While our teams have proven their ability to adapt remarkably to the huge challenges brought by COVID-19, it’s never been more important for us to understand any issues or areas of concerns our colleagues are facing.
Over the past few weeks, the world has adjusted to entirely new ways of working. For many of our colleagues at Radian Group, face-to-face interaction with colleagues and customers has been replaced by home working, emails, and video calls.
While our teams have proven their ability to adapt remarkably to the huge challenges brought by COVID-19, it’s never been more important for us to understand any issues or areas of concerns our colleagues are facing during the pandemic. As such, we adapted our latest Peakon survey – the world’s leading platform for measuring and improving Employee Engagement – to focus on our response to COVID-19 and explore how our colleagues are feeling.
The results were significant. Showing that colleagues are keener than ever to share their thoughts, our participation rate was 83% with an overall engagement score of 8.8 – our highest ever. Not only was this a fantastic result in itself and placing us in the top 5% of organisations that run Peakon surveys, it’s given us a greater and more accurate understanding of how colleagues are feeling and given us some helpful feedback to provide additional support where needed.
Why is colleague engagement important during a crisis?
Receiving our highest levels of engagement during the crisis has provided the opportunity to reflect on our response to COVID-19. While colleague engagement is an important ongoing focus at Radian Group, taking a few extra steps to strengthen a feeling of unity and shared commitment has been one of our priorities during the crisis. Engaged colleagues are more likely to adapt and respond well to a crisis, pulling together to support one another as well as customers and stakeholders. This feeling of unity is also central to colleague wellbeing, helping our teams to feel happier and healthier during uncertain times.
How have we increased engagement with colleagues?
Clear, consistent and regular communications
To engage with colleagues, our Communications Team have issued daily all-colleague email updates, built dedicated COVID-19 intranet pages, posted colleague-facing articles and blogs, hosted Executive Q&A sessions, and supported individual teams with engaging, tailored communications. Scoring highly in our Peakon survey with an average score of 9.3, the majority of colleagues agreed they had received regular and helpful communication regarding the COVID-19 pandemic.
Enhanced wellbeing
While the stay-at-home instruction is effective in helping to keep people safe during COVID-19, it can increase feelings of isolation and affect mental and physical health. Investing in additional wellbeing measures have helped to provide our colleagues with key support where it’s most needed.
One example is our ‘Eight dimensions of wellness’ – a fantastic set of learning resources launched by our People Development team. The handy range of videos, podcasts, blogs, articles are helping colleagues adjust to agile working and provides emotional support, tips for physical and mental wellbeing, financial support and much more. Our Mental Health First Aiders and Employee Assistance Programme (EAP) are also providing vital support.
Protecting our colleagues’ wellbeing is always a priority, and our Peakon survey showed an average score of 8.4 when colleagues were asked to rate how well Radian Group cares for their mental wellbeing.
Giving colleagues a voice
Giving colleagues a platform to ask questions, give opinions and feedback, as well as share good news stories and successes has been a fundamental factor in our COVID-19 colleague engagement. Shortly after the government’s stay-at-home instructions, we rolled out Yammer to the entire organisation and we’ve seen some great colleague interaction.
Conversations across the platform have been transparent, and any struggles or concerns have been collectively voiced and shared, with colleagues signposting each other to helpful information. We’ve also seen a fantastic amount of positive stories, pet photos, and recipes! This sense of engagement was captured in our Peakon survey, with the majority of colleagues saying they feel comfortable talking to people at work about their concerns rising from COVID-19 (average score of 9.0).
Utilising colleagues’ wider skillsets
As a result of the nationwide instruction to stay at home during COVID-19, a number of frontline roles across the organisation have been restricted in what they can do. With a huge network of customers to support, we’ve had the opportunity to redeploy affected colleagues into other temporary roles and utilise different skillsets. This has worked particularly well for our Buddy Club scheme, a new framework that provides regular companionship and emotional support through daily phone calls to our most vulnerable customers. To date, with the extra colleague support, we’ve been able to make over 2,500 phone calls to vulnerable customers during COVID-19.
This fantastic work has provided colleagues with a great opportunity to help our customers, use different skillsets, and keep them involved and engaged in our organisation. Furthermore, our Peakon survey showed that majority of colleagues believe that we can continue to serve our customers during these challenging times (average score of 8.9).
Supporting managers
Leading through crises and periods of change can be challenging for even the most experienced managers. We’ve found it helpful to refresh our managers’ skillsets through our recent Leading Through Change management courses and provide practical guidance on engaging with colleagues and cascading information.
Celebrating successes
Recognising achievements has helped to reinforce positivity during uncertain times. Teams across the organisation have adapted to new ways of working and delivered some great work despite the huge challenges they have faced. Celebrating successes and thanking colleagues for their extra efforts have gone a long way in boosting morale.
In addition, encouraging colleagues to recognise and thank each other has strengthened peer-to-peer connections. We’ve found 7Geese, Great Conversations and Yammer great tools for colleagues to recognise and thank each other. Reflecting this engagement, when colleagues were asked to rate how their teams have shown care for one another during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Peakon survey showed an average score of 9.3.
While COVID-19 is continuing to affect individuals and organisations worldwide, it’s clear that collaboration is fundamental to managing the challenges presented by the pandemic. Our colleagues are central to our success and resilience, and we’ll continue to do everything we can to engage, inspire and support them so that, in turn, we can continue to protect and support our customers.
Over the past few weeks, the world has adjusted to entirely new ways of working. For many of our colleagues at Radian Group, face-to-face interaction with colleagues and customers has been replaced by home working, emails, and video calls.
While our teams have proven their ability to adapt remarkably to the huge challenges brought by COVID-19, it’s never been more important for us to understand any issues or areas of concerns our colleagues are facing during the pandemic. As such, we adapted our latest Peakon survey – the world’s leading platform for measuring and improving Employee Engagement – to focus on our response to COVID-19 and explore how our colleagues are feeling.
The results were significant. Showing that colleagues are keener than ever to share their thoughts, our participation rate was 83% with an overall engagement score of 8.8 – our highest ever. Not only was this a fantastic result in itself and placing us in the top 5% of organisations that run Peakon surveys, it’s given us a greater and more accurate understanding of how colleagues are feeling and given us some helpful feedback to provide additional support where needed.
POD & HR Business Analyst