The founder and chairman of Autohuset Vestergaard, believes strongly that happy employees lead to a healthy bottom line and positive customer experience.
According to Chief Human Resources Officer Steffen Filtenborg, “There are the three key output measures, Profit, Customer Experience and Employee Experience, into which everything we do in the day-to-day running of the business has to fit. These provide the cornerstones of the strategic plan around which we’re shaping the company for the future.
“So, when we see that employee experience and engagement are under pressure from inflation and other stresses, we have to recognise that what made our colleagues happy in the past is not making them happy today.”
In a parallel issue, Steffen continues, “The way the company used to measure employee engagement was outdated and very difficult to translate into something actionable. We had to radically change our approach to understanding how employees are feeling and how we can help ensure they’re happy at work.
“We selected Workday Peakon Employee Voice to be at the heart of that transformation.”
Managers responded really positively when we explained that Peakon was their tool to improve life for them and their people.
Steffen Filtenborg, Chief Human Resources Officer
Delivering the insights that drive positive action.
In selecting Workday Peakon Employee Voice, Steffen Filtenborg and team were aiming to implement a solution that would deliver insights leading to positive, effective action.
“Peakon has actually exceeded my expectations,” he says. “Its dashboard delivers great granularity, enabling you to dive in, rapidly pinpoint an issue and turn it all into action. So, if there’s a trouble point affecting relationships with employees, you can very quickly establish three or four causes and identify five or six recommended actions. And we know from experience that these will be more effective than our own suggestions.”
Steffen also likes the fact that Workday Peakon Employee Voice is what he calls “front-line heavy. In other words, managers can use it intuitively themselves. So, HR is not the gatekeeper: the more we can enable people by giving them the right tools to help them run the business, the better it is. And Peakon is so easy to use that people can be up and running on it in just 15 or 20 minutes.”
Support is focused on those who need it most.
From the company’s experience to date, it is those managers who have been struggling most to help their team members fully engage with the business who have gained the greatest benefit from the implementation.
According to Steffen Filtenborg, “Following a quarterly survey, we work with those managers to focus on particular areas where they need most support, and then measure the impact of that work with a Pulse survey.
“It’s really popular with participating managers, because now they have something to focus on that’s really helping them and their teams perform better. Before they had no obvious way of driving improvement. And now they’re receiving the tools they need.”
Survey frequency means decisions are based on current, accurate data.
In what Steffen Filtenborg calls “a real game changer”, the company is now capable of using data gathered via the tool to accurately predict future employee-turnover rates.
As he says, “The only data we had in the past was our experience from the previous period, up to a year earlier. Now, thanks to quarterly surveys that show where we are exposed, we can be much more proactive about making recruitment decisions.”
In addition, the regularity of the surveys also enables managers to make taking positive action on employee experience an important part of their daily operations. “It’s no longer something you look at once a year and then forget about after a couple of weeks,” Steffen says.
“It’s now always there as a key responsibility—tangible, operational and hands-on. That means we’re in control and can recognise the difference between a fluke finding and an embedded reality. That’s really valuable.”