Companies recognise that delivering a great Employee Experience (EX) that considers and puts its people first is the key to unlocking better business outcomes, from higher productivity and improved ‘stickiness’ for attracting and retaining talented employees, to the ultimate reward of an enthusiastic, engaged workforce – higher customer satisfaction, recommendation and loyalty. 

Shifts in the employer-employee dynamic has led to business leaders setting out and prioritising practices and behaviours that contribute to a great employee experience. Dedicated HR roles are springing up, such as Employee Experience Manager and Employee Relations Specialist. Their main aim: embedding an effective cross-company strategy that treats employees like customers throughout their work lifecycle.

As part of our research work in helping employee experience personnel identify and understand employees’ needs, we get clear insight into the internal and external challenges they face, including:

Just as a range of factors come together to form a great Customer Experience (CX), employees value an array of characteristics in an employer.

Our employee engagement research reveals several key factors that contribute to employee engagement and satisfaction, including Leadership – where employees feel valued by managers and leaders and their opinions listened to, Empowerment – where employees are enabled and trusted to make decisions and Development, where workers can access relevant personal and career development opportunities.           

Employees are also increasingly prioritising values integral to the company’s leadership culture, such as what the company stands for, its reputation, diversity and inclusion, as well as how well it treats its customers, the wider community and the environment. With many variables at play – and the fact that employees’ perceptions and expectations change over time as they experience shifts in their role, responsibilities and outlook – it’s difficult to know which actions to take to improve employee engagement.  

Developing an effective employee experience relies on isolating the metrics that matter. But what are the defining metrics that go into building an accurate picture of employee experience – Satisfaction? Loyalty? Willingness to recommend an employer to other people? The truth is, it’s all of these. The difficulty is that while annual employee surveys and pulse surveys are ideal for capturing a ‘snapshot’ of employee feeling at a certain point in time, a holistic understanding of engagement, and the factors that drive engagement, is needed to make accurate, effective changes.   

In the drive to identify and understand engagement drivers, companies often use a variety of tools, from employee satisfaction surveys to establishing cross-function feedback panels. Although well intentioned, implementing multiple techniques can lead to an unintelligible mass of data and recommendations. Without a tangible link between measurements and results, it’s difficult to draw cohesive actionable insights that will make a difference to the employee experience.

When it comes to employee experience, performance management plays a pivotal role. Employing the right performance management tools and techniques can lead to higher engagement, better, more trusting relationships between employees and line managers, as well as greater confidence and satisfaction in employees’ work.

Stuart Hearn, Founder and CEO of Clear Review says:

“We all know that performance management is crucial when it comes to building a quality employee experience, but one of the main challenges is time. Managers often feel that they don’t have enough time to introduce new, effective performance management measures. Some also feel they don’t have the time to do regular performance reviews, preferring instead to stick to traditional yearly reviews. Yearly appraisals ultimately represent a waste of time — not to mention, employees and managers alike hate them.

“Another challenge of performance management is that of goal setting. All too often, the goal-setting process isn’t adequately thought out. Employees are given objectives that are vague, misaligned with the organisation’s goals, or simply unrealistic. Giving employees too many goals, or goals that are too difficult to realistically achieve, will only serve to stress out employees.

“One further major obstacle to good employee experience is the managers themselves. All too often, managers disregard performance management, thinking it isn’t their responsibility. However, the performance and wellbeing of employees is everyone’s responsibility. Managers need to wake up and embrace their role in this area — after all, generally speaking, employees don’t leave roles. They leave managers. The key thing is, managers need, and deserve, appropriate training when it comes to performance management — they need to know to interact and engage with employees, how to deliver effective feedback and when to step in to help employees who are struggling. This requires great effort from organisations, but the results are worth it in the long run.

“It’s all about having regular, authentic communication and timely feedback so employees know what they’re doing, and why they’re doing it — they need to know why their role exists and how it benefits the organisation.”

Holding regular performance-based discussions are not only effective for relationship building but help employees feel more engaged, happier and confident — in turn leading to increased productivity.

Again although well-intentioned, managers and leaders can introduce bias by introducing non evidence-based tactics they believe will enhance employee experience. As well as channelling resources into initiatives that might not work, a spontaneous, rather than data-led approach, can cause further problems. For example, implementing a generous flexible working policy enabling employees to work from home can impact the employee experience in a variety of ways.

As Julie Tumilty, Director at Feature Media points out:

“With the way we work changing, the increase in flexible hours, remote workers and companies being spread across different locations, it is getting harder to maintain consistent communication internally. When communications become disjointed, confusion, irritation and unhappiness fester in organisations. This often leaves employees feeling undervalued and unmotivated.

“Over the last year or two we’ve had an increasing number of enquiries from businesses asking us how they can use video to address these issues around the employee experience. From what we’ve seen, video is supporting the transformation of internal processes, making employees feel involved, creating consistency and transparency and injecting personality to messages helping to build connection and trust. When included as part of a wider internal communication strategy, video has been shown to address the growing challenges faced by an evolving workforce that’s demanding more from employers.“

To pinpoint potential issues, a key starting point for developing an effective EX strategy is grounding it in hard data about employees’ real wants and needs, then adopting practices that are practicable and mutually beneficial for employee and employer.

With more staff working remotely, hot-desking and, as we move to more project-based working, staff needing to check in with different colleagues and managers, employees’ day to day interactions are increasingly complex. Employees are also likely to receive communications from different company functions – each using different channels – as well as use employee self-service apps. The challenge for HR and EX managers is not only identifying and managing each touchpoint on the employee journey but establishing how these channels interact with each other.

Often tasked with mapping and understanding employee touchpoints, from every day written and verbal communication to benefits and training plans, bringing consistency to multiple interactions across multiple channels is a daunting task.   

Gaining support and input from different department functions can be challenging, particularly if priorities and processes differ. It makes accessing employee information hard and developing and embedding a set of employee experience priorities that everyone agrees on even harder. As well as forging cross-functional support for an overarching employee experience strategy, getting managers to align practices and values can be extremely demanding.

Like CX, delivering a strong employee experience is an emerging concept. To build a differentiated employee experience, it’s important to know (and learn lessons from) what direct competitors are doing, their focus areas and what engagement strategies they use that work effectively. With many companies still using annual staff surveys or using a variety of research tools each producing different outcomes, difficulty comes in accessing like-for-like external benchmarking research to compare employee experience too.  

