Automotive company wins several industry awards, thanks in part to 100% engagement with new platform

What they needed

Before Anna-Lisa, The JCB Group had never had a Group HR manager or a strategic focus on employee engagement. She immediately identified that The JCB Group’s workforce ranges from graduate engineers to 70-year-old men who have been with the business for decades. After implementing an employee engagement platform, the company has 100% engagement and has won awards in relation to its high engagement levels.

Being able to address this diversity is something that had been lost with the previous benefits offering. Coupled with low ratings of the existing benefits and reward offerings and ineffective communications, it was time for a change.

Anna-Lisa knew she needed a solution to deliver bespoke content to provide unity, confidence, transparency, and to be an open forum for 290 individuals over 12 sites. Employees needed to be able to stay up-to-date with what was happening internally, so they could understand company news as it related to their own roles, but also better comprehend and influence the decisions being made in the wider company on a day-to-day basis.

How we helped

Knowing that her employees lie at the heart of The JCB Group's success was the main reason Anna-Lisa wanted to promote a feeling of unity. She is driven by a motivation to really hear her people and make them feel heard, to act as their champion, and improve their happiness at work.

The JCB Group’s platform, called JCB Connect, was created in Anna-Lisa’s vision to do exactly that. It’s more than a benefits website, it’s a place where The JCB Group’s culture comes to life – integrated with everything The JCB Group does to enable employees to be successful in their roles, it involves them in shaping the business, and makes them part of The JCB Group family.

Since launch, Anna-Lisa’s work ethic has been incredible. She’s created all homepage tiles, pages, and blog articles in-house to ensure the platform is always aligned with The JCB Group’s wider engagement strategy. She aims for weekly updates and promotes the most important messages at the top of the homepage. Anna-Lisa’s approach to engagement extends to the employee life cycle too, as new recruits learn about JCB Connect during induction and eCards™ are sent to welcome them. 

What they achieved

Employees can also see internal vacancies, posted on JCB Connect as part of Anna-Lisa’s commitment to enabling The JCB Group’s people to grow with the business.

Engagement with the platform has been positive, with 50% of employees signing up on launch day in July 2015, and a whopping 100% being engaged by January 2016. JCB Connect is proving a big draw for new starters as they’re hearing about the site and asking for access straight away, even before they get their payroll number.

Since Anna-Lisa’s drive to launch JCB Connect, the company has won four dealership awards from Volkswagen. While, of course, many factors contributed, the new platform and a boost in engaged and unified employees definitely had a little something to do with it.