Toyota

Employee Engagement Programme

Understanding employee engagement

In 2010, Toyota (GB) carried out a staff survey which revealed that employees were proud to be working for the organisation and intended to stay with Toyota. However, when they answered the question ‘Does my company motivate me to go the extra mile?’, the answer was 28% below the high performing norm. Toyota wanted to discover why this was the case.

Making a deal to be accountable

To support the management population’s endeavours to become more accountable for employee engagement, we worked with employees to define and create their Management Deal. This is a set of guidelines, standards and behaviours that managers of all levels are expected to follow.

However, it is a deal and also emphasises the part employees can play in making the working relationship as effective as possible. In the Deal, managers promise to:

  • Give you clarity
  • Communicate with you
  • Support you
  • Coach you

CREATING ‘TOYOTA TALKS’

To enable all employees to have the best quality conversations they could, we rolled out a company wide programme called ‘Toyota Talks’. This began with a series of talks from engaging speakers and led to a one day workshop for the Board of Directors, encouraging them to reflect on the way they communicate and how it impacts the organisation.

Peer-to-peer learning sessions were organised and facilitated, allowing employees to support each other in applying the learning to the day-to-day activities of their roles. To reinforce all the above, employees were given access to an innovative tool called Truth Teller, used to to provoke honest feedback and conversations across the organisation.

Award-winning results

In 2015 Toyota (GB) celebrated entering the prestigious Sunday Times ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ index. Then in February 2017, they achieved an amazing 3 star Best Companies rating, with “extraordinary” levels of employee engagement and a ranking of 27th in the Sunday Times Top 100 Best Companies to work for – moving up 67 places over a two year period.