Leadership has continued to analyze the feedback of employees since this year’s Global Employee Engagement Survey. This article details the progress that has been made in identifying common global themes regarding barriers toward engagement and on the creation of a global action plan to address them.
In the months after the Global Employee Engagement Survey, employees around the world had the opportunity to share and discuss the specific barriers they face. People Leaders all over the world held state of the team meetings and formed local action plans. At the same time, Engagement Champions facilitated focus groups and leadership interviews were conducted to gain a better understanding of the barriers that employees encounter at all levels and job functions within Dentsply Sirona. Four categories of barriers were identified:
Complexity and Inefficiencies
Leadership Communications
Vision
Skill Development
Feedback showed the need for improvements to processes and systems as well as the overall organizational structure to reduce complexities and drive efficiency. Employees want better Leadership Communication of the organization-wide progress being made. The Company’s future vision and direction should be better clarified. Finally, there is a desire to focus more on skill development to equip employees and their managers with the needed communications, sales, technical and leadership tools required to grow professionally. Improving these areas will enable a revamped focus on the customer.
Addressing barriers
As the Company works together to improve the level of engagement and focus on growth, an Executive Sponsored Action Plan will help to overcome the identified barriers. The plan focuses on three areas as enablers of better engagement.
Customer-centric Culture: the establishment of an ethos that places the customer at the center following the Dentsply Sirona Model for the future. Further developing relationships with customers will not only make for a more engaged work culture but will enable the Company to develop the right products at the right time for the market.
Skill Development: The plan includes further investment in Dentsply Sirona University and leadership training and education for employees. The Company will additionally establish an online learning library to support people leader skill focused on topics such as team engagement, communication skills, maximizing delegation and change management.
Leadership Communication: A greater emphasis on leadership communication will increase the transparency of organization-wide activities.
Teams and their leaders have
given a lot of important feedback throughout this ongoing process of improving engagement. There’s no doubt that the voices of our employees were heard and I’m proud to see specific actions to address the gaps and barriers that were identified both at the local level and from a global view."
A lot of progress was made this year toward identifying and addressing barriers to employee engagement. The initiatives that the Company is undertaking aim to reduce complexities and improve efficiency to give employees the best environment in which to succeed and to be able to focus on the customer.
A poll was taken in September to help assess the effectiveness of engagement efforts to improve the process and experience within the 2019 Global Employee Engagement Survey cycle.