How Swesale turned their employee mood back to ‘green’
‘I wanted it to be fun to go to work again’
As the employee mood was heading down at Swesale, the company set out to change by measuring employee feedback in real time.
The company can now detect in advance if their employees’ motivation is decreasing and work preventatively.
They’ve opened up their workplace to the point where Swesale can show that they DO have a great workplace!
Loss of motivation
The recession was affecting the mood at Swesale, the market leader in recruitment and staffing of sales personnel in Sweden.
The company made a profit in a year when many competitors showed red numbers. Yet they were still far from the 100% annual growth employees were used to. The employee mood didn’t feel to high.
People just didn’t feel how important they were to the company, some even started to question if Swesale was really a ‘good’ company to work for.
No heads in the sand!
Adelie Örnhall, one of the partners, realized it was time to take positive and productive action.
‘We were aware that it takes a lot of energy to improve, however it takes even more energy to ignore it’.
She started looking into ways to get her employees to feel revitalized at work.
Swesale wanted to show their coworkers that they were aware not everything was as great as it possibly could be.
“We wanted to send a clear message that we were not putting our heads in the sand”.
Starting with Employer Branding
Adelie knew that companies with active and satisfied employees achieve significantly better financial performance, yet she was not sure of the best way to start the change in Swesale.
Even Adelie herself was not enjoying work as much as she had done in the past, so she decided to take on the task of HR and employer branding.
‘I wanted it to be fun to go to work again’
Adelie wanted it to be fun for everyone to go to work again.
She realized that some people hadn’t been given the right introduction as they joined, and didn’t identify themselves with the company.
What defined a ‘Swesaler’?
“I started thinking about what the company previously had done so well, and things we were doing now that didn’t have a great outcome. How could we find our way back to what worked? I started planting a few seeds to improve, but I didn’t have the energy to do it all by myself”.
Improving at work isn’t about one person!
Adelie did some research and when she later found the Celpax she had a strong insight.
She realized that improving at work isn’t about one person pulling everyone else along, or the HR department doing all the work - it’s about all co-workers working together to improve.
The first thing she did was to start asking questions to her coworkers, as questions make you think in positive terms:
“What has made you and us so successful?”
She quickly realized the importance of people understanding why they were at Swesale.
Measure employee mood in real-time
Using a real-time feedback system Swesale found a way to recognize that their coworkers are the most important asset and the backbone of the entire company.
With a Swesale cartoon as the cover image, they installed a Celpax device next to the exit door and asked everyone to press the green or the red button every day.
Everyone presses red or green to answer the question “How was your day?”
Employee Mood at Swesale
After pressing green or red, the lights light up to show how the rest of the Swesale coworkers have responded.
The full results are available at the online dashboard.
This benefits me as an employee
When Swesale started their journey towards a better workplace they admitted that the company was going through a slump to their colleagues.
They feel that real-time employee feedback helped them a lot to progress in the right direction.
“People are curious about the solution, it’s something fun, it benefits me as an employee.”
Opening up the workplace
For Swesale, receiving the stats from the ongoing employee mood check is a way to continuously work to engage their colleagues, and to open up their workplace.
From the very beginning, the senior management sent a message letting their people know they were prepared to act if they received employee feedback.
We didn’t know everyone felt this good!
After measuring the employee mood for a few months they were surprised by the green mood result.
Or as Adelie puts it:
“We didn’t know everyone felt this good! When everyone is feeling reasonably content, it’s easy to see when things go down occasionally.”
“Now I know how everyone is doing. If the result is down I just open my eyes a little wider to figure out what is going on.”
Press the red button every now and then…
Adelie also tries to encourage people to press the red button every now and then:
Everything doesn’t have to be so terrific all the time. By pressing the Celpax as they leave, people really question how they are feeling at work every day.”
“The feedback we have received is that people appreciate that we’re doing this. It is a way for coworkers to influence change, and provides incentives to see good results - we have the potential to become better and better. I still don’t think we are where we were one year ago. The Celpax shows that we are open, that we don’t hide anything. It shows that we are a flat organization.”
How the green mood feedback is used
Swesale can now capture the employee mood and translate it into conversations and mature discussions such as “How do we talk to each other more, not about each other”?
The green mood results are used as a discussion base at their monthly All-hands meetings.
They use broad questions like “What percentage of green do we want to see, to consider us to have a ‘good’ company”?
Detect and prevent mood drops
Adelie also uses the Celpax as positive reinforcement.
It allows her to see firsthand that people do want to be at Swesale and that they are content there.
“People didn’t have this feeling previously, you didn’t know if people wanted to be here, or if they were on their way somewhere else. I hadn’t heard about a company working with Employee Branding as Celpax does. It has sparked so many ideas around how to motivate our employees to get engaged at work.”
“We can detect in advance if our employees’ motivation is decreasing and work preventatively”
Building a ‘Great place to work’ reputation
By measuring employee engagement in real-time, Swesale has been able to gradually build up a positive working environment where their coworkers are involved and engaged on a daily basis.
Adelie says Swesale has had positive feedback from their employees; “The Celpax helps us build a reputation as a good place to work” and she concludes:
“Thanks to this solution we have been able to open up our workplace to the point where we could show that we DO have a great workplace!”
