"The best testimony I can offer is that BIS have already decided to conduct another ESS in 2008 to benchmark our progress and to evaluate the effectiveness of our business planning activity."

Tim Cawdron, Human Resources Director

Getting the Most out of Employee Satisfaction Research

Babcock Infrastructure Services provides a complete facilities management service for a range of clients, including the Ministry of Defence. The company employs around 1000 people in more than 50 locations around the country.

Managing Director Mike Fellowes was appointed during 2006 and immediately started a strategic review of the business. In an early newsletter to employees, he emphasised that their professionalism and commitment would be a crucial factor in achieving company goals.

He and his team launched a series of initiatives to encourage people's involvement, including new communication and recognition processes and a project to work towards Investors in People status.

Human Resources Director Tim Cawdron and his team worked with Burton OD to establish the company's first Employee Satisfaction Survey to provide a snapshot of employee views and input for the Investors in People project.

Stage One - planning

A survey team developed a set of topics for the survey - designed to test out key company practices and employee attitudes. The topics included: People Management; Learning and Development; Recognition and Reward; Communications; Company and Culture.

Burton OD then provided a suggested set of questions and these were circulated to managers and discussed by the Investors in People project team who also provided further input to the survey implementation plan.

Although a large number of Babcock employees have access to the internet, many don't and it was decided that everyone should be invited to complete a paper survey. In order to guarantee anonymity the survey did not ask for names and arrangements were made so that people could post their responses directly to Burton OD.

The survey was widely publicised around the business and local co-ordinators were briefed to encourage a high response rate.

Stage Two - implementation

Babcock is a complex business - based on many different sites. Key to achieving a response rate of almost 60% was to ensure that people knew about the survey and were encouraged to take part.

This was achieved by appointing co-ordinators throughout the business who could answer questions locally. Their efforts were backed up by company-wide communications.

During the period when the survey was open, Burton OD provided regular reports on the response rates, by each area of the business. This enabled the survey team and co-ordinators to ramp up their efforts in areas where responses were comparatively low.

Stage Three - reporting

Burton OD carried out analysis on the results, first of all at overall company level, interpreting the figures and comments people had made to provide a rich picture of attitudes. This was presented to a meeting of the senior management team, who made an immediate commitment to follow-up more detailed reporting with improvement action planning.

Employees were kept in the loop with early news of the survey headlines.
Burton OD then supplied packs to managers throughout the business setting out the local results.

Stage Four - follow-up

The HR team, working with the Investors in People group, met to plan improvements and report back to all employees.

Management teams throughout the business received their reports and started work to plan local improvements. Burton OD presented the results to several teams and facilitated discussions on areas for improvement.

The survey has helped Babcock Infrastructure Services acknowledge the current strengths of the business and to identify some areas for improvement. Human Resources Director Tim Cawdron said:

"This has been the first time that Babcock Infrastructure Services have commissioned an Employee Satisfaction Survey.

I have been very pleased to note how seriously the business has taken to the concept of an ESS and gone on to devise appropriate action plans as a consequence of the findings.

This is in no small way due to the very apparent professionalism, knowledge and experience of Burton OD, also the clarity of the material presented.

The ESS also complements very well the parallel activity of BIS working towards achieving IiP, underpinning much of the actions we are now delivering into the business. I have no doubt that BIS will benefit from all the foregoing in a number of different ways.