Holaluz: “What Gets Measured Gets Improved”
What gets measured gets managed
I’m waiting to talk to a CEO about how they measure employee mood when he waves me into his office. Except it’s a nursery. Or an ex-nursery.
“As a company, you can’t really plan when there’ll be kids or not”, he says with a big smile.
“I’m a numbers person”, says Oriol Vila as we find some random chairs. “I like seeing the weekly results of how our office mood is doing”.
Holaluz is disrupting the energy industry using the Internet to empower customers and lead them towards a new paradigm of decentralized energy sources, offering total price transparency to their customers.
The same transparency is reflected when Oriol talks about the employee mood results:
“I like the simplicity of the device. It’s engaging that you see the daily results after you press. And sharing the results with everyone means people keep using it.”
“Measuring can never substitute that managers need to talk to their people though! It’s a compliment.”
30% staff growth
“At first you wonder how your employee mood is doing compared to others. Then you realize that the only thing you need to compare to is yourself.”
“Employees don’t go home thinking about what it would be like if they had been working for Google or Apple, they evaluate how their day was here.”
Holaluz has hired at lost since the last time I visited their office. With a 30% staff growth the spacious office feels busier:
“I would define our organization as organized chaos. The to-do list is immense!”, says Oriol and looks across the office.
“Our employee mood KPI is pretty stable. Sometimes you can see the impact of a teambuilding, or a mail or some news that affect the mood. When there are significate changes we look into it and discuss it.”
“We’re also sitting in a nursery”, I remind the CEO
Holaluz tries to be close to their employees and look after them.
“We do stuff like yoga, cross-fit, fresh fruit twice a week… and I think someone just started a ukulele club”, he says and looks surprised himself.
“We’re also sitting in a nursery”, I remind him with a nod towards the empty cribs, located next to a flash roof terrace, overseeing Barcelona’s harbour.
“Yeah it’s empty now, you can’t really put into the company plan when there’ll be kids or not”, says the CEO and laughs.
“We do normal things. Stuff that comes naturally to us and that we think employees might value. But eventually, you get used to perks, all the cool stuff converts into benchmarking. We don’t force it. And it doesn’t matter if you have a lot of perks if you had a red day.”
Day to day more important than perks
“What counts is the day to day. How can you help employees find flow and get them to be productive?”
At Holaluz they work by yearly, quarterly and weekly objectives:
“When you leave through the door you should be able to say that you’ve done what you wanted to do. Cause you’ll be pressing green or red depending on if you feel good… but feeling good about what?”
“It should be with the work you’re supposed to do. So today did I get done what I wanted to do or not? We try to follow up a lot and support people, to make sure the planning actually happens.”
You can’t manage what you can’t measure!
The Mood KPI reflects the effectiveness of the actions you take
Holaluz is a unique customer-centric energy company in Spain, which supplies 100% green power at the best price to more than 80.000 customers - households and SMB.
The company is cash-flow positive and topped previous year’s performance results by 143%, billing 70 million euros.
This year they closed a finance round of EUR 4M.
The day they announced the deal a lot of green smileys were being pressed.
“It’s a KPI that’s super simple and valuable, at a reasonable cost, Oriol continues.
“It’s a good way to get started and do things for your employees, to design measures that may affect the company.”
“There is something worse than knowing that things are bad, and that’s NOT knowing that things are bad.”
“Of course, you can choose ignorance but that goes against all business sense.”
“The mood result just reflects the way things are and shows the effectiveness of the actions you take. Like it or not. It’s like an email, it doesn’t matter if you open it or not… it’s still there.”
What gets measured gets improved - measure and manage
“It‘s like my friend says”, Oriol concludes with a smile. ”What gets measured gets improved. All companies should have a Celpax survey kiosk.”
Measure if your leadership actions are working.
Hej! I’m Rebecca, people analytics enthusiast and co-owner at Celpax. We’re a for-profit helping workplaces improve employee morale with simple tools. I might appear in our chat, or say aloha on twitter?
