Change management: Murray River Council achieves rapid uplift
Murray River Council began working with Voice Project in early 2021 to implement an Employee Engagement Survey and collect feedback from staff across the organisation.
Murray River Council CEO Terry Dodds says the survey helped to gauge the workplace culture, and enabled their 200+ employees to share their views on a range of workplace practices.
Upon receiving the survey results in March, the leadership team shared all the feedback with Council staff and set about working to improve identified priority areas. Teams of volunteer staff members were assembled to help explore the survey results, and to work with all areas of the Council to suggest and implement changes.
Measuring progress
To track their progress as changes were implemented, the Council repeated the Employee Engagement Survey in November 2021 as a ‘pulse check’ to gauge how things were going.
The November survey results showed significant improvements – the feedback from staff showed a 10.7% improvement in favourable responses on average.
Achieving this degree of change in a short period of time is a remarkable accomplishment. Murray River Council has been recognised with a Voice Project 2021 Change Champion Award for their achievements.
Watch the video to see how enabling strong employee involvement helped to unleash the talent at Murray River Council.
The importance of employee voice
In reflecting on their change journey, Murray River Council CEO Terry Dodds says there are two main components to improving staff culture, the ‘what’, and the ‘who’.
“All those in management positions think they know a thing or two about leadership. Until I experienced the Voice Project for the first time I did too. I couldn’t have been more wrong!”
“The trouble with being a CEO, or holding any leadership position, is that you often get told what you want to hear, and only by the 15-20% of staff who are in the habit of communicating their views of the world. Therefore what you hear, may, or may not, be a biased view anyway.”
“Not tapping into the thoughts and minds of the silent majority - those staff who are a bit apprehensive to speak up - is a huge opportunity that will be missed, and a bigger risk! But it gets worse...”
“Sometimes, those in leadership roles are the people that the staff view as having difficulties in seeing their own reflections. They are part of the problem. The longer a manager, director or CEO spends at that ‘level’, the more removed they become from the operational side of business.”
“As 88% of staff in most organisations aren’t managers, directors or a CEO, the risk is that only 12% of people will have the ultimate carriage of developing solutions - the same people who haven’t worked at the coalface for years and years! Staff who were hesitant to voice their opinions in the first place then become even more disenchanted.”
“If this is the case (and sheer mathematical probability says it is in any large organisation), having the people responsible for improving culture, who are the causes of some of the problems, is hardly going to assist!”
Empowering staff to champion change
“Two things need to happen to improve staff culture. You need to define the problem, the ‘what’, and then give the task of developing solutions to those people who’ll get the most benefit each day from the changes; the ‘who’,” Terry says.
“Using the Voice Project methodology fosters feedback from all staff and allows complete anonymity. It clearly defines the ‘what’ (needs improving) and accurately measures everything that is important to an employee.”
“Adopting a ‘servant leader’ approach, often linked to the phrase ‘transformational leadership’, is part two. This is more often than not counter-intuitive for those in leadership positions, especially to the ego!”
“The organisation needs to choose three or four teams of staff to work on two or three of the lowest scores in the survey, who are then tasked to produce suggested improvements. Those chosen can’t be a manager, director, or CEO (M1, M2, M3 level).”
“I will guarantee that you’ll not only be pleasantly surprised at the quality of the suggestions… because the teams have heavily invested in their solutions, they’ll be champions in helping the organisation carry out the implementation phase too.”
“My experience clearly shows that the improvement in any organisation will be compelling.”
Voice Project provides research-backed surveys that measure employee engagement, leadership capability and customer satisfaction. These state-of-the-art surveys help organisations get the best feedback to drive positive change. Voice Project works with organisations across the not-for profit, private and public sectors. Get in touch.