Engagement starts with managers
Employee engagement in Assicurazioni Generali SpA United Kingdom Branch (Generali UKB) is hitting new heights thanks to Axiom’s on-going provision of leadership development workshops allied to wide-ranging internal communication consultancy.
Capability building
The basis of our work with the insurer is to drive engagement by first building leadership capability. In a kick-off event, we helped the organisation’s managers understand their goals for business performance and employee engagement and then create their own bespoke engagement skills development programme that we would deliver.
Top of their wish-list was a tailored version of our ‘How to improve business performance by getting Straight A’s in Interpersonal Excellence‘ workshop. This one-day event, led by Axiom’s Miles Henson, primed the leadership group to more effectively influence their teams by identifying and responding to others’ habitual ways of behaving and communicating.
The workshop is based on DISC, the behavioural and communication assessment tool that provides an insight into people’s personality traits and how they behave at work. Before the event, participants completed a DISC self-assessment questionnaire and received a personalised evaluation of their natural communication style. On the day, they explored how to adapt their style to meet the needs of others with different DISC profiles.
In a later workshop, we helped managers identify the key messages to share with the entire workforce and explore how to use storytelling techniques to engage employees with those messages and to communicate in times of change.
New approach to communication
Building on this work, we have also advised Generali UKB on key aspects of its new approach to internal communication.
We helped the organisation set up a sounding board – a representative group of frontline staff who volunteered to join a forum where they would express their views about employee engagement in a safe and trusting setting. Members of the sounding board have become engagement champions and are shaping communication messages and tactics to meet the needs of their colleagues.
The champions organised an engagement event that included an employee survey.
Equipped to motivate
Rocco Romanelli, Head of Generali UKB, says: “Axiom has helped the company in understanding the meaning of employee engagement and therefore we are now much better equipped to motivate our people to execute the business strategy and deliver on our priorities.
“Axiom has challenged us to go further than I thought possible in a very short space of time.”
Our work with Generali UKB continues.
