“Systematic approach is essential in employee engagement. It is a continuous process that goes through the entire company, from top-down and then up again – information flows constantly, like a spiral, and relevant signals need to be discovered. Our corporate values act as cornerstones; they are the common denominator on which every-one puts their focus in daily work. Understanding and adopting them is essential also when it comes to engagement.”

Even within the Nordic countries, levels vary considerably in general opinions or attitudes towards certain issues. With tools such as Corporate Spirits global benchmarks, data can be put in the right reference frame and thus interpreted so that results are comparable amongst them-selves. Based on the first experiences in dealing with Corporate Spirit, Pirjo B. Vangsnes is looking forward to the next steps.

“Already at the bidding stage, Corporate Spirit presented convincing ideas and methods about their ability to work with international organi-sations. The annual surveys are important, as is the work that is done between them. The results must be turned into tangible action plans that are implemented in an efficient and appropriate manner. The added value for any data comes from interpreting it into practical and useful tools for our line managers, so that they can carry out their respective roles in improving employee engagement. Cixtranet3® has been very well received and actively used. The managers find it very useful, which is important for efficient employee engagement.”

“Added vAlue for globAl employee engAgement surveys lies in effective use of results”

Pirjo B. Vangsnes, Nordic HR Manager, Santander Consumer Bank AS, Oslo

Corporate Spirit CS Ltd | Hr inteLLigenCe to Support buSineSS SuCCeSS. | 2/2012

As Santander Consumer Bank was looking to further improve its employee engagement with state-of-the-art tools and knowledge, Corporate Spirit was selected as partner, largely thanks to the company’s global bench-marks and Cixtranet3® reporting system. According to Santander’s Nordic HR Manager Pirjo B. Vangsnes, this is just the kind of equipment that can efficiently help international organisations use data from various levels and locations. Pirjo B. Vangsnes is based in Oslo and manages Santander’s HR issues in Nordic countries, coordinating them with other regional offices. She has been pleased with Corporate Spirit’s methods and tools, which have been actively implemented throughout the organisation.

Santander Consumer Bank AS is owned by Santander Consumer Finance, which is part of Grupo Santander, one of the world’s largest banks.

The division is present in 14 countries across Europe and the USA.

Santander Consumer Bank AS provides financing in the areas of car finance, credit cards and consumer loans.

The bank has business in Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, with almost 600 employees throughout

the region and total assets of NOK 62 billion.

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Our mission is to help organisations build environments and teams where employees achieve their best potential.

by engagement, we mean how positively em-ployees think of their work, organisation and its values, as well as their willingness to extra efforts, when needed. enabling continuous engagement among employees requires flawless organisa-tional leadership and other prerequisites.

So why does engagement matter? one answer for this can be found in the Macleod-Clarke 2009 review to the uK government: “employee engagement is the most important factor in creating outstanding organizational performance.”

the evidence indicates that successful leaders have to be champions and line managers have to lead engagement. but the Hr profession and Hr practitioners have a vital role to play. as Jackie orme, Chief executive of Cipd, emphasises: “a key challenge for the profession is to ensure that employee engagement ‘gets put on the table’ in companies and organisations. Hr can’t manufacture engagement, but we have a key role in helping companies develop an organi-sational culture where engagement can thrive, ensuring that managers have the skills to make engagement a reality.”

the outcome of our own global engagement survey (39,000 respondents from 21 countries) showed that the main drivers of engagement are leadership, commitment and performance. that is why our latest engagement model is based on these. However, we argue that measur-ing engagement – even with the best tools – is not enough. in order to reach your goals, you also need to have the tools and means to facili-tate and motivate leaders in the organisation to actively and systematically utilise that information.

You can read more about engagement in this newsletter and on our website: www.corporatespirit.eu

Let’s keep in touch!

beyond engAgement

Advanced communication methods and social media may be

shrinking our world, but certain cultural variation still remains.

Amongst the Nordic countries, Finns still rate their superiors’

performance higher than the rest. Austrians and the Swiss

believe their superiors are keen on employees’ ideas, while the

Spanish and French give lower ratings. In India, people tend to

rate commitment to employers higher than anywhere else.

Jukka PohJolaManaging Director

Global benchMarkseDITorIal

These differences cannot be changed through global exchange programmes or annual meetings with office managers. In order to understand the variations and particularly to put them into perspective, certain bench-marks need to be established. Comprehensive experience and understanding about human behaviour in various cultures is obviously required to create this kind of toolkit for inter-national organisations.

synchronizing countries and cultures

Corporate Spirit’s benchmark norms are based on extensive global basic research as well as a database of our current surveys, updated annu-ally. In addition to 30 country- and area-specific norms, we have designed precision norms for blue- and white-collar workers, managers and specialists in each country. Combined with our experience of over 25 years and almost 3,000 employee surveys, we are able to provide any international organisation with highly reliable

benchmarks as well as knowledge to utilise them for added value.

