Sturrock and Robson: Optimising the engagement strategy

How Sturrock and Robson boosted engagement by an extraordinary 16%, reaching a score of 90%.

Having experienced long-term prosperity followed by a market crash, two years ago Sturrock and Robson were a company who had just come out of a period of significant restructuring and reorganisation. They had successfully weathered the storm and their plan for growth was set. However, they were faced with a significant challenge to bring their people, buffeted by the experience, along with them. Leaders realised that connection between purpose and people had gradually declined over a number of years. It was time to refocus on the culture and values of Sturrock and Robson and re-engage their people, so they felt empowered and proud, no matter what their role.

This case study shows how Sturrock and Robson implemented an impressive re-engagement and cultural change programme with an incredible personal touch, which gave a voice to people whose valuable views had never been heard before and achieved amazing results.

Sturrock and Robson are a global group of companies supplying specialist products and services to industries such as oil and gas, renewable energy and mining. Founded in the 1910s in South Africa, today it is a diversified group with offices in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, South Africa, Australia and the USA. A fourth-generation family business, with Greg Robson as the current Executive Chairman, today the business is focussed on people development and driving growth through sustainable industrial solutions for their clients.

In the early 2000s, Sturrock and Robson enjoyed a prolonged period of success with strong demand from buoyant markets, so growth and profitability were booming.

However, problems hit when commodity prices dropped and the oil price subsequently fell through the floor. This had a serious effect on business performance and led Greg, freshly appointed as Executive Chairman, and his executive team to undertake a significant restructuring programme which stabilised the company.

Going forward, they knew business growth would require significant changes to operations and diversifying into new markets. However, they were faced with important people challenges:

1. Whilst company performance had been strong, there had been less focus on company culture. People in divisions all over the world were operating in silos, having lost their connection with the Sturrock and Robson values and way of doing business.
2. Having experienced significant restructuring and been deprived of good news, morale was low. Many felt a lack of purpose and had little appetite for innovation or change.

Greg appointed Amalie Lyneborg from his team to run the employee engagement project, to listen to and act upon the employee feedback. Having assessed several providers, she engaged People Insight because of our ability to provide advice and expertise. She said,

“The first representative that we met from People Insight gave a good flavour of an organisation who have really helped us. People Insight were excellent – guiding us through the process and making an effort to understand our particular business.” –  Amalie Lyneborg

Stakeholder Interviews

The project started with stakeholder interviews with board members and MDs from the operating companies. This helped gain buy-in to the process and understand everyone’s concerns to feed into questionnaire design. Richard McDonough, business psychologist who ran the interviews, said:

“Leaders gave us a valuable insight into their teams and how they saw the project. We were also able to reassure them about us as an external provider with a professional process and response anonymity. Doing interviews like this builds trust and can be a really nimble activity. In fact, one leader I spoke to was in the middle of a fishing trip in Alaska, and we still managed to capture his views from the boat!.”

– Richard McDonough

The questionnaire incorporated this feedback and was based on the PEARL^TM model to cover all aspects of engagement.

Amalie launched a communications programme to explain the ‘Have Your Say’ survey. As the survey had buy-in from all of the senior team and was led with personal communication from Greg, it was clear to the Group that there was an authentic desire to listen. Every communication – from posters and announcements, through to Amalie’s personal discussions with each individual business were consistent in message and branding. Amalie said:

“The time we took to set up the survey paid off. Once live, we had fantastic response, especially considering this was our first ever employee engagement survey – 88%. People were really keen to have their voice heard.”

Once the results were in, the main priority was to keep news flowing to employees so they felt connected with each stage. Both Group and individual company posters were created to share key headlines from the survey. Amalie said,

“We made a commitment before the survey to truly understand how we could improve and subsequently follow that with action. We wanted to show respect for the fact that our people had really applied themselves to coming up with constructive solutions.”

– Amalie Lyneborg

Detailed reports were issued to leaders and People Insight guided Amalie and her colleagues through a feedback and interpretation presentation.

