Engaging employees through live events at Scottish Water

Like many other organizations, the publicly owned Scottish Water has been undergoing a period of massive change. It was formed in 2002 when three Scottish water companies were brought under one umbrella and the new company was required to cut operating costs by 40 percent by 2006. A huge campaign was needed to ensure that all functions and departments were working well with each other and that misunderstandings leading to inefficiences were wiped out. Above all, employees needed to be really motivated in what they were doing and engaged in the company’s strategic objectives. This led to the creation of the Making the Connections campaign.

 

Objectives of the campaign
Because of the nature of working with water – it’s a process which takes us from reservoir to tap and waste water treatment, and doing this in some very remote working locations – people needed help seeing how their job fitted into the bigger picture. The objectives of the campaign were to:

• Improve how managers and employees work together.
• Encourage employees to build networks.
• Promote personal ownership, and improve customer connections.
• Give recognition.
• Clarify Scottish Water’s priorities to 2006.

“Everyone’s a link in the process but as they work independently, they don’t see how what they do affects the next person,” says internal communication manager Ruth Findlay. “We needed to do something that brought that process to life and help people see all the different jobs and responsibilities within the company. It’s called ‘making the connections’ because it’s about connecting with others and making the connections in your own mind about why what you do is important.”

It was also decided at an early stage that Scottish Water employees would “own” the campaign Their resources and skills would be used to develop and implement the campaign and give it creative input. To ensure this, Findlay and her team began by getting support and involvement from senior management, trade unions and employees for the campaign. A wide-ranging project team was set up representing many different areas of the company. Internal communication and organizational development worked together on the initiative, which was seen as an employee engagement program.

 

Getting senior leaders on board
One of the project team’s first tasks was to organize a one-day leaders’ forum in May 2004. The off-site event was geared so leaders realized the importance of employee engagement and customer service. This fed into the campaign’s objectives of improving working relationships between managers and employees, giving recognition and clarifying company objectives.

The day was highly interactive and creative, using a mix of media, including speakers, videos, games and discussions. Managers worked in small groups and the outputs of their discussions were made into booklets. They also helped design the next stage of the campaign, the mapping exercise.

 

The mapping exercise
The project team’s next task was the mapping exercise that took place between June and July 2004. Each manager took their team through this. Different parts of the business were represented as islands on a map, with the team mutually agreeing what connections had to be made with which other islands for their own to survive and prosper. Each team then developed new and existing “connections” and fed these ideas into an action plan, and, in some cases, to business plans.

 

Inspiration for the events
After the first two events, it was time to concentrate on the meat of the campaign: tackling the perceptions of the majority of employees in the company. Traditionally Scottish Water had operated under a more formal style of management and events consisted of bringing people into a room and talking at them, sometimes with the aid of slides. “I don’t know anyone who responds well to that,” says Findlay. “Our employees are greatly varied by educational level, age, experience and so on. We needed to find something that appealed to everyone.”

A trip to Edinburgh’s Dynamic Earth museum provided the inspiration for Findlay. It’s an interactive museum telling the story of how the Earth was formed. Visitors progress through the story by pushing various buttons to hear more. “The whole multimedia approach was really interactive and engaging,” says Findlay. She then worked with the project team, the unions and senior management to find out what types of events employees enjoyed and how they spent their leisure time.

Top of the list of employees’ most enjoyed leisure events were farmers’ markets and funfairs. “They both have a high level of appeal, visually and through sound,” says Findlay. “No matter what your abilities, you can still participate as it’s geared to learning through the senses, particularly sight, sound and touch. That started me thinking that at the fairground there’s always something for everyone.”

 

Employees design the funfair
With the funfair theme already established as the basis for the employee roadshows, the next task was to find a workable solution for representing different parts of the business as funfair stalls. The project team induced 250 employees to help design and man the stalls. To help them, Findlay brought in illustrators from the London-based What If? consultancy.

The illustrators sat down with each stall team in order to draw analogies of the descriptions people gave them of their jobs. For instance, a contact center could be represented in the stall illustration as a virtual contact center, where visitors could listen to customer calls through headphones and see the script and details on screen, giving them an idea of what it’s like to receive customer calls.

According to Findlay, the illustrators helped push the boundaries of the creative process. “Most people are in process jobs that don’t lend themselves to creative enterprise. The illustrators could find an analogy for what people do to make it come alive.” Another example is the company’s laboratories that test the water samples. The stall representing this centered around a game where visitors were invited to guess the pH for certain liquids such as soft drinks or whisky.

 

Roadshow kicks off
Sixteen half-day roadshows were held around Scotland. Enthusiasm for the carnival-style show and its funfair stalls was built up among various communication channels. In all, at each fair there were around 20 different stalls representing different parts of the business. The corporate goals and values were also displayed around the room. Everything was highly interactive, with background carnival music and the room fully dressed – apart from the four-panel design shells for each stall, there were huge cardboard cutouts and balloons. “It was supposed to be a complete shock when you walked into the room expecting a corporate event and instead it was like being in a funfair,” says Findlay.

Further motivation was whipped up when employees started visiting the stalls.They were given cards to be stamped at each stall they visited. If they managed to visit more than 15 in 90 minutes they were entered in a prize draw. “People got surprisingly enthusiastic,” says Findlay. “You needed that recognition and motivation to get people around.”

Behind the scenes, a great deal of organization was required. The 50 to 60 people manning the stalls and another 10 running the event, plus the event equipment, had to be transported around Scotland. These logistics involved using an articulated lorry, two vans and a people carrier. The stall holders also received training in customer service techniques, such as welcoming people to the stall and putting them at their ease.

 

Results
The total budget for the entire campaign and all the events was UK£400,000. But in the end the final costs came under budget. “It was a lot of man power,” says Findlay. “But the buzz and morale boost it created far outweighed the cost of people’s time and the financial expenditure. People went away understanding how their own area needs the help of others and how what they do supports someone else. It couldn’t have been done as effectively in any other way.”

There was good feedback too from each of the events. All of the managers who attended the leadership forum said they’d felt it was a good use of their time and they felt motivated to drive the making the connections campaign forward. From the mapping exercise, 95 percent found it helped them and were “committed to improving the connections they have with the organization.” There was also good feedback from the carnival roadshows, with 98 percent saying they understood why making the connections is important for Scottish Water and a 98 percent score from those who intended to “improve the connections they work with.”

While the ultimate proof of success of the campaign will come in the long term, some benefits have already been realized. “Employees have become more engaged, customer service has improved and we’ve beaten our target by cutting operating costs by 41 percent,” says Findlay. She’s also encouraged by the fact that employees’ survey responses on understanding the organization’s direction have increased, as have seven key measures of engagement. A new follow-up program of events has been initiated to improve delivery and customer service.