Developing an integrated EX strategy which improves employee experience to the point it tips over into enhancing customer satisfaction and advocacy, requires an agile employee experience research framework. One that has the capability of identifying what employees want at touchpoints across multiple end-to-end journeys, whether an office-based senior manager or remote working trainee.

Our research deciphering drivers of employee engagement and the factors that contribute to a compelling employee experience led us to develop EEQA (Employee Experience Quality Analysis), an enterprise-grade research system capable of tracking and measuring employee journeys in an omni-channel setting.

EEQA delivers actionable data for all employee segments, identifying and prioritising staff expectations at each touchpoint, enabling companies to design an employee experience in step with their needs.  

Unlike a lot of EX survey solutions, EEQA’s questionnaire design is derived from in-depth gap analysis into what employees want, including expectations of their role and responsibilities, team leaders, managers and leaders, workplace culture and values, training and development, financial rewards and benefits, workplace environment, technology and self-service tools.

Obtaining direct feedback across all elements of the work experience enables us to deliver an employee survey targeting the exact factors they value the most. Alongside cutting out bias of what leaders *think* employees’ want and eliminating risk of costly of costly mistakes, EEQA delivers actionable insight into the practices and behaviours staff want, in priority order, and how to achieve them.     

EEQA survey enables companies to collect real-time employee feedback at defining touchpoints, allowing them to design and develop interactions that align with staff expectations.

As well as targeting specific touchpoints, such as onboarding, performance management and training and development, it garners deeper understanding of cultural factors around empowerment, trust and appreciation. 

EEQA provides regular insights that allow employee engagement metrics (and the effect of improvement actions) to be monitored and tracked over time.

The survey is managed and issued via a management dashboard and automatically updates with real-time results. As well as an overarching view of employee engagement, it shows employee engagement by role, function and at key interaction points, enabling companies to drill down into areas that raise engagement and where it falls away.  

EEQA has been used by companies of all sizes around the world to align leaders, managers and workforce thinking around improving employee experience. Its capability to plot engagement, how it changes and how employee feeling reacts to improvement actions, encourages everyone to focus on and prioritise the employee experience.

How does your employee experience measure up? Our employee experience research solutions are tailored, giving you clear understanding of your employee expectations, what’s working and where action is needed. To help start, we’re offering a free sample of your sector’s employee engagement scores and other relevant benchmarks from our latest data set. To find out more, contact us today.

About the Authors

Glyn Luckett

Glyn Luckett is Director of our Research practice and joined GP Strategies in 2018 through acquisition of TTi Global. He is a Certified member of the Market Research Society. Glyn previously led the commercial team at Maven Research, a private equity backed business and one of the Top 10 UK Research agencies. Glyn has effective experience applying research to support business management challenges and objectives. His experience developing and managing customer, employee and stakeholder research supports the delivery of insightful research that drives outcomes supporting strategic decision making. Throughout his successful research career, he has built a wealth of qualitative and quantitative research experience, supporting clients across Utilities, Manufacturing, Automotive, Construction, Financial and Business Services sectors, as well as working with public sector organizations and regulatory bodies.

Delivering a great Customer Experience (CX) is top of every forward-thinking company’s agenda. Quite simply, delivering excellent customer service pays.

Research by Forrester shows that businesses focussed on enhanced customer experience have:

• 1.6x higher brand awareness
• 1.9x higher order value
• 1.7x higher customer retention
• 1.9x return on spend

The need to present a quality, consistent CX has spawned an entire new genre of customer service roles. A quick glance at LinkedIn shows over 15,000 Customer Experience Manager/Director and Customer Experience Analyst jobs in the UK. Tasked with ensuring customer service is on-point, CX champions are responsible for optimising each step on the customer journey to ensure it fulfils customer expectations. 

In our Customer Experience Research (CXR) to help CX managers gain a 360-degree understanding of their customers, we often hear about the barriers they face in bringing an effective strategy to fruition, including: 

Many businesses, especially smaller and medium size companies, recruit CX managers internally. Typically, someone who knows the company well with customer-facing responsibilities. The challenge is separating what they *think* their customers want, from what they actually want. While it may be relatively easy to pinpoint customer dissatisfaction triggers within areas you have direct experience of, it’s harder to know where and why customer pain points occur with other functions, such as finance, operations, customer complaint handling.

Similarly, although well intentioned, management teams and company cross-function consumer groups can also introduce bias by introducing initiatives that they *think* will enhance customer experience. The first step in developing a successful CX strategy is rooting it in hard data about customers’ actual wants and needs.      

Customers’ attribute value to a wide range of company characteristics. For products, it might be value for money, product performance or longevity. For services, it might be frictionless transactions, convenient self-service options, or helpful customer service agents. Today’s customers are also increasingly prioritising corporate values, such as sustainability, diversity and community support in choosing who they do business with. Quite often it’s not one thing but a blend of value-drivers that come together to form a single satisfying customer experience. An initial stumbling block is that many CX managers are unsure where to access latest accurate information about what practices and values their customers’ desire the most.  

Customers expect the same seamless service whichever engagement channel they choose whether physical or digital. The challenge for CX managers is that while many organisations have taken steps to deliver channels that customers want, such as problem-solving chatbots and apps for streamlining account management, how these channels interact with each other presents a minefield of issues that impact the perfect CX.

Common customer issues our customer satisfaction research reveals include:

• Inconsistencies between information provided depending on channel used
• Problems swapping channels from online to real life interactions (and vice versus)
• Customers having to repeat steps – either by needing to call back (phone or in-person), re-send emails or re-enter information online

For CX managers, whose primary responsibility involves mapping customer journeys and making touchpoints effortless, getting a handle on multiple different customer scenarios across multiple different channels is a daunting task.   

Departments, regional operations and channels are headed by different managers, and even different companies (for example, outsourced call centres and social media channels) with their own KPIs and goals to attain. When silo mindset sets in – where functions work to their own agenda rather than the wider company’s – it can result in misalignment of company goals. The challenge for CX managers is successfully breaking down silo mentality with a strategy that’s capable of aligning everyone’s efforts around customer experience. 