“The feedback was challenging,” said Amalie, “but People Insight helped us focus on the key changes that would make the biggest difference to engagement. Afterwards, we felt confident and equipped to recommend areas for action to the executive teams.”

– Amalie Lyneborg

Guidance and Advice

Greg was passionate about fostering connectivity within the Group and trying to create a personal connection with employees to drive change. The commitment was evident in the significant resources put behind this programme in supporting Amalie to deliver a face-to-face action planning & change delivery roadshow in each country, over a 2-year period.

People Insight, as experts at action planning design, were able to advise on how to structure and run the workshops, interpreting quantitative and qualitative data effectively and focussing on priorities that would make the most difference to engagement.

At each business Amalie worked with the management teams, to prepare the results communications. They were delivered in a morning session, then, in small groups, people developed ideas for how to solve the issues with coaching and guidance from Amalie. Each employee came away from the day feeling that they had been given a chance to have their say, in person.

The Have Your Say programme had laid a strong foundation for further work on our culture. Collaboration with the Group Head Office was replacing isolation and optimism was replacing bad news.

The impact of all the visits and the message that the team had brought was gaining traction. Action progress was an agenda item in every senior meeting.  Communications were consistent, tying change back to ‘Have Your Say’. It became clear how much of a difference the programme was making to people and momentum had gathered.

When People Insight carried out the second ‘Have Your Say’ survey, they achieved a record-breaking improvement.

For context, an improvement of 5-6% in an engagement score is considered good. However, Sturrock and Robson had achieved an average increase of 16%, with all of the businesses enjoying substantial improvements. Every metric improved, including key highlights below:

These results demonstrate the dramatic impact of the ‘Have Your Say’ programme on employees’ positivity about the purpose, change programme, vision and the commitment to action from the top. Said Amalie,

“The ‘Have your Say’ programme has been the single most amazing experience of my working life. I’ve been to every site, in every country, and met pretty much every one of our employees to act on our commitment to our people. In return, I’m humbled to see how committed they are to us and it’s just incredible how far we’ve come.”

In addition, Greg reflected on how the engagement score has correlated with performance across the business.

“Looking back at the engagement scores,” said Greg, “we can see that low scores were a predictor of poor performance in some of our businesses. Going forward this is an early indicator we include in our management information suite.”

“Of course,” said Greg, “we are absolutely delighted with the feedback. The challenge is to maintain engagement and live up to the expectation we’ve set that we’ll listen and take input seriously.”

— Greg Robson

Talking to Greg, Amalie and Jane Burgess, Sturrock and Robson’s new Global Head of HR, plans and activities are in place to maintain momentum, including:

• Investment in additional HR headcount;
• Recruiting for cultural fit;
• A focus on developing the skills and capabilities required to support diversification;
• Succession planning to ensure future senior managers are capable of delivering the vision;
• Learning from the businesses with high engagement performance to build consistency across the Group.

It’s clear that significant effort was put behind this high priority programme. Here’s what Greg, Amalie and the team advise other companies facing the need to improve culture and engagement to consider:

• Sincere, committed leadership. A change programme needs to be led from the top, with 100% commitment to seeing through change.
• Real resource investment is required. Amalie’s role in leading countless workshops on four continents over 2 years was impactful and successful – but required significant time and effort.
• Change works when:
  • You get in front of your people. Ensure there is a ‘face of the programme’, like Amalie, to get amongst your people and create personal, meaningful interactions with face-to-face meetings and shop floor walkthroughs. Both during the initial roll out, and at follow up visits. This was the most important learning from the programme.
  • It is personal. As a leader and family member, Executive Chairman Greg was able to articulate why it meant so much, and show he cared.
  • You are humble and sincere. Listen to feedback with humility. Acknowledge individual input and show you have acted.
  • You communicate consistently, about why you are doing it and what you are doing as a result of your programme, to ensure that your people know what’s happening and feel they’ve had an impact.

“Communication is much better than before, and I am very happy about it! People spoke up and I think 80% of the issues have been resolved.”

“It’s good to see the great improvements the company has made since the last survey. Credit to the Management Team on their continuous efforts in making it such a positive work environment.”