Commerzbank Monitor
Guidance in the Follow-Up Process to Bank-Wide Employee Surveys Starting Point:
Starting Point:
“Commerzbank Monitor – the next generation of our employee surveys.” That was the ambitious initial slogan of Commerzbank AG’s latest employee survey. It was primarily intended to serve as a basis for action and decision-making. It was definitely not supposed to be simply a box-ticking exercise. The aim was for respondents to see the benefit of taking part – to see improvements being made on a team and bank level.
Procedure:
We developed the architecture for the follow-up process hand in hand with the project team. It focused on knitting organizational and development processes closely together on several levels within the bank. We helped establish an internal consultation system: Each level of management was allocated its own qualified consultant from human resources for this task plus additional consultants from different business areas. These consultants gained access to the result reports from the managers in their remit at the same time as the other managers. The consultants to the different levels of management remained in contact and coordinated their work in areas where their responsibility overlapped in order to offer the managers in their remit integrated and tailored guidance in the process. The consultants were given access to comprehensive training (enabling workshops, international telephone conferences, second level support from the project team) to prepare them for their assignment. “The significant factor was that the employees were asked to rate the quality and efficacy of the follow-up process from the second survey onward. Word soon got round (supported by the bank’s own communication measures) that the departments with the best experience of the follow-up process made the greatest advances in the assessment of their key topics and employee engagement. That meant that the importance of the follow-up process sank in quickly for the managers and the employees. By the third survey, there was a high level of awareness of the topic at all levels of management – along with a desire to initiate a good follow-up process and the resulting tangible improvements,” summarizes Horst Basse, responsible for the Follow-Up Process in the “Commerzbank Monitor” Team.
Results:
“Commerzbank Monitor enabled us to implement visible changes in large sections of the bank,” reports Project Manager Dr. Karin Brünnecke. In the departments that had worked to improve on their key topics following the survey, those improvements were clear in the next survey. In some departments, that led to an increase in employee engagement of up to 20%.
Our Tasks:
We helped the Commerzbank Monitor team through four Commerzbank Monitor surveys over a six year period with the development and implementation of the bank-wide follow-up process.