McCann Takes Real-Time Employee Engagement to New Levels with Thymometrics
McCann Takes Real-Time Employee Engagement to New Levels with Thymometrics
McCann has long been recognised for pioneering many of the brand communication practices that have become today's essential approaches. Through its commitment to Truth Well Told, McCann has evolved advertising into a strategic business expertise that can deliver effective, high-impact creativity anywhere in the world, and in any media format.
To underpin its vision for clients, this creative and innovative powerhouse sets the bar high in relation to its own internal team engagement practices, always seeking better ways to provide an environment that honours a progressive, people-led culture.
Challenges of Managing People Engagement at McCann
In the exciting yet high-pressure world of global advertising, award-winning McCann has always stood out as a leader. While its culture allows all creative forces to move in sync and the business is actively committed to recognising everyone's contribution, the People Team was finding it difficult to assess team engagement levels on a regular basis - even with the internal surveys they had been using.
The team had relied on annual surveys that no longer served their purpose. Instead, they needed to understand and measure how people were feeling and the mood across the business at any given time. The People Team also wanted to provide a means to give people a voice in making positive changes.
Harriet Shurville, Head of People for McCann London and McCann Enterprise, wanted to find a more modern solution to make sure that the company could continue to stand behind its mission of creating a positive, innovative workplace that enables creativity at all times. The old system of gathering employee ideas and feedback just wasn't providing the deep level of rich data that McCann required. It was time for a change.
Having been introduced to Thymometrics, Harriet learned more about the full capabilities of an enterprise level, real-time engagement platform that would be able to evolve with the culture at McCann. Immediately, she realized how easy and useful the Thymometrics employee engagement solution could be towards monitoring and enhancing the agency's dedication to fostering open communication and a collaborative environment.
Features of Thymometrics That Made the Difference
In evaluating the various features that Thymometrics included, there were three key areas that particularly suited McCann's requirements:
Communication
Thymometrics provides a unique, two-way communication platform that enables employees to share detailed and meaningful feedback with members of human resource and management teams. This is all done seamlessly within the tool, and it's completely anonymous. This empowers employees to feel comfortable in expressing their ideas and thoughts, knowing that someone will read what they have to say and take them seriously. Harriet says that this helps McCann's people to feel confident speaking their mind and proactively sharing ideas to improve their work experience.
The other benefit of a two-way communication channel is it allows people and management teams to initiate their own messages to all or part of the business in order to strike up a conversation. This has had the additional benefit of enabling the creation of Focus Groups based on feedback via this new communication channel. Why not ask your employees for their ideas and suggestions to improve their working life?
Customisation
The ability to modify and customise the Thymometrics tool is a critical component, providing maximum flexibility as a company continues to evolve. Providing a simple, quick, and easy-to-use employee engagement platform that would be able to address the real issues that McCann's people have was one of the pivotal reasons Harriet selected Thymometrics.
Data Usefulness
Harriet was immediately impressed with the deep level of employee engagement data that Thymometrics could provide. Along with surface metrics, there are multiple layers of deeper data that can be mined for a greater understanding of what influences the people at McCann. Having access to this rich real-time engagement data enables McCann to get a much greater insight into what creates a better working environment and ultimately produces higher levels of productivity.
Armed with this easy-to-read and real-time data, it has proved very straightforward to take immediate and meaningful action on the findings.
Implementing Two-Way Employee Engagement
With any new product comes a brief period of on-boarding. Fortunately, the process of working with Thymometrics was a smooth one for McCann.
Harriet says that the initial concern of the agency was, "How do we make sure our people know it's 100% confidential?" They were able to solve this with the help of Thymometrics' CEO, Jerry Pett, who very willingly live-Skyped into a McCann all-hands meeting to explain the product and reassure them that it was a confidential system for sharing feedback.
Having an external company provide this reassurance went a long way to alleviating concerns and also set out the way in which Thymometrics would be providing responsive support directly to people once the product was rolled out.
How McCann Customises its Perks
The people at McCann have truly embraced this new feedback channel. As a result, the People Team have been able to create more recognition and perks that are meaningful to their people. "The Work Out" program, for example, was a direct result of gathering feedback. McCann provides personal trainers to conduct yoga, Pilates, and other wellness classes at various times of day to give employees more "me time". They also have a hairdresser and barber that comes in regularly to give employees new styles, a masseuse and nail technician, among other new benefits.
As a direct result of gathering feedback using Thymometrics, McCann has been able to actively add more perks and benefits suggested by people. This means that they are tailored to what people actually want and feel they would truly benefit from.
Why Thymometrics is Future-Proof
When asked, "How confident are you that Thymometrics will be able to continue to service McCann in the future as the company evolves?" Harriet says she views it as a system that people actually like to use. She particularly points to the fact that it's not a static product so McCann can easily make changes and adaptations over time as needed.
Harriet highlights that both McCann and Thymometrics have evolved together to ensure the solution and service fit the needs of the business. This makes it a perfect long-term solution for the company.
Harriet concludes, "A lot of HR tools tend to be a bit dull, but Thymometrics is both fun and easy to use - even our people enjoy using it!".
Additional Benefits of Using The Thymometrics Resources
There have been some other unexpected results of using Thymometrics to monitor and improve employee engagement levels. McCann has seen:
- Participation rates have gone up since Thymometrics was introduced to the company
- People indicate that seeing the positive changes being made has empowered them
- People are much more open to giving their views, and management is open to suggestions
In terms of the value of McCann's investment in the Thymometrics platform, Harriet says that it has helped to accelerate the kind of workplace that people want to belong to at McCann. It has created a more authentic culture where people can express themselves with confidence.
Summary
In conclusion, the experience that McCann has had using Thymometrics to manage engagement and boost productivity has been extremely positive, with far-reaching results and a new, deeper understanding of people's real needs. This, along with several pleasantly unexpected side effects, has opened up an entirely new way for staff and management at McCann to communicate, promoting a culture of teamwork and productivity.
Harriet advises that the main benefits of using Thymometrics include the ease of use, the rich data that is obtained, and the first-class level of support and service the Thymometrics team provides.
About McCann London
Founded in 1927, McCann London is a full-service communications agency that creates award-winning work for some of the world's leading brands including Microsoft, L'Oréal, MasterCard, Premier Foods Subway® brand and Wimbledon. In 2016 the agency became the UK's most awarded at leading international creative festivals including Cannes Lions and Clio Awards and was placed in the Top 10 agencies in the world by the Gunn Report. McCann London is a McCann Worldgroup company and part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG).