An effective CX strategy that brings about true transformation in company thinking needs a progressive customer experience research system that examines customer touchpoints in the round and delivers actionable data across each company function. 

Recognising the challenges of gathering meaningful customer data in an omni-channel environment, we’ve developed CEQA (Customer Experience Quality Analysis), a breakthrough CXR management system capable of tracking and analysing customer journeys in omni-channel settings.

The CEQA survey collects valuable customer feedback at defining touchpoints along the customer journey – however disjointed – enabling companies to design and implement interactions that align with customer expectations.

As well as tracking the end to end customer experience, CEQA can hone-in on specific touchpoints, such as onboarding, billing and purchasing, and complaints resolution, as well as evaluating specific channels and channel transitions, generating real-time insights into what is working and where action is needed.

Unlike a lot of CX survey platforms, CEQA’s questionnaire design and questions sets are derived from dedicated gap analysis research into what an organisation’s customers want, giving unequivocal and prioritised views of the service factors customers care about the most.

CEQA works as an effective stand-alone CXR tool, as well as providing baseline measurements for a comprehensive Customer Satisfaction Index allowing customer satisfaction (and improvements made) to be tracked over time.  

The CX survey can be issued as and when needed with live CSI scores fed direct to managers’ dashboards. This provides overall and cross-functional views of customer satisfaction, enabling managers to pinpoint precisely where satisfaction declines and its root cause.

Dashboards can be set according to role, so that relevant customer feedback is fed to the right function heads. Customising the data in this way shows managers where they need to focus and improvements actions to pass to teams.

CEQA reporting turns the data into clear, easy to understand analysis, including:

• All pertinent customer experience scores, including common metrics such as CSAT scores, Net Promoter Scores (NPS) as well as indicators such as, Customer Effort Scores (CES) and loyalty and recommendation scores  
• Translating free-form customer comments into sentiment analysis scores, enabling quick identification of subjects and themes such as ‘billing’ or ‘call waiting time’ and whether customer feeling around that subject is positive or negative – sending a red flag to where attention is needed
• Indicators of what customers want to future proof CX, including what technology and tools they want to solve their problems quicker.

CEQA has been used by companies worldwide to help bring about deep transformation in company thinking. With the ability to set and track measurable customer satisfaction goals across different functions and areas, it encourages every team and individual to think in terms of customer experience and how their role impacts the customer view.

Do you want to know the reality of your CX? Our CX research solutions are personalised so you get unique understanding of your customers’ needs and where to focus effort for the best ROI. To test the health of your CX, we’re offering a free sample of your sector’s customer satisfaction scores and other relevant benchmarks from our latest data set. To find out more about this or any other aspect of our CXR, contact us today.

About the Authors

Glyn Luckett

Glyn Luckett is Director of our Research practice and joined GP Strategies in 2018 through acquisition of TTi Global. He is a Certified member of the Market Research Society. Glyn previously led the commercial team at Maven Research, a private equity backed business and one of the Top 10 UK Research agencies. Glyn has effective experience applying research to support business management challenges and objectives. His experience developing and managing customer, employee and stakeholder research supports the delivery of insightful research that drives outcomes supporting strategic decision making. Throughout his successful research career, he has built a wealth of qualitative and quantitative research experience, supporting clients across Utilities, Manufacturing, Automotive, Construction, Financial and Business Services sectors, as well as working with public sector organizations and regulatory bodies.

No business is an island. Right from the word go, organisations need to build positive relationships with stakeholders to achieve long-term sustainable success. Your stakeholders, whether B2B suppliers or industry regulators, all have influence over your company performance and how it’s perceived. But mapping and managing stakeholder relations can be complex and resource intensive, especially when it comes to identifying and meeting individual and group expectations.  

Here we explore who stakeholders are, and how stakeholder research can help develop and sustain a powerful, productive stakeholder network for your business.

Every organisation, from major gas and electric suppliers to small social enterprises, has stakeholders. Stakeholders are companies, groups or individuals who can affect, or are affected by your company’s actions. Stakeholders can be internal or external.

External stakeholders are not integral to the company but have an interest in its performance. A housing developer, for example has several external stakeholders, including customers (potential homebuyers and occupants), government (Local Authority Planning and Building Control), suppliers (architects, builders, service installers), creditors (banks, shareholders and investors) and community bodies (neighbouring residents, community groups with interest in the development’s social and environmental impact).

Internal stakeholders are integral to the company and include employees, managers and board members. Some of these may also be company shareholders, owning a direct stake in the business.

Each stakeholder will have different priorities and concerns depending on their position and outlook.

Understanding these is key for forging productive relationships and the best outcome for both individual projects and overarching business objectives. 

The first step is to identify all known stakeholders – whether individuals, groups or organisations that influence or will be affected by your company’s activities. It’s important to remember that stakeholders can be positive and negative (for example, a developer may face opposition from environmental or residential groups). They are also constantly evolving; new bodies emerge, and new opinions are voiced in response to change. For start-ups navigating stakeholder relations is critical, as failing to engage am important stakeholder from the start can severely undermine its success. An experienced research agency, such as TTi can help identify all relevant stakeholder bodies with a vested interest in your company’s work.   

Depending on the aims of your stakeholder research, whether it is to determine and understand all your stakeholder expectations or assess primary stakeholders’ needs relating to a specific project, various methods can be implemented. These include:

• Focus groups – Small, facilitated group meetings with key stakeholder representatives to determine their interest and reactions to your company’s offering or project proposal.
• Gap Analysis – A blend of qualitative and quantitative research (typically interviews and surveys) to pinpoint the difference between stakeholders’ expectations of your company performance and actual delivery, allowing you to implement a focussed improvement plan and measure its results over time.
• One-to-one interviews – Expert-led interviews with individual stakeholders (usually senior contacts, CEOs, Directors, Department Heads and Account Managers) to gauge perceptions of your company or project, and motivations for using you.

Along with focus groups, in-depth interviews are particularly effective for managing internal stakeholder’s expectations, such as department managers, executive teams and board members, as you can determine the precise level of engagement needed to satisfy their requirements.

Due to the varied and disparate roles stakeholders take it’s important that survey and interview questions are tailored to extract the insight you need and that each research activity provides you with a series of actionable outcomes. Again, employing a seasoned research agency such as TTi will support this.  

