Supernova Award Category
The Problem
SPS went live on Ultimate’s UltiPro® in 2016 to unify the company’s eight HR systems and improve the employee experience. “We're big on value, and we saw a lot of merit in having a single, unified solution,” noted Kephart. “The ROI on UltiPro was immediate and substantial, delivering a great deal more automation to our organization.”
In terms of surveying, previously our company conducted an annual leadership and engagement survey using a variety of methods. Office-based employees with computer access could take the survey online, while production-level floor workers were provided with hard copies of the survey. To aggregate survey results, our HR team needed to undergo a time-consuming process limited to whatever could be gleaned manually from spreadsheets. We knew we needed a more effective method to gather input and gauge the sentiment of what our employees were really feeling.
“Our leadership wanted to continue investing in our people, so when I met Armen Berkjily, the founder of Perception, at Ultimate’s Connections Conference, I wanted to learn more about how Perception could deliver real-time, actionable insights beyond our existing survey administration.”
The Solution
With more than 500 employees working in 11 locations as part of four different types of businesses, it was critical for SPS to have flexibility in surveying its workforce. With Perception SPS could embed a link in UltiPro, enabling all employees to participate in the survey from wherever they access UltiPro.
The flexibility was an important factor for us because nearly half our employees—our floor workers—don’t have company email addresses. By embedding the link in UltiPro, employees had the opportunity to access the survey at facility kiosks, on the tablets available to employees at each location, or on their own mobile devices.
We tailored Perception’s surveys to our workforce needs, rather than a one-size-fits-all model. Along with plenty of questions in the library to select from, we had tools to build our own library. We could easily integrate specific topics into the survey. We got the right questions in front of the right people.
The results
Perception goes beyond standard surveys in giving leaders the “voice of the employee.” Perception’s advanced AI technology automatically surfaces over 70 themes that identify what employees are discussing (e.g., compensation, teams, leadership), and over 100 emotions (e.g., confused, optimistic, sad) to compute an Emotional Promoter Score (EPS). Managers instantly know their teams’ top concerns, the intensity of how they feel, and can act upon those findings. The results:
Before: SPS was never able to ask open-ended questions as it was too labor-intensive.
After: SPS was able to ask open-ended questions and then very quickly see not only the EPS but the key themes emerging from those comments.
Before: Traditional surveys were standardized and cumbersome to administer to office and on-floor employees.
After: SPS has been able to deploy on all screen formats and devices and in multiple languages. Surveys may be anonymous or identified, and integrates with SPS’s employee directory to guide deployment.
Before: Survey results could be delayed for weeks or months, valuable time lost in trying to understand and boost employee performance.
After: UltiPro Perception delivered SPS real-time analytics to quickly and easily survey their workforce. Managers receive an automatic EPS calculation, which provides a complete picture of employee engagement along with real-time actionable insights for improving satisfaction and retention.
Metrics
Rapid Activation: SPS was able to achieve its goal of activation in two weeks due to Perception’s seamless integration UltiPro, enabling SPS to administer their new June benefits survey to all employees on schedule.
Leadership and Engagement Survey: SPS increased its leadership effectiveness score from 81 points to 84.6 points, and its engagement score from 79 to 83.7. With Perception's ease-of-use through desktop and mobile devices, SPS got a great response rate, resulting in action to improve engagement.
Rapid reporting: While it previously took their team more than a month to analyze results and roll out reports by hand, with Perception HR leaders had highly visual, in-depth reports available immediately. The turnaround for the Leadership and Engagement Survey results was reduced from six weeks to one day, a significant time savings.
Benefits Survey: Perception results showed that employees were unhappy with the large medical-plan deductible. With that feedback, SPS was able to offer a second plan with a lower deductible, resulting in 40% of its employees enrolling in the new, lower-deductible plan.
Critical Illness Insurance: SPS had previously offered 12 different critical illness plans for employees to select. The Perception results showed that employees preferred one simple plan through payroll deduction. Transitioning from 12 plans to a single plan saved money through consolidation of carriers and increased employee satisfaction.
The Technology
UltiPro Perception offers a modern way for companies to collect and understand employee feedback and sentiment, with the unique ability to detect emotions from unstructured data. Powered by Xander®, Ultimate’s artificial intelligence (AI) engine, UltiPro Perception provides real-time, actionable insights for improving performance and employee retention strategies.
Disruptive Factor
Only 22% of companies are getting good results from their employee engagement surveys, according to Forbes. “We’ve used the Perception survey 17 different ways, all of which have been beneficial to our organization,” said Kephart. “That goes back to value and the endless opportunities to deploy Perception it in different ways company-wide.”
“Xander, the artificial intelligence engine that sits behind Perception, is able to generate a sentiment analysis that goes beyond traditional surveys,” said Kephart. “That feature in and of itself has delivered a tremendous benefit to our organization. Previously, we'd never been able to ask open-ended questions as it’s just too labor-intensive. Now, we’re able to ask open-ended questions and then very quickly gain real-time insight. We can view the EPS to understand employees’ top concerns and the intensity of how they are feeling.”
“Our business unit leaders were astonished by the ease in quickly navigating from high-level results to detailed data. The custom reports our senior leaders were able to build in just a few minutes enabled them to identify the true drivers for employee engagement within their business units and specific locations. The immediate reactions were telling. I heard several leaders proclaim, ‘This is powerful!’ Perception delivered on our aspirations to add real, meangful value to SPSin a huge way.”
Shining Moment
Our benefits committee includes the chairman, who’s served for 45 years. The day after closing the benefit survey, we held a meeting with detailed reports providing a visual road map how each of our 11 operational units perceived all benefits offerings. ‘Efficiency’ was key: we had scheduled a one-hour session, yet within 45 minutes we were able to identify two key issues and make timely, informed decisions. Our chairman and all present were extremely impressed