A fictional services company announced that it had improved employee engagement by removing the department whose employees had consistently reported being disengaged, leaving leadership optimistic about the next survey.
The decision followed an internal review that found a strong relationship between having too much work and telling the company there was too much work. Executives concluded that the second part of the relationship was easier to address.
"We listened carefully to what people were saying," said chief operating executive Martin Hale. "Many felt their voices were not making a difference. We are now giving the organization a chance to move beyond that feeling."
The eliminated department had handled scheduling problems, disputed invoices and customers who had already contacted the company twice. Its responsibilities will be distributed among teams with stronger engagement scores, a choice leadership described as building on existing enthusiasm.
Those teams have not yet received the redistributed work. Their current enthusiasm was measured before the announcement and will remain the official baseline for the transition. Managers have been asked to preserve it by framing new responsibilities as opportunities rather than additional responsibilities.
The company expects several indicators to improve immediately. The number of open employee complaints has fallen because former employees cannot access the complaint portal. Training completion has risen because employees who had not completed training are no longer included. The employee-to-manager ratio also looks better, although nobody has decided whether that is good.
Hale emphasized that leadership was not manipulating the metrics. The metrics, he said, simply reflected the organization as it now existed. Asked whether customers would wait longer, he explained that customer waiting time belonged to a different dashboard and could not fairly be used to evaluate an engagement initiative.
A transition team has been formed to address the work left behind. Its members will participate in a special pulse survey asking whether they feel supported during change. The survey includes a free-text field, limited to characters that can fit comfortably inside the summary presentation.
Executives plan to celebrate the improved results at an all-hands meeting. The presentation will show a cleaner chart and several photographs of employees who are still available to be photographed. Former staff will be thanked collectively, without creating a category that might complicate the comparison.
At press time, the company had recorded its highest engagement score in years, pending responses from the employees currently too busy to complete the survey.