Effective, regular research provides a sound foundation for identifying and tracking stakeholder expectations, both on a project by project basis and for evaluating overall positioning and whether your company’s on track.

For overarching company health, stakeholder research helps you:

• Identify key stakeholders – supportive and oppositional – and their importance, allowing you to draw up an effective engagement and communication plan to maximise stakeholder buy-in and support
• Understand your most powerful stakeholders’ motivations and satisfaction drivers – helping enhance relationships and build trust with key influencers
• Evaluate appropriate positioning of partnerships and initiatives by providing clear, accurate data on what is working and where strategic or operational adjustments are needed
• Get ahead by understanding stakeholders’ opinions on current and emerging issues enabling you to develop on-point reactive statements and communication plans
• Measure your company reputation against competitors – wider stakeholder benchmark research into competitors and industry peers helps highlight differences in approach and areas which need attention, helping strengthen company perception  
• Understand employee opinions about key initiatives or company changes helping you plan and manage internal change successfully
• Kickstart Improvement – implementing a robust research framework that regularly and consistently measures stakeholder and employee satisfaction provides you with insight on where satisfaction is waning and change is needed, kickstarting a cycle of improvement.

Stakeholder research is also beneficial when it comes to rolling out large or complex projects or organisational changes, such as leadership or partnership changes.

Stakeholder research and analysis can help:

• Identify all key stakeholders – from the most powerful who need close consultation throughout to those who require little input but still need monitoring – helping inform project planning and linked communication activities. Getting stakeholders involved early will also help gain their support, and open opportunities to find out what resources are available to help, setting the project up for success.
• Prioritise stakeholders and understand what they value and what are their concerns – supporting effective communication and engagement planning. Research enables you to find out exactly what your stakeholders do and don’t want, including answering questions, such as what information they require and when, what do they want the outcome of the project to be, how do they want to be communicated with, and who influences their opinions, as such, do they also need to be involved in the project consultation? Doing this will help map each stakeholder’s expectations and what is needed to meet them, helping foster satisfaction and trust in your company’s intentions and way of working.  
• Identify difficult stakeholders – not everyone may support your proposal, research can determine who’s not in favour, their concerns and guide you on what actions you can take to allay those concerns, helping smooth the project’s path and keep PR positive.     
• Plan resources effectively – establishing the level of engagement each stakeholder needs will keep your team’s efforts focussed and lean. For example, a priority stakeholder might require close engagement and consultation via activities such as joint campaigns and press activities, while a stakeholder low on the interest radar, might need to just be kept informed of progress via newsletters, social media etc. Research ensures effort is targeted where it’s needed most, and – when conducted regularly – provide hard, accurate data on what engagement initiatives are working and which need attention, keeping activities productive and on track.

TTi Global, a division of GP Strategies, has over 30 years’ experience of helping UK and overseas organisations understand and strengthen their relationships with key stakeholders and opinion formers. We work across all industries, conducting stakeholder analysis in Utilities, Automotive, Housing and Construction, IT, Finance and Manufacturing sectors, enabling companies to measure the impact of their engagement activities and set actionable priorities for the future.

To find out how we can help your business, contact us today.

About the Authors

Glyn Luckett

Glyn Luckett is Director of our Research practice and joined GP Strategies in 2018 through acquisition of TTi Global. He is a Certified member of the Market Research Society. Glyn previously led the commercial team at Maven Research, a private equity backed business and one of the Top 10 UK Research agencies. Glyn has effective experience applying research to support business management challenges and objectives. His experience developing and managing customer, employee and stakeholder research supports the delivery of insightful research that drives outcomes supporting strategic decision making. Throughout his successful research career, he has built a wealth of qualitative and quantitative research experience, supporting clients across Utilities, Manufacturing, Automotive, Construction, Financial and Business Services sectors, as well as working with public sector organizations and regulatory bodies.

If there was ever a time to embrace digital technology for business – it’s now. Digital technologies are helping the global workforce adjust to a world that is already vastly different in 2020 than it was in 2019. Not only is the business environment changing rapidly, but digital technologies themselves are changing and evolving at lightning speed and disrupting the landscape of work, leaving a wave of conundrums in their wake.

Some perplexing challenges can be attributed to the current technological era, described as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Experts have predicted that robotics, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and other digital technologies will change the world in unexpected ways. Employees will need to have entirely new skillsets and expand their use of software applications.

Here are some things to keep in mind as more technology opportunities present themselves in the coming months and years.

Software fluidity redefines training

Many companies begin digital transformation with their employees—preparing them for complex software applications with continual training, often provided in different training formats.

In this digital-empowered work environment, most employees must learn how to fluidly use various company-related software applications. A wide range of jobs require deep knowledge and high proficiency using multiple software applications. Previously, employees could master an application as it applied to their job and successfully fulfill the job’s requirements. It’s not so simple anymore. The change in an application’s functionality can happen overnight, requiring must-know-now knowledge for an employee to successfully perform their job.

This rapid pace of software change requires an alternative training method. Many learning and development (L&D) organizations have created different training methods—from eLearning to instructor-led to virtual reality—to teach employees how to use software.

However, training departments are having trouble keeping up with the rapid pace of software changes.

Today, employees need a faster, digitally powered methodology to not just learn how to use complex software, but also to use applications as they relate to employees’ job duties and tasks. All these factors have led to a new training method—digital adoption.

Digital adoption: faster, easier learning and expanded application use

Digital adoption is often defined as achieving a work environment where digital tools are used in the manner intended and to the maximum extent. An employee with the proper digital adoption technology at their fingertips will better be able to make use of your company’s digital tools and assets.

Companies are embracing digital adoption because it does more than teach the basic functions of a software application. It also shows how the application can be used in the context of employees’ jobs. The aha moment of digital adoption happens when technology becomes second nature to employees. The value of that kind of employee knowledge is priceless.

Guided Learning through GP Strategies and our Partners at Whatfix
In 2020, GP Strategies partnered with Whatfix to provide a digital adoption platform that integrates key learning methodologies, such as listed below, into our digital user adoption approach:

• Contextual learning – Content is deeply personalized and promotes user engagement.
• Interactive learning – This promotes learning by doing, inside the applications. Learning content is dynamic, giving users a better way to learn.
• Real-time learning – With real-time learning, content can be adjusted to a user’s needs, improving user productivity by providing the right information, at the right time.

