The power of marginal gains in employee experience

Does the idea of shifting your workplace culture or improving employee experience seem like a huge, daunting prospect?

If you feel that way, you’re not alone. But what if I told you that significant, sustainable change is often possible by identifying a few areas in which you can make a series of smaller, incremental tweaks…

At ETS plc we talk lots about “moving organisations forward”. But what does that really look like – what does it take to make improvements to how we all experience work day-to-day? And what is the prize for employee and employer when this happens?

Organisations we partner with in this field generally want two things: 1) Help to measure their employee experience and 2) Guidance on exactly how to improve it.

Of course, the action plan needed to achieve this can vary wildly from one organisation to the next. Our role with each is to pinpoint a small number of key signal areas - usually 1-4 things - upon which they should focus.

Having a laser focus on these few things, we tell clients, will have the biggest overall impact on both the overall EX and achieving business goals.

Making marginal gains

Reflecting on this narrative and the process involved, I saw an obvious parallel with the ‘marginal gains’ theory (also known as the ‘1% Factor’). If you’re not familiar with it, the premise is that small yet significant improvements can collectively lead to much bigger results. The theory has been credited for much of the success enjoyed by the Dave Brailsford -led British Cycling team in recent times.

With employee experience or workplace culture – as with elite athletes – there might be just a few factors that are proving blockers and holding back better outcomes. Certainly, that is often what we see when analysing survey data...

Translating this into an effective action plan likely involves making a larger number of changes – mostly small but some bigger, and perhaps over a period of time. To get your marginal gains.

Business imitating sport

It’s easy to see why this theory has gained traction and proved successful in the data-driven world of professional sports. Be it cycling, motor racing, golf or football, at the top level the difference between winning and losing is often wafer thin.

You have a field of competitors with many capable of performing at a consistently high level. To win, you must find the edges, pinpoint minor development needs and seek out the one percents, the hundredths of a second or extra millimetres. And the same is surely true in businesses too.

I think this theory (and mindset) is readily transferrable from the sporting arena to workplaces too. In truth, it is a well-trodden path to take theory and coaching practice from the former to the latter, so why not this one?

Applying this to employee experience

The first thing is to be clear on, is where you can make your gains. It’s easy to get lost in all the data coming out of an engagement survey, or indeed when sifting through a myriad of other people metrics. We describe this process as “separating the signals from the noise”.

While all feedback you receive from people in an engagement survey is valuable and should be reviewed and considered, not all of it is ‘mission critical’. And to have that transformative impact, you’re looking for those things that are crucial to you delivering the very best EX and, in turn, hitting your desired organisational goals.

This process is most effective when the diagnostic or measurement used (in this case, an engagement survey) is designed in alignment with your business strategy and culture. It makes it a lot simpler when circling back to that context with your survey data in hand…

The impact of marginal gains

So, what of the evidence of making marginal gains? I looked at two recent examples from clients we’ve worked with.

In each case, post-survey actions prescribed focusing on a handful of key drivers. And, within each, making a series of (mostly) small changes – i.e. to ways of working/processes, leadership behaviours or systems. Progress was later assessed as part of a remeasure, to see where scores had changed. But the real gains were seen in the business outcomes these changes contributed towards…

1. Healthcare client: Engagement survey & targeted leadership development

> Achieved 94% colleague engagement in latest survey (+4 from already high starting point)

> Big upwards shift in perceptions of leaders, based on survey re-measure scores (a key focus from earlier survey)

> Commercial success for the business with income exceeding target, and growing by +15% vs previous year

2. Engineering client: Engagement survey, listening groups & work with leaders

> Overall employee engagement up +5% YOY

> Significant increase on employee enablement +9% YOY

> After big focus on managers, latest survey scores saw significant jumps +7 % points for managers giving right level of support, +6 % points for managers showing appreciation/recognition and +6 % points for managers giving meaningful/constructive feedback

These are just two examples of how making marginal gains to improve the employee experience has proved to be a game-changer. And it shows that delivering transformation - real transformation - doesn’t have to be about large, wholesale changes.

What about you; are you clear on how and where to focus to make changes in your business?

Or is your company already finding and delivering marginal gains to improve the employee experience?