Former COO, and recently appointed CEO, Stephen Adams, sits down and speaks on the subject of employee experience and his never-ending pursuit to create an organisation that delivers success to colleagues, by creating the right conditions for engagement and empowerment.
Stephen believes this is necessary for delivering sustained success to CPS’ employees, customers and shareholders.
CPS has the ambition to grow, develop and enlarge the capability of the organisation
Where did you start with employee experience and why did you start this journey?
It was back in 2013 where the aspiration to become the employer of choice and drive more productivity from having a happy workforce was born.
Secondly, CPS wanted to become an employer of choice because they wanted to increase our retention rate, engage and attract new staff. It was, therefore, important to be able to stand apart from competitors in the market.
Employee Experience is the foundation of what makes CPS a great place to work
The first employee survey conducted by CPS in 2013 was to form an understanding of what it is like to work at CPS. From those findings they were able to structure a strategy of improvement, creating a process of change. One of the first implementations was the introduction of an employee forum, giving the workforce a voice and give the employees the chance to contribute to the changes needed to achieve the overall vision of the company.
Instigating the employee forum was a break from the norm in how the company culture was managed. It enabled decisions to be made, allowing actions to be taken around the running of the company such as the internal social events and how we can impact the wider community.
It was another way of how the power of culture was growing and developing as the company grew and developed. As the transformation of the company took place, the employee forum has evolved; there was a creation of 6 core values making the organisation operate with the philosophy of “An employee first organisation.”
Where are you now in your employee experience journey?
From that point, they created a continued process of measuring internal engagement and compared it to an external benchmarking, which then worked towards CPS gaining a Great place to work certified. A successful result as each time CPS has entered in Great Place to Work they have won an award.
Over time the employee experience and engagement strategy have shown a positive effect on recruitment in CPS, people are approaching them for roles and now able to establish a talent pipeline.
Retention rates have increased to an average of 5 years tenure. Should employees choose to leave CPS reasons are normally personal examples being a change in career path, but CPS has been able to help those employees with their development and process of departure. Giving employees a positive exit.
He said;
At CPS we have a shared belief that is, a passionate and engaged workforce enables us to deliver an exceptional service to our customers.
We asked Steve What’s the next steps/chapter for CPS and its employee experience?
CPS’ aim at creating an employee first organisation is to have a culture that is thriving inside and out. Using weekly pulse surveys from 2020 and 2021 the annual survey scored 4.3 out of 5 on Engagement.
Steve believes that the core elements to why CPS has seen a positive impact from creating an employee experience and how they intend to continue that can be defined by 6 core elements:
- Health and Wellbeing
- Meaningful Work
- Hands-on Management
- Productive environment
- Growth Opportunity
- Trust in Leadership
Steve deems the core elements to be the fundamentals for success and will continue to embrace them on the journey to exceed expectations across the board, some are company led, others led by the employee. Mostly CPS are aware that as a company they must create a nurturing environment, and individuals within the organisation have the motivation, passion and ambition to see and seize opportunities
We are a great place to work, however, I don’t believe we should rest, as the world changes so does engagement in the workplace
Follow this conversation where next we speak to Head of HR, Nicola Lloyd and understand how the organisation manages the actions relating to their employee experience.
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