Through our partnership with Whatfix, we can provide a digital adoption platform to manage and control the disruptive technologies that are changing the workforce. To learn more about digital adoption and how you can achieve the full potential of your software applications, request a demo today.

About the Authors

Derek Levandowski

Derek Levandowski is a Field Marketing Specialist with GP Strategies, focused on Technology Adoption and Human Capital Management Services. He joined the GP Strategies team in February 2017 after three years with Maverick Solutions, a Division of GP Strategies. A New York native, he currently resides in Wake Forest, North Carolina with his wife Melissa.

A Guide to Selecting the Right SAP SuccessFactors Implementation Partner for You

Having been an SAP partner for over 25 years, we’ve been around the block and seen projects go sideways due to inexperienced partners taking on more than they can handle. This only results in the customer paying the price.

Based on these experiences, we have put together a checklist, along with a set of best practices, for you to utilize when you are selecting your partner.

The Implementation Partner Checklist

Are they:

• Professionally certified in all modules?
• Global (meaning that they have teams across the globe and support local requirements)?

Ensure they have:

• Recognized expertise in:
  • Employee Central and Payroll
  • Recruiting and Onboarding
  • Talent
  • Learning
• Authorized application management outsourcing
• Global helpdesk and ticketing system
• Customized support packages
• Expertise in SAP Analytics Cloud
  • SAP-qualified partner-packaged solutions
• A dedicated team for:
  • Data migrationData replication
  • Integrations
  • Change management
  • Project management

Best Practices for Selecting and Maintaining Your Implementation Partner

• Check the partner’s references before signing a contract. Make sure they can prove their expertise.
• Ask the consultants to show proof of their education and experience in the form of their digital badges or certifications issued by SAP.
• Meet the proposed project manager and/or engagement manager before the project begins.
• Define roles and responsibilities with your entire project team, and make sure that everybody is clear on what is expected.
• Demand visibility into the detailed project plan.
• Identify third-party dependencies, such as:
  • Payroll vendors
  • Finance requirements
  • Compliance requirements
• Schedule regular project status reporting from your partner.
• Take advantage of product training to ensure that you understand the system and can make decisions without your partner.
• Allow your partner to guide you in configuration and business process suggestions, but realize that all final decisions are yours.

Before you sign, obtain the following from your partner:

• A proposed governance structure
• Roles and responsibilities
• A pricing approach
• A method for handling surprises and roadblocks
• Approaches to knowledge transfer and post-go-live support

This list may evolve over time, and you may have specific requirements that will demand other items to be examined with the partner. Use this checklist as a guide to build your custom specifications.

About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

Six Insights to Align Your Strategy, Culture, and Organizational Values to Support Business Continuity

Crises can be triggered internally or as a result of external factors. What we are currently experiencing with COVID-19 is definitely the latter. How you respond and lead through this crisis will determine whether you also end up dealing with an internal crisis. Simply put, if the external crisis isn’t responded to well with strong leadership, it will spark an internal crisis as a result.

Leadership is often referred to as doing the right thing, while management is characterized as doing things right. So what is the right thing? Your strategy is your North Star; it’s the right thing to focus on and execute, now more than ever.

Your strategy combined with your culture and organizational values should guide you and your people safely through the crisis.

Living Your Values

This is when people need to see you live those values, not just talk about them. We are seeing multiple examples of organizations protecting their people through remote working and paid sick leave. These are small but powerful examples of living an organization’s culture and values. People are afraid of the health and economic consequences of COVID-19, and as a result, they need reassurance and strong leadership. They are looking for someone to lead—someone they want to follow.

You know how your daily work connects directly to the strategy of your organization, so much so, you don’t even have to think about it. How well do your people know what they do contributes to your organization’s strategic success? Can they articulate it? It’s vital that they can see and articulate that connection. It brings meaning to their work.

This is especially true if they are working remotely for the first time and maybe starting to feel disconnected from the mission and their team members.

You can’t control the external environment, as this crisis is proving; however, you can influence the internal factors at play inside your organization. Your role as a leader is to create an environment where people can be successful.

6 Insights for Creating a Successful Environment

Here are six insights to focus on to create that environment:

• Clear aims, outcomes, and objectives – People want to do a good job and contribute. Articulating what they need to do and how it drives toward the organization’s strategy is fundamental to that. Staff who know why they are doing something and how it contributes to the organization are known to be more engaged and committed to achieving that outcome.
• Skills, knowledge, and mindset – Can your employees do the work? Has that been impacted by the current circumstances? What extra support might they need? How can you and your leadership provide that? Skills and knowledge are two elements; the force multiplier is the correct mindset. Helping your people achieve the correct mindset is vital to successfully navigating this crisis.
• Capacity – Do your employees’ circumstances allow them to execute what needs to be done? Have childcare responsibilities reduced their capacity? Can they work more flexible hours to get the work done, for example, when the kids are in bed? Are they struggling without you being aware?
• Tools, systems, and resources – Do your people have equipment, laptops, desks, etc. to work effectively? Do they have accessibility to systems and visibility of the information they need to make informed, correct decisions? How are they communicating across and with their teams?
• Work processes and environment – Do your processes need to change to accommodate the current environment? Are your people empowered to suggest and make changes? Crises are often a catalyst for advancement and change. What changes can your teams make to improve or streamline their processes without undue risk?
• Motivation, incentives, and consequences – Along with having set clear objectives and outcomes, there also needs to be clear rewards for achieving those outcomes. Those rewards don’t need to be solely financial. Knowing they have contributed to the success of the organization or exceeded a customer’s expectations are powerful motivators; those achievements have their own intrinsic value.

People cannot control many things during a crisis. By aligning the six factors above with your strategy, being able to articulate it, and showing people where their contribution fits in the bigger picture will give them purpose in their work. Providing the purpose will help them feel a sense of control and understand their contribution to the common goal. You will have helped create an environment in which your people can be successful.

Quick Exercise

You are not in this alone—your leadership team needs to live and enact the values of the organization to achieve your strategy.

