The new Electrolux Employee Engagement Survey (EES), rolled out in October and November 2010, is a sophisticated tool for testing the organizational climate throughout the company. As well as reporting findings, the survey provides core information for future action plans designed to facilitate team growth and improvement.
The EES follows almost a year of workshops carried out around the world to embed an understanding about Electrolux core values and strategy. Areas covered by the EES include corporate culture, team efficiency, employee engagement, leadership and employer attractiveness. Addition-ally, to ensure that middle managers were aligned and committed to executing the strategy, 880 globally went through Executive Essentials' training.
Some sectors add sector-specific questions too. The survey is completely confidential; an important feature as Electrolux is an organization with many small teams. And it is utilized by a number of comparable companies, so it offers the useful potential for external benchmarking. The EES was sent to 16,393 white collar workers, while blue collar workers could elect to take part also. The response rate was 75% and results show that Electrolux is in line with or exceeds the external benchmark for employee engagement.
Areas of Group strength are leadership, team efficiency and employer attractiveness. For instance, 85% of Electrolux employees think that managers live up to Group core values, and 80% believe that leaders drive change to support Electrolux future goals and direction.
There are also several key improvement areas including continual perfor-mance feedback and recognizing employee performance. Electrolux sees the survey results as an opportunity to make the Group stronger. Going forward, the aim is to develop innovative ways to recognize employees, ensure fair and equal treatment and in improving performance feedback.