Employee Satisfaction Study for an IT major

Client: IT services company that provides business consulting, information technology and outsourcing services.

Employees: 1,00,000 + employees

Business Need of the client

• Our client was experiencing a change in the Senior leadership. This had created an apprehension among employees at both onsite and offshore centers on the business strategy/direction of the organization.
• There were also concerns across employees on growth getting stalled in the last few quarters. This had created a feeling of uneasiness among employees on their own prospects.
• Our client wanted to undertake an employee engagement study to understand the sentiment prevalent among employees. They wanted us to identify key areas of improvement, which would help them implement measures to allay these concerns.  

Our Approach

Considering the brief, Feedback Insights crafted a research approach to focus on:

1. Assessing engagement levels and identifying areas doing well / not so well.
2. Identify confidence levels that employees have towards the management and what employees feel that the management should do to connect better with them on a regular basis.
3. Feedback Insights designed its approach to focus on the following key areas:
   • Understand opinions on what should be improved to have a better connect with the top management
   • Capturing Residual Sentiment
   • Assessing Satisfaction Levels across employee touch points
   • Identify the key drivers of employee satisfaction
4. We created a Hybrid approach where we first conducted an exploratory Dip Stick Survey (for only a sample of employees) and these findings were leveraged to create a full-fledged web survey.
5. The Dip stick was carried out for a randomized sample (2% of the employees). Inputs were gathered through telephonic interviews. Adequate care was taken to get a representative sample across geos, BUs, experience levels, seniority etc. Our team conducted in depth conversations with these employees to understand the key issues. The qualitative inputs gathered offered rich insights into the overall pulse of employees and the key concerns among each group of employees.
6. The findings of the dip stick survey were presented to the client management team and the management team also agreed with the observations. Based on these findings, the web questionnaire was customized to get further inputs on these key issues.
7. The web survey was a combination of qualitative and quantitative to get rich insights from employees and understand the mood, as well as get inputs on the intensity of the sentiment. This survey was conducted for all 1,00,000 + employees.
8. Based on the data gathered, we then conducted an in-depth analysis to understand the sentiment across various demographic variables so that each issue could be handled differently. Data was analyzed across Seniority levels, Locations, years of experience etc..

Outcomes

Some of the key concerns that emerged out of this exercise are:

1. The lack of Employee connect with the high-level management across both onsite and offshore employees. Employees felt that they were not kept in the loop of changes in company strategy which was constantly evolving due to changes in technology trends/leadership changes
2. Mid-level experienced employees (8 – 15 years) were concerned about the lack of initiatives in improving both their technical as well as management skills. They were looking at a more concerted effort around helping them redefine themselves
3. Appraisal system especially in terms of normalization was creating discontent among employees
4. Process Simplification: Employees felt that all the support services were not simplified for ease of usage. Specific functions were highlighted as areas of improvement

Some of our Suggestions and the Business outcome

1. We suggested a need for creation of a channel of communication for employees to hear from the top management on a regular basis on the company strategy.
   • Basis this an onsite connect program was created for onsite employees for them to feel more engaged with the workings of the company. Virtual town halls were held with the CEO and senior leadership team.
   • For the offshore team, the CEO and the senior leadership started conducting town halls across key locations on a regular basis.
2. Leadership development programs (online and offline) were started for the mid management to improve their value as professionals
3. The entire appraisal system was overhauled to make it more robust and aligned to trends in the industry.
4. Key support functions were digitized for an enhanced ease of usage.

Long term changes

Feedback Insights also conducted the next cycle of the employee engagement study after a year. The significant improvements noticed were:

1. The Employee Experience index (EX index) had improved significantly by 15 points which now put them in the top percentile of the Industry scores
2. Higher scores around confidence in the management and leadership were observed.
3. Higher satisfaction around the performance appraisal process.