As a quick exercise, consider the six factors and answer the following questions in order:

• Which factors are your leadership teams excelling at?
• Are all teams excelling at the identified factors?
• Which ones do you need help with?
• Which ones need your immediate attention or need to be prioritized?

Your team’s strong leadership is as important as yours. Your and their behavior will percolate down through the organization and create the real culture and values that people see. Those behaviors need to be aligned with the organization’s strategy to emerge from this crisis stronger and more competitive.

About the Authors

Ian Croft

I have always been fascinated by performance excellence. Obviously, we don’t call it that when we watch our favorite sports team/heroine/hero winning at their sport or while we watch an amazing artistic performance—we just enjoy the moment. For me, that moment is frequently followed by these questions: • How did they do that? • How hard have they worked individually or as a team to be that good? • What do they do that others don’t do that makes them successful? Being a Performance Consultant with GP Strategies allows me to explore those questions with clients on a daily basis. I was born and raised in the UK and moved to the US at the start of 2007. My career started with a UK-based bank where I specialized in commercial banking. It was the chance to help clients build successful businesses that attracted me to commercial banking over the other alternatives on offer. I spent several years working with clients on expansion strategies, restructuring their businesses, and working through the day-to-day challenges of running their businesses. I moved into commercial banking training during 1998 after completing an MBA. That’s when I found my true passion: helping people become the best they can be at what they do. I moved to a global bank during 2000 in a training role and became a Learning and Performance Consultant with responsibility for four of the bank’s businesses in 2003. In this role, I traveled internationally, delivering training and working with the four businesses to solve performance issues. My final role with the global bank was as Head of Commercial Banking for North America. After leaving banking, I became a Solution Architect within the Global Learning Solutions division of a major consultancy firm. This gave me the opportunity to work with diverse clients on learning and performance issues and indulge my passion for helping clients improve the performance of their businesses. I have been with GP Strategies since 2016 and truly love what I do here. Each day brings fresh challenges as I partner with clients to solve performance issues at individual, department, divisional, or organizational levels. I live in Delaware with my wife Elaine and our dog Charlie. I am an avid cyclist and can be found out on the roads of Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland most weekends.

This blog article was written prior to LEO Learning becoming part of GP Strategies.

Experts, tutors, mentors, coaches, trainers, and learners can all be brought together in virtual classrooms. For example, studies show that your learners will do better by having an expert guide to lead and support them throughout the session.

The tutor plays a key role by improving employee engagement throughout the learning experience, and can help and motivate learners to get through their personal learning challenges. Another dimension is added through the interactions of the group of learners themselves. By creating a collaborative peer group, your learners can bounce ideas off each other in a way that more traditional digital learning doesn’t allow.

However, running virtual classrooms is not an easy thing to master, so we’ve pulled together our top ten tips for running a successful virtual training session.

1. Use Virtual Classrooms as Part of an Ongoing Blend

Incorporate virtual classrooms fully into the blended learning experience to help bind cohorts of learners together and engage them throughout the learning process. This ranges from pre-learning sessions to scenario exercises and other engaging interactions over an extended learning program, and onto follow-up sessions exploring feedback, stories, and expert Q&A. This will also help your cohort to keep in touch, share knowledge, and develop as a group.

2. Plan Your Session

As with any learning design task, start with your learning objectives. These may cross over with the rest of the blend (if there is one), but you need to be clear on the objective of your session in order to focus your preparation, materials and the session itself.

3. Prepare Your Audience

Use the tool’s email reminders to ask the audience to download any required plug-ins in advance, turn mobiles off, test their headphones, etc. Use this communication opportunity to solicit questions in advance, which will also help increase turnout rates.

4. Know Your Audience

When developing traditional digital learning experiences, we target different user types. But in virtual classrooms, you can really get to know your audience in more depth. Elicit information through registration forms, invite further information through the joining instruction emails, and use this information to really target your learning design to your audience.

5. Let Your Audience Know You

Start your session by introducing yourself and your background, along with a photo so your audience can visualize who you are. You need to build trust and rapport with your audience so they are comfortable being guided by you as an expert.

6. Storyboard Your Session

You must have well-structured content for a successful session. Defining a clear and appropriate structure for the session, and the activities you’ll include within it, are vital to a successful virtual classroom. Remember to tell the audience what you’re going to cover first, and to reinforce the key points at the end.

7. Keep It Visual

In a face-to-face presentation, the audience can see you and if there’s no visual slide, their attention will be focused on you. Keep your slides visual to keep the audience’s attention from wandering. If you’re not using a webcam then include a photo in your introduction slide too, so the audience can visualize you.

8. Use a Facilitator

This important supporting role can introduce the session and presenters, act as a moderator, manage chat or questions, run your polls and oversee other interactive features. They can also deal with any technical issues that arise during the session.

9. Engage Your Audience

Don’t just run an online lecture; use hand-raising tools, polls, chat and questions throughout the session to keep the audience interested and engaged. Your audience is typically only seconds away from their email, so you must build rapport, engage their interest and maintain it throughout the session.

10. Measure Success

Follow up the session with an evaluation form at the very least to measure the success of the session. Better still, follow up with an online quiz or an assignment to keep the learning process going.

About the Authors

GP Strategies Corporation

GP Strategies is a global performance improvement solutions provider of sales and technical training, e-Learning solutions, management consulting and engineering services. GP Strategies' solutions improve the effectiveness of organizations by delivering innovative and superior training, consulting and business improvement services, customized to meet the specific needs of its clients. Clients include Fortune 500 companies, manufacturing, process and energy industries, and other commercial and government customers.

In this time of great uncertainty – what leadership lessons can we take from those who are trained from the get-go to lead us out of situations we could not predict?

For the military, crisis response is part of their daily lives. Terms that have become common language in corporate circles (operational rehearsals, drills, and war-gaming) are well-rehearsed techniques deployed to manage life and death situations. Organizations can learn a lot from military practices leveraging leadership, alignment and ways of working.

Murphy Bright, former US Marine and Consultant with McKinney Rogers in New York, and Will Casselton, a London based Partner, discuss fundamental leadership lessons that apply to today’s crisis response more than ever.

Murphy, in our work with leadership teams, we talk about operating faster than the pace of the problem, at the pace of the fastest, what personal examples of agility and flexibility stand out from your service in the Marines?

