Autumn 2009 - Marshall Group

10 Human Resources
MA Transformation Team
Employee Survey – Feedback and Improvements
In the last issue of MA News we published the company-wide consolidated results of the inaugural Employee Culture and Behaviour
Survey; departmental results were distributed to each individual department. Many of you completed the Employee Survey at the end
of last year and took the opportunity to comment openly on certain aspects within the company, such as teamwork, communication,
individual performance etc. Over 800 comments were generated which proved to be extremely constructive, and a number of
suggestions have been incorporated into the Transformation Project.
In addition to the initial feedback, we now provide examples of some of the subjects raised, and outline the resulting actions taken by
the company:
You said: “We want positive feedback and
regular performance reviews, we want clear
objectives and for line managers to define
priorities and actions effectively, we also
want greater empowerment to be given to
employees”.
We have: “Commenced the introduction of
Performance Management (PM). When we
started this project, it soon became clear that
people across the business didn’t really know
how and where they fitted into the business,
what was expected of them or how well they
were doing. That was something we clearly
had to address, so we have designed a
scheme that encourages regular discussion
and feedback and sets objectives that aim to
give individuals the responsibility to achieve
their objectives. We have already started the
roll out of PM in the Production departments
and some of the core teams with a great
response so far – people have been really
enthusiastic! “
We will: “Finish the roll out by the end of this
year so that none of us will have too long to
wait! What has also been extremely positive
is that this excellent piece of work has been
achieved with a working group of people from
a variety of departments across the company
– it’s been hard work but hugely rewarding”.
Vivienne Bush, Chair, PMWG - Performance
Management Working Group.
You said: “There is a need to improve
working relationships between
departments”
We have: “Recognised the need to involve
people from different departments within our
Transformation activities. This has enabled us
to get the optimum benefit from the vast
experience of the people actually ‘doing the
task’ to help us to develop future processes.
We have actively encouraged discussion
between the various areas of the company in
an effort to help identify areas for
improvement and to foster more effective
working relationships.
A really good example of this is where more
than 80 cross-functional representatives
supported our end-to-end process
workshops that helped us to produce and
agree improved processes that will be used in
the future. People have shown a real
enthusiasm towards working together, and
this has also helped individuals to understand
each others issues and priorities. Indeed, a
key element of our future processes is to
further develop far greater concurrent working
in both developing our customer bids as well
as the project delivery itself.”
We will: “Continue with this theme of wider
involvement of colleagues within all of our 6
Transformation work streams, ie shaping both
the new corporate Induction Programme and
the company-wide Skills and Competencies
Framework.”
Jon McKeown, Head of Transformation
You said: “There is a need to improve
technology”
We have: “Recognised the need to better align
ourselves with the business to ensure that the
correct level of technology is provided for use
in the workplace. As part of the Transformation
Team’s improvement of the end-to-end
processes, we are reviewing the capabilities of
our current computer systems to determine
how best to support the requirements going
forward. As part of this exercise we have invited
an external consultancy to perform an
independent high level review of the company’s
IT requirements; this will provide a better
understanding of what we have and what we
need. One of the themes within the
Transformation Team is ‘Improved
Communication’ and we recently released the
Transformation Team Intranet site to ensure that
people are better informed on the progress
being made with the various initiatives.“
We will: “Continue to develop the
Transformation Team Intranet site; some ideas
currently being considered are features such
as ‘BLOGS’ and ‘Wiki’s’. Also, the new MA
Intranet is due to be released in August and
brings with it many standardisations in how
we store information and retrieve it, while at
the same time giving the MA Intranet a much
needed facelift. We will also look at ways to
consolidate the IT function into a single unified
service, centrally available to the whole
business; this is critical to any strategic IT
planning.”
Brett Davis, System Development Manager
CONTINUED >