{"id":2587,"date":"2016-05-17T19:54:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-17T19:54:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/?p=2587"},"modified":"2022-07-28T23:35:54","modified_gmt":"2022-07-28T23:35:54","slug":"strategies-to-improve-employee-engagement-in-shared-services","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peeriosity.com\/shared-services\/articles\/2016\/05\/strategies-to-improve-employee-engagement-in-shared-services\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategies to Improve Employee Engagement in Shared Services"},"content":{"rendered":"

Having a talented and engaged workforce is one of the critical success factors in creating and operating a successful Shared Services operation<\/a>.\u00a0 While there is an abundance of real-life examples of companies that operate Shared Services at a sub-par performance level due to a disengaged team of employees, most savvy leaders realize that such an environment will be dysfunctional at best, with more damaging outcomes increasingly likely the longer employee engagement remains low.<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, a Peeriosity member company shared on a PeercastTM<\/sup> the results of a project to have a more focused and sustainable approach to driving employee engagement in Shared Services<\/a>.\u00a0 Some of the subjects covered included running employee focus groups, administering employee surveys, and creating a playbook to define the process, roles, and responsibilities to ensure the long-term integration of improvements in this area.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2013, this Shared Services operation participated in a company-wide engagement survey administered by a major HR consulting firm and determined that their organization had moderate employee engagement as compared to other Fortune 500 companies.\u00a0 Not considering being mediocre in this area as acceptable results, they formed a project team to determine what was the cause of this less-than-stellar performance and to develop some action plans to improve<\/a>.\u00a0 This project was executed using Six Sigma tools and methodology and included personnel at five satellite Shared Services sites.<\/span><\/p>\n

One key aspect of this project was the use of focus groups to perform a root cause analysis of the underlying issues with the employee base.\u00a0\u00a0 Administered by Shared Services HR business partners and a project manager at all Shared Services sites, the discussion started with the question, \u201cWhy does Shared Services have moderate employee engagement?\u201d\u00a0 This was then followed with the use of Employee Idea Generation and Idea Prioritization tools to drill down further into the issues, including the use of the \u201c5 Why Method\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition, an internal Shared Services survey was developed with open-ended questions intended to generate anonymous feedback and suggestions for improving employee engagement.\u00a0 The survey results were then analyzed for common themes and prioritized in Pareto charts<\/a>, with the survey comments compared with feedback from the focus groups to develop final action plans.<\/span><\/p>\n

Some of the lessons learned as a result of this project included the following: \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n