Servco, a family-owned leader in automotive products & services, didn’t have a way to effectively drive personal action within their workforce. While their employee engagement survey over the past 20 years surfaced high-level insights, it lacked a detailed view into how specific teams were feeling, specifically about retention and inclusion. It also generated a lot of work for Human Resources (HR) and managers, who had to manually create and attempt to implement action plans based on the incomplete results.
“The action planning process used to take months of work. Now, with Humu the post-survey follow up is far more efficient AND includes individual accountability through Humu nudges.” – Estelle Iwamura, HR Business Partner
At the same time, Servco was looking for a way to connect employee engagement to business outcomes including customer satisfaction and quality of service. To drive better business results, they needed accurate feedback from their people, a platform for automating plans and inspiring action within every team, and a better understanding of how morale was tied to performance.
The Approach
Humu ran a company-wide diagnostic to give Servco leadership an accurate look into what was working well within the organization, and where improvement was needed. Based on the results, Servco and Humu decided to focus on driving measurable improvements to inclusion and retention.
Humu mapped these two goals—increasing inclusion and retention—to specific, relevant actions for the entire Servco workforce. Humu then delivered nudges, or short, science-backed suggestions, to employees. Nudges were focused on skills and habits that support a culture of belonging.
By suggesting specific, easy-to-implement actions, Humu nudges made it easier for Servco managers and teams to support each other, stay connected, and deliver impactful customer service.
“Nudges help me and my team stay engaged with the items we agreed to take action on. They are a subtle reminder to keep our goals top of mind and hold ourselves accountable.” – Bev Sato, VP Servco Parts Center
At the same time, Humu conducted a custom analysis of Servco dealerships to quantify the relationship between how customer-facing employees were feeling and their performance, measured by Net Promoter Score (NPS) and how customers responded to Fix-It-Right (FIR) questions.
The Results
By making it easy for managers to take specific steps proven to drive inclusion and retention, Humu nudges drove sustained, measurable change at every level in the organization. Employees said nudges made it easy to grow and change their outlooks and execute Servco’s core values at every level of the organization. Nudges kickstarted a virtuous cycle: as employees noticed managers starting to take positive action, they became more likely to take positive action themselves, too. Over time, action-taking among both employees and managers continued to increase.
Taking action on nudges led to clear improvements: Teams whose managers consistently engaged with nudges had higher happiness, retention, and inclusion scores.
“The results of this study confirmed that utilizing nudges and acting on the responses of our semi-annual Humu survey directly impact the productivity and success of our organization.” - Peter Hirano, EVP, People and Strategic Initiatives
Impact stats after 6 months of nudges:
- Employees became 25% more likely to take positive action
- Managers became 22% more likely to take positive action
- Employees whose manager acted on nudges were 7 points higher on NPS outcomes, compared those who did not take action
- While the automotive industry saw NPS drop by 22 points, Servco NPS remained stable over the same time period
- Employees who experienced job satisfaction and a sense of inclusion delivered 8% higher NPS and 9% higher Fix It Right scores
Humu’s analyses also clearly tied employee engagement to business outcomes and higher customer satisfaction. Employees who experienced job satisfaction and a sense of inclusion delivered 8% higher NPS and 9% higher Fix It Right scores. Taken together, these findings show that supporting individuals & teams helped improve business performance.
Want to help employees act on your mission-critical goals? Humu can help. Get in touch today.
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