Work on crucial communication pays off

Photo / Herald on Sunday

The "communication and co-operation" section of the JRA employee engagement survey is often one of the lowest-rated sections for many organisations.

Typically, organisations struggle to make communication "work".

Brett Oetgen, a senior consultant at JRA, says that "often clients are disappointed with their scores in the communication area, especially when they have really focused on making improvements to how they share information".

Unfortunately this is often because of a misinterpretation by organisations of what their employees actually mean by communication.

Mars New Zealand (part of Mars, a food business with global reach) was the overall winner of the 2010 JRA Best Workplaces Survey and has invested time and effort into improving communication throughout the organisation.

Michael Lynch, people and organisation director, said that "early on in the process people here were not as open with each other as they needed to be".

Since then, Mars has focused its efforts on making significant improvements to all aspects of its organisation. Mars has seen strong increases in its "communication and co-operation" scores, which increased by 7.6 per cent between 2007 and last year.

Mars has not only improved significantly compared with its past performance but has also scored 19 per cent above the benchmark score for all organisations that entered the 2010 workplaces survey.

Lynch says "training and up-skilling in the communication area is one of our current priorities because we know how critical honesty and openness are to building an engaged workforce".

Mars continues to focus on equipping its staff (especially managers) to have "crucial conversations".

JRA is running the 2011 JRA Best Workplaces Survey in association with the NZ Herald and sponsored by the NZ Chambers of Commerce, KiwiBank and HainesAttract. The survey runs from June 1 to August 31 and registrations are now being taken.

ON THE WEB

www.bestworkplaces.co.nz