Case Studies and Success Stories

"After using CustomInsight's survey tool, we had to share it with others-we recommended Focal ORG to many of our clients, and they love it as much as we do."

- Lori Seal, CEO

Employee Engagement Survey (Focal ORG™)

Like many of companies they were servicing, Blytheco was experiencing the strain of growth, expansion, and transformation. They needed to make sure all their employees were aligned, committed and capable-and remained that way. They knew the right employee survey solution could help them accomplish this.

They wanted a survey tool that protected employee anonymity while summarizing results across groups, with a proven methodology, benchmarks to compare against other companies, and assessment of leadership competencies. It also had to be easy to launch and contain built-in robust reporting and analytics tools.

It had to be much better than what they had used before. In 2010, the company used a popular internet survey tool to measure employee satisfaction. "I remember being excited to gain insight into how Blytheco employees were feeling about the company," stated Donna Baeza, Blytheco's Director of Human Resources & HRMS. Once the survey was completed, however, Donna quickly realized that the information that she was getting from the survey tool was just superficial data. "The results were extremely shallow without any means to carve deeper into what it represented," stated Donna. "I had to specifically request more detailed results from the survey company" she added. The raw data was sent to her in a labyrinth of three spreadsheets which consisted of x's in various rows and columns for each question asked to each employee. Not fit to consume, the raw information needed to be painstakingly arranged and formatted in another spreadsheet by hand.

Employee anonymity was important to Donna and these files contained sensitive information from employees, including survey answers and comments which meant the use of a company administrative team member was out of the question. Donna would have to slice, dice, and format the information by herself. Reflecting, Donna estimates that she spent over 30 full days-hundreds of hours-cutting, pasting and formatting her way to a consumable report, for the executives and for the rest of the employees.

According to Donna, "The initial baseline data I was able to extract just wasn't enough." She went on to say, "Understandably, the executives wanted even more granular information, and the process of trying to gain deeper insight just kept going on and on."

Eight months into the project the plug was pulled. "With that kind of timeframe, providing the results would have been irrelevant and could have had a negative backlash." While the report made it to the executive team, it never made it to the employees.

After carefully comparing options in the marketplace, the team selected CustomInsight's survey management tool, Focal ORG™, which embodied everything that they were looking for. In fact, it offered a lot more. Donna says, "We were beginning to think that our only option would be to go with one of the standard survey tools again, like Survey Monkey and Zoomerang. Or to go deeper, we would need to hire a survey consulting firm at an exorbitant cost." She went on to say, "Both of those options were really out of the question for us; there had to be a better way and we found it with CustomInsight's Focal ORG."

Focal ORG offered Blytheco powerful tools right out-of-the-box that allowed them to be up and running quickly. It came as a complete package including pre-written employee email invitation templates which assisted in expediting the process. Packed with carefully selected questions developed by psychologists, the cloud-based solution was a breeze to setup and administer. The insightful questions were designed to measure engagement as well as alignment with company strategies such as values, goals, and strategic objectives. Donna mentioned, "Knowing that the questions were successfully used thousands of times before for over 20 years with other companies was a huge plus for us."

Their new COO, Lori Seal, was also delighted that they were able to measure their results with other companies that have used the questions in their surveys. "This was a huge bonus for us." Lori stated. "Not only were we able to establish our own baseline for the first year in which we started the survey, but we were immediately equipped to compare our initial results with other organizations."

After employees completed the survey, Donna and Lori were given access to an easy-to-use dashboard via their own secure CustomInsight website portal which gave them a top-line summary of the results. From there, they could quickly drill-down with hyperlinks as deeply into the data as they cared to go. While reviewing the extensive information, they could tag certain elements of the report as 'follow-up' items that would need further review and attention. Lori stated, "We could drill down to department level, position level, manager level and even by location while still keeping results confidential." She continued, "The possibilities to slice and dice the data were almost endless."

It came as a complete package including pre-written employee email invitation templates which assisted in expediting the process. Packed with carefully selected questions developed by psychologists, the cloud-based solution was a breeze to setup and administer. This functionality literally cut the process time in half as they were able to get moving on action items that were created while poring through the information. Donna shared, "We never felt confused about the results we were viewing because Focal ORG provides an overview section to explain what the information represents and how to interpret it." She continued, "As soon as I began to view the reports, I realized that we were light-years ahead of where we were when compared to our 2010 survey."

The survey results have enabled Blytheco's Executive team to quickly identify challenge areas and work to formulate a strategy to impact those items in a timely manner.

Lori said, "We are seeing organizational silos coming down and we have better insight into what's working. We understand our opportunities to improve organizational alignment and adherence to our vision and values." When asked if they would continue to use CustomInsight Focal ORG, Lori shared, "We are committed to continuing this process. Our management team benefits from the insights and our employees appreciate being valued and heard." Donna agrees, adding, "The ability to coach managers based on feedback from their teams is a huge benefit. It also assists us in identifying our blind spots and problem areas in our departments and locations. I feel like there is a better understanding of the organization by everyone."

Blytheco's starting point was not bad. In fact, compared to other companies, it was quite good. But they knew they had room for improvement, and they wanted to be a top performer in their industry. So, they carefully analyzed their results, built a detailed plan, and took appropriate actions. The results have been noticeable. They increased the portion of employee who are engaged from 44% to 68% and decreased the portion of their employees who disengaged from 12% to 6%.

Engagement Level