatever the organization may be, let’s say it’s for profit and it’s multinational. The consequence is time. By acting and deliberately acting more proactively collaborative. Because it will take time to involve more people in either decision making or fact gathering or collaborative ideation. But if your purpose inside of that organization is a short terminism type mindset, if you’re there just for the sake of profit sharing or profitability or what’s called maximizing shareholder return then you have no hope to take the time to be more collaborative, open, transparent and using the intelligence of your organization to perhaps make better decisions. That’s where a lot of this relationship between culture, collaboration, purpose and the demands that our markets have basically instilled inside of us since 1970, that’s where we get caught in the trap.