Lindéngruppen company Colart’s 2022 Employee Survey highlighted progress on people engagement and satisfaction. The results are being used to further drive the company’s culture and positive change.
Colart is committed to building a strong people culture and to put people first. While they still have work to do, Colart improved their scores in areas such as how people feel about working for the company, employee pride, collaborative working, the understanding of company priorities and the desire to stay with Colart compared to the previous survey.
In 2022, Colart received an Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) of +22 based on responses from over 80 percent of its people. eNPS is a measure of employee satisfaction and loyalty on a scale between -100 and +100. The higher the number, the more positive the reflection of engagement and culture.
As an owner, we want our companies to drive a strong people culture. Lindéngruppen’s 2030 target for all its companies is to have an eNPS of over 20 – a target that Colart has already exceeded in 2022.
“Our trend of improved eNPS scores in recent years reflects our ongoing work towards our people promises,” explains Jane Beeston, Colart’s Chief People Officer. “Our latest employee survey shows that Colart people feel part of a family rather than part of a system. They feel connected with each other.”
Colart uses the employee survey to make it a better employer by making sure it listens to feedback from people and taking their feedback seriously. A key area that has been developed over the years is how people perceive their leaders.
“When we first started the surveys, it became clear that we needed to make improvements in leadership as leaders are so important for conveying and sustaining the right company culture,” says Beeston. “As a result, we have built a Leadership Development Programme that promotes self-reflection and encourages leaders to reinforce collaboration and connectivity.”
Communication and being listened to, have also been highlighted in recent surveys and have been a focus area for Colart. The company has worked to promote a ‘two-way dialogue’ culture through the Colart intranet, webinars, podcasts, a weekly publication Colart News and regular Town Hall meetings.
“Being listened to is also about results and we involve our people when developing solutions by putting them at the heart of our decision making,” says Beeston. “An example is how we responded to requests from some of our people to create a hybrid form of working post-pandemic – to give people a degree of choice in where they work.”
Colart is a business that seeks to continuously evolve, with people driving this evolution.
“We’re putting a big focus on employees as changemakers, and ensuring everyone is part of the positive change,” says Beeston. “So, for example we have wellbeing ambassadors, sustainability ambassadors, and diversity, equity and inclusion ambassadors.”
The idea is that through these additional responsibilities, people broaden their skills professionally and personally beyond their normal role, while shaping the Colart culture into how people want it to be.
“Of course, we have work to do and challenges to overcome, such as to improve our people development, which was highlighted by our recent survey,” says Beeston. “But there are things we can do. With people development, I believe that promoting self-reflection is crucial to leveraging the capabilities and skills of our people to enable them to develop and overcome challenges in their roles aligned to their personal motivations.”
Colart aims to combine this self-reflection mentality by developing the relationships and dialogue between people and their line manager. Managers have a key role to play in proactively seeking and developing career opportunities for the people they are responsible for. “These reviews are important and whilst there is an improved sense of listening in the company, we need to take the next step to encourage more varied views and opinions,” says Beeston. “People tell us we also need to be better at recognising and celebrating success together – such as simple acknowledgement to make people feel appreciated as well as bigger company-wide celebrations.”
Colart has communicated the latest responses from their people survey to explain what’s working, what’s not working and what can be improved. These insights enable them to pinpoint the core components to be addressed and create solutions going forward.
