Listening and responding

Colleagues at Experian communicate via a huge range of different media, including; global and regional publications, intranets, face-to-face meetings, information days, webcasts, podcasts and blogs.  Surveys of varying size and scale also play their part.
 
In 2007 we carried out our first global employee opinion survey. Country-specific surveys had been used previously, but this was the first international exercise of its type.

Nearly 10,000 employees took part, providing a response rate of 73%, more than sufficient to draw reliable conclusions from the data and a response rate which is comparable with that of other global organisations. The questionnaire covered 14 different topics and we compared the results against those from other global companies undergoing transformations.

We found that we scored significantly better in10 of the 14 categories when compared with other companies going through change. Particularly strong scores were seen in local management and change and communication.  

We showed a need for improvement regarding our score for employee engagement (64%) and local action plans are focusing on the elements that address this including  people’s perception of the company as a good corporate citizen, how well people are managed and developed  and their view of senior leadership.

We will be surveying again in 2009.

Another global initiative this year was a major programme of communication around our new brand which used a global employee engagement team to develop a communication strategy which involved email newsletters, a desk dropped brand publication, and a new intranet site.