Case Study
Measuring Employee Engagement
For the past five years Westfield Group has focused on ensuring continuous improvements in the effectiveness and efficiency of its global operating model and
by measuring employee engagement.
Broadly defined as the measurement of peoples’ discretionary effort, employee engagement is an important measure of business health because it demonstrates how willing and committed staff are to strive to achieve superior results, even in challenging times.
Westfield’s engagement survey offers its staff an opportunity to share their views on what makes the company an effective organisation and the areas where they believe it could improve.
The survey is run by an independent third party, Sirota Survey Intelligence, thereby ensuring objectivity in reporting and confidentiality of response for employees.
The survey enjoys a high degree of traction with employees with an average participation rate of 82% across our four regions being achieved over the five years it has been conducted.
Every region has experienced an improvement in their employee engagement over the five years of the survey, reflecting staff’s willingness to endeavour to meet the Group’s business objectives. In Australia the score has increased from 65% to 81%; in New Zealand from 84% to 85%; in the United States from 65% to 74% and the United Kingdom from 65% to 69%.
To put these results in perspective, according to the Renowned global proponents of staff engagement surveys, AON Hewitt, produced a study on engagement in 2011 where the, average score for companies the same size as Westfield was around 54%. The Group’s own survey manager Sirota, considers scores of around 75% “best in class”.
Through the survey process the Group has been able to determine that a key global strength is its highly engaged workforce, which is committed to the company and its goals, and which regards its leaders as credible. At a local level, Westfield staff have indicated they enjoy the work they do and the teams in which they work. A positive outcome of the survey has been a consistency between staff’s local and global perceptions of the business and their role within it.
Another positive outcome of the survey is the strong belief amongst staff that people from diverse backgrounds can succeed at Westfield.
The surveys also showed where staff believed the Group could make improvements: in the speed of our decision-making; in process and system efficiency and in the timeliness of internal communications. Results also showed that staff believes Westfield can continually refine its organisational structure to foster higher-quality cross-functional collaboration.
Following the completion of each survey, action planning is conducted at the organisational and local level, and managers are equipped with processes, training, and other other necessary tools to explore their results implement any changes with their teams.
At the organisational level, the executive in each region agrees on companywide issues that need to be addressed and appoints a functional head to lead the execution of positive changes.
The Group has committed to continuing to measure employee engagement on a biannual basis, ensuring a constant improvement of how people work together to deliver results.