Within 48 hours of the 2012 Benghazi attack, I was on a Navy Ship with the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit,  a self-mobile, self-sustaining force of Marines and sailors, capable of responding to a range of crises at a moment’s notice. Two days later my Platoon of 42 Marines was offloaded to an undisclosed location in the Horn of Africa with a Mission to respond to any crisis to U.S. interests throughout Africa and the Middle East within 12 hours. The situation was evolving hourly and we were not sure where the next attack might come from.

As it became clear that US citizens somewhere in western Africa were in imminent danger of an attack by hostile forces, we received word to be wheels up within two hours to reinforce the US interest in that location. Immediately I was pushed additional resources from other government agencies and branches of the military. While I was not the senior ranking officer, I was the officer in charge of the mission and responsible for the overall success or failure. With limited time and resources, we had to plan to be agile and think dynamically. We had to come up with a sound plan quickly. We accomplished this by constantly checking in with one another and ensuring we were allowing our subordinates time to understand how the plan would be executed.

Back in 2012, as a relatively junior leader, how did that situation shape how you make decisions?

The initial reaction at the time of a crisis is to look straight towards leadership for the ‘what now’ and ‘what next’. That situation taught me the pressure of how it feels when people look to you to control potential chaos. It has taught me to trust my intuition whilst remembering to project honesty, caution and to stay positive. Leaders need to be decisive yet prepared to adapt to a changing situation.

In the Marine Corps we use the acronym B.A.M.C.I.S.

• Begin planning
• Arrange for reconnaissance
• Make reconnaissance
• Complete the plan
• Issue the order
• Supervise

It is used to help us make plans in times of crisis that will accomplish mission objectives. In the corporate world, the same process can be applied in times of crisis. The most important step in this process is the final step –

Supervise. A strong leader will be able to take a step back and because the plan is so clear and concise to team members that no micromanaging is needed.

The military have specific guidelines for creating a plan at the times of a crisis, aligned to the same principles of Mission-based leadership. How relevant is that right now as Organizations plan to survive and overcome the challenges we are all facing?

Mission Leadership is more relevant at times of transformation and disruption. Having clarity of the desired outcome, actions to achieve it and a feedback loop to measure progress is critical. The initial plan provides a foundational starting point, not a script. Plans should not seek to specify future actions but identify options and possibilities. The best plan is only as good as the team that implements it.

Last September you joined me in the Bahamas to support a client as Hurricane Dorian hit Abaco and Freeport. Our client’s response reinforced their Vision to be the leader in connected lifestyles and experiences. At the time we co-developed their strategy in 2018, we did not intend that to include natural disasters or health pandemics, but the clarity of the mission to connect people and save lives created a strong sense of belonging both in the management team and equally from customers loyal to the brand.

Reinforcing that sense of belonging is critical. Leaders need to highlight the importance of the team or group of teams’ identities.  Keeping teams motivated, true to your purpose is key. Organizations operate best when members think of themselves as belonging to a group with cooperation and commitment to the Mission.

We are being forced to change our ways of working as cities lockdown and citizens and employees stay at home.  This is forcing us to work together differently in how we collaborate, innovate, and serve our customers.

For many organizations and skills sets, working remotely was already a reality. For others it requires new disciplines, to form new habits, new behaviors, and new offerings. Remember that no matter where you are, teams can mobilize around a clear mission in order to take course correction actions during a crisis and establish agreed communication protocol and habits to adapt to the new reality.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week. We started this discussion talking about urgency, based on your personal experience what separates strong leaders (at all levels) in responding to the challenges we are facing today?

Operating at the speed of the fastest is a core attribute of elite teamwork. Elite leaders at all levels of organizations require that balance of courage, integrity, empathy, judgment, and above all resilience. Displaying these qualities now at pace under intense pressure will provide strength to their organizations leading through chaos and getting ready for the future.

As we respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are helping our clients manage current operations while preparing for the different scenarios that the future holds.  It is our hope that the COVID-19 disruption is brief and that you and your employees remain safe and healthy throughout.

About the Authors

Murphy Bright

Murphy Bright is a New York-based consultant with McKinney Rogers, a division of GP Strategies Business Transformation practice.  Murphy joined the McKinney Rogers team in 2019, bringing with him over ten years of professional leadership experience.  For ten years, Murphy served as an Infantry Officer in the United States Marine Corps. During his time in the service, Murphy served in numerous challenging environments, including  the Horn of Africa & Afghanistan.   Murphy left active duty in 2014 but still is currently serving in the Marine Corps Reserves as a Major. Murphy has extensive experience helping companies develop their sales and marketing strategies.  Additionally, Murphy completed his MBA at Syracuse University Whitman School of Management in 2018.  Murphy is passionate about developing high performing elite teams and ensuring alignment across the team. Murphy loves to leverage his experiences and insight to help others unleash their leadership potential. EXPERTISE: - Financial Services - Operations - Leadership - Elite Team development to build high performing teams

As communities around the world respond to the coronavirus pandemic, many of us are facing jobs, communities, and homes that look radically different than they did a few months ago. Remote work. Children adjusting to distance learning. Shrinking investments. Impending layoffs or reduced hours. Daily tallies of the number of people “testing positive.” Bare shelves at the grocery store.

Although I have telecommuted for 20 years and I write about engagement in the virtual workplace, I can’t tell you how to manage your conference calls when your 12-year-old starts playing with the dog instead of doing school work. I can provide ideas for managing personal engagement in this up-ended world of work. This is not a primer on every factor that influences employee engagement (we have a book about that). This is my list of what to draw on today:

Buffers. Buffers are activities that help you step out of a situation to gain distance and perspective. They help you clear your head and move from swirling emotions to productive action. We explore five buffers in our Your Career program: physical, emotional, spiritual, mental, and social. Don’t worry about the labels. Think instead about the activities that help you regroup and fuel your resilience. Modify them for your socially distanced reality. Exercise? Find an online workout you can follow at home. Talking with friends? Video chat or set up a virtual wine and whine. Journaling? An activity made for social distancing! Spiritual practices? Stream. Many churches, synagogues, and mosques are holding virtual services. Also, try a guided meditation app.

