Fostering growth and sustainability for an excellent, engaged culture

Case in numbers

Significant improvement in employee engagement as measured by Gallup Q12®:

The challenge: to grow and learn how to sustain the high performing work and an excellent engaged culture

Midwest Dairy's was looking for a way to engage their entire organization. They had done some strengths training in the past, but only at the leadership level. The biggest challenge was maintaining a great culture of engagement and learning how to maintain high performance. Although this is a company that always wants to grow, there was also some turnover. With the market being really challenging, they needed to ask themselves what made their culture unique enough that it would not only retain their employees, but also attract really good candidates.

Their goal was to become a strengths-based company, contributing to a culture of strengths and improving employee engagement. They recognized the High Performing Team program as a solution that could lead not only to higher engagement, but also to better team collaboration and communication. Their goal to not only do this, but to live it, is something they wanted to do, and they are really moving purposefully in that direction.

The process: encouraging leaders to know their role and share their knowledge with others

After we presented them with several options where they could take a series of trainings or the e2grow track, they immediately chose e2grow. They were given an overview of their strengths and how they could develop them.

Clarifying and aligning expectations was followed by setting the appointment and accommodating their schedule to really make an improvement. A company of 60 employees was then divided into 4 High Performing Team program groups where everyone worked at the same time. Coaching sessions followed to help the leaders understand their role in building their teams, supporting them and being a good leader and a good learner at the same time during this transition. Leaders went through the High Performing Team program before their employees, but then they repeated it with their employees, so they went through High Performing Team program twice. Before the employees were done with the High Performing Team program, the managers also went through the High Performing Leader program so they had the basic framework to support their teams once we were done with the training. Throughout this time, we also held one-on-one meetings after CoffeeSync's with everyone in the company.

The results

Significant tweak towards more engaged employees as measured by Q12.

After measuring employee engagement with Q12, there was a significant change of +26% overall. That was a great indication that people are feeling more engaged – not only anecdotally, but also when they’re anonymously responding about what they’re feel about their culture and engagement.

There is improvement in almost all aspects of employee engagement:

• Overall engagement with the organization +43%.
• Employee’s knowledge of work expectations +38%.
• Opportunities to learn and grow on the job +30%.

Their leadership had also completed High Performing Leader program and has since met monthly to continue to support them and provide resources to help their staff develop High Performing Teams and strengths and culture. In addition to positive feedback, all leaders share their ideas and what really works for them so that their fellow leaders can take those ideas and implement them themselves.

They are soon planning their first quarterly onboarding for new employees and a new leader. The goal is to familiarize these new employees with High Performing Team behaviors and practices and get them on the right track, as well as maintain the integrity of the entire organization when it comes to aligning the foundations of its culture.

All 60 participants were very engaged in the program and are applying these behaviors to help them in their work. They were very open-minded, engaged, enthusiastic and positive, all of which contributed to the foundation on which they will build and grow from here on out. The organization has promised that this will not be a flash in the pan, but that they will stick with it and build on it.