An engagement GPS. It’s hard to move forward in your personal engagement when you don’t know your starting point. Our X model can help you reflect on where you are and why, so you can determine what to do. The model defines full employee engagement as the intersection of maximum contribution for your organization and maximum satisfaction for you as an individual. Simply put: It’s when you give and get as much as you can. My hunch: No one is experiencing maximum anything these days (except, perhaps, stress).

Priorities. You can’t achieve full engagement if you don’t know what maximum contribution looks like. As businesses and agencies determine how to respond to the pandemic, work priorities will change. You may have taken on additional tasks already. So it’s time to prioritize. What’s most important now? Talk to your manager. Shift your focus. Agree on what you won’t work on. Check in regularly to recalibrate.

An updated play book. It’s one thing to clarify work priorities, but results (and your engagement) will elude you if you don’t define how to work together now. If you’re working remotely, think beyond what technology to use to how you’ll use it. Talk with your manager and teammates. How often will your team connect? When should you instant message, call, email, or video conference? (Some people, for example, may assume a phone call equals escalation, especially if they’re used to stopping by your desk to ask a question.) How will people adjust their schedules to handle altered responsibilities at home?

Your talents: I explored employee engagement in the aftermath of 9/11 and through the Great Recession. One critical theme: People consistently stepped up to deliver for their organization and community. This is the time to take inventory of your unique capabilities, dust them off if they’ve been shelved, and use them. Where can you make an impact now? Which of your skills and knowledge can really make a difference? Share your ideas. Make them happen. Achievements in difficult times fuel personal satisfaction and organizational results—just what we all need right now.

A parting thought: Resist the temptation to crawl under the covers and wait for leaders to tell you what to do or for things to return to normal. Do something to manage your engagement now. You don’t have to venture out of the house, stand in line, or pay a premium to stock up on metaphorical engagement supplies. You’ve got this. Reflect on what’s important to you and your employer. Talk to your manager and teammates. Take action—wherever you are.

If you lead others… Leah Clark’s recent blog Eight Insights for Leaders if COVID-19 Requires Your Team to Work Remotely has some practical tips for taking care of your team.

If you want to learn more… check out our Taking Control of Your Engagement program and tools.

About the Authors

Mary Ann Masarech

Mary Ann Masarech spent the first third of her career writing, designing, and marketing skills training for top-notch consulting firms. She acquired a broad Mary Ann is the Lead Consultant for GP Strategies’ Engagement Practice. In this role, she leverages her extensive experience with instructional design and client experience to create practical tools and strategies that clients apply worldwide to create successful businesses and thriving workplaces. She is also co-author of The Engagement Equation: Leadership Strategies for an Inspired Workforce (Wiley, Oct 2012), and a founding member of the Norma Pfriem Urban Outreach Initiatives, a not-for-profit that addresses food insecurity and education for underserved adults and children. Mary Ann is a graduate of Wesleyan University. 

With the growing threat of COVID-19, many organizations are asking their employees to work from home. Putting that into practice, however, can prove difficult. So, what steps can we take to ensure a smooth transition from the office to the home? And how can leaders best manage their virtual teams?

We are facing unprecedented challenges in both our work and personal lives. Many schools have been required to assemble plans that allow their students to learn remotely, and various organizations have imposed travel bans and restrictions, including a work from home policy to reduce close contact.

While this scenario limits exposure to the virus, working remotely can prove challenging and leaders need to be prepared to support their teams. This support is especially important when the upheaval in our personal and professional lives is so profound.

Here are eight insights for leaders to consider when managing their virtual teams:

• When you connect with your people, check in and see how they are doing on a personal level. Don’t dive right into your to-do list and contingency plan for getting things done. Recognize that they are dealing with stress and anxiety associated with the situation, and could benefit from someone to talk about how they are feeling and coping. Let them know you care about them; this opens up the door to communication.
• Encourage your people to practice self-care. While many working adults are trying to juggle what you expect of them, chances are many of them are also responsible for soothing the concerns of their children and family members, or they may have elderly parents who are increasingly at risk. Remind them to keep themselves physically and emotionally healthy.
• Keep the lines of communication open. As company policies flex-and-change, and business results are impacted negatively, share with them what you know, when you know it. In the absence of clear communication, employees may fill-in-the-gaps with incorrect information.
• Flex your emotional intelligence as you communicate, and be more vigilant about how your words may come across when sensitivities are heightened. Consider the “logic-emotion” bubble – when someone comes to you with an emotional reaction, acknowledge the emotion and express empathy first. Defusing the emotion allows for greater space for a logical discussion to happen.
• Continue making progress against individual, team, and organizational goals. Ensuring that work continues to progress and contribution is maximized is not only good for business, but it can also create some normalcy for your team members. When so much around us feels out of control, it can be helpful to see progress in the work we do and the contributions we make.
• Explore new technology. Now is the time to leverage video conference, texting, and digital platforms such as “Teams” or “Yammer” to keep communication and collaboration going, even from a distance.
• Be globally aware/sensitive. It’s clear that certain geographies are harder hit than others. When working with global partners, be aware of where they are located and be sensitive to the fact that the impact of the virus may be more pronounced where they are located.
• Model the behavior you want to encourage. Take care of yourself and practice your own self-care. As a leader, you are responsible for others, but you can’t be a support to them if you aren’t physically and emotionally as healthy as possible.

It’s easy to talk about “leadership” and “teamwork” in times of success. The true success of a leader and their team emerges in times of real personal and organization crisis. Take care of yourself, take care of your people, and know we are better when we stick together than when we suffer alone.

The leadership division of GP Strategies is adding a series of virtual leaderships sessions to their schedule to ensure leaders have the skills to lead effectively. Topics include working virtually, managing change, giving feedback, and handling resistance. Just pick a comfortable spot, and join us at the scheduled time!

About the Authors

Leah Clark

Leah Clark is the Leadership Practice Lead at GP Strategies, as well as an author and the founder of LeaderConnect. With over 28 years of experience in her field, Leah brings a unique perspective on the mindsets and skillset that are critical to leadership success to her coaching and consulting. Her clients benefit from her collaborative approach to crafting a well-connected and thoughtful leadership development strategy. Leah holds a Master of Arts; Organizational Psychology, Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts; English and Sociology, Boston College.