Doing an international survey and comparing absolute percentage averages of various items between countries will most likely lead to the wrong conclusions, bearing cultural variation in mind. A comprehensive collection of exter-nal benchmarks helps scaling results, as well as discovering the real strengths and areas of development.

Besides culture, the nature of work plays a significant role in job satisfaction and engage-ment variations. Criticism towards excessive information flooding is typical for modern managers. Work in general is perceived as quite demanding. On the other hand, blue-collar workers are more critical towards reward systems and would appreciate more feedback from their superiors. In general, top manage-ment’s evaluations are higher than with other respondent groups.

IT’s a DIfferenT worlD ouT ThereglobAl benchmArks put culturAl differences into perspective

Various stages at work are evaluated in very different ways. Rewarding and change man-agement get clearly lower points than, for instance, awareness of expectations. Without relevant benchmark material, topic areas can-not be compared with one another.

“benchmarks enable seeing things in a new light”

“Our normative benchmarks are based on one of the most extensive international databases of employee engagement surveys available”, says Juha Ala-Lipasti, Corporate Spirit’s Head of Inter-national Operations. “They form a reliable frame of reference when evaluating survey results from

various countries. Having analysed altogether millions of responses, we’ve found some amaz-ing differences in response styles in different countries – as well as some quite different mean-ings and values attached to individual questions.”

Knowing these cultural differences, it is diffi-cult to imagine that reliable information could be gained simply by comparing the propor-tion of favourable responses from one country to another. If in Spain, for example, half of the respondents tend to respond favourably to-wards a single question, it may be a very good result in Spanish terms. However, it might be that the same result in Denmark is quite poor compared to similar companies in Denmark.

“An employee survey conducted without any proper normative benchmark could usually be regarded as quite questionable”, Juha Ala-Lipasti continues. “A standard finding would generally be that weaknesses in the employee survey are connected with unsatisfactory re-muneration, poor information flow and too little feedback. This misinterpretation often takes place because almost every culture nor-mally judges and values these types of ques-tions more critically than other types of ques-tions. If a survey states that 65 % of the staff dislike the information flow, would that be a good result or perhaps something we should worry about? Reliable benchmarks help determine that.”

Notable added value for interpretation of results – the average level of satisfaction varies to a great extent between different types of groups and questions.

Fewer interpretations that simply state the obvious – salaries and communication are being criticized, worker-intensive groups are less satisfied in basically all fields of research compared to superiors and management.

Relevant comparison of results from different countries – it is absolutely necessary to avoid comparing results from different countries as such. Country-specific benchmark material enables taking cultural impacts into consideration.

For more information about how your organisation can benefit from global bench-marks, feel free to contact your Corporate Spirit contact person or your local office.

benchmArks And benefits

Global benchMarks

25.–26.9.2012 HR Dagarna, Stockholm, Sweden

3.–4.10.2012 Salon RH Suisse, Geneva, Switzerland

4.10.2012 HR Next Exit!, Amersfoort, Netherlands

17.10.2012 600Min Human Resources, Stockholm, Sweden

17.–19.10.2012 Airport Leadership and Change Management

Exhibition & Forum, London, UK

6.–8.11.2012 Personalforum, Tønsberg, Norway

15.11.2012 600Min Human Resources, Munich, Germany

MeeT us aT

fAces & plAces

valkjärventie 7 A, 02130 espoo, finland, ☎ +358 9 452 0730

läntinen pitkäkatu 33, 20100 turku, finland, ☎ +358 2 274 3100

20 broadwick street, soho, W1f 8ht, london, uk, ☎ +44 870 366 93 35

employee surveys

360° leAdership Assessments

internAl co-operAtion surveys

mAnAgement teAm Assessments

solutions for utilising the surveys

www.corporatespirit.eu

editor-in-chief: Jukka pohjola | editor: piia palomäki | Layout: Mainostoimisto dynastia | printed by: teMa-teaM 11116-12 | Circulation: 7 000

Highest Creditworthiness©Soliditet 2012

corPoraTe sPIrIT has aPPoInTeD The followInG sPecIalIsTs:

corporate spirit cs ltd. provides an efficient solution for making the most of your company’s most valuable asset: its people

In today’s competitive environment, organisations have to prepare for inevitable changes and challenges. In doing this, they need to commit to a winning perspective. Turning challenges into opportunities is an essential key to success. Engaging employees is important, tomorrow even more so than today.

Corporate Spirit CS Ltd. specialises in global employee surveys and leader-ship assessments. We use state-of-the-art methods to gather extensive, relevant data about personnel, management and various interest groups. However, our true added value comes from our knowledge and tools to put that data to work for your company. Our advanced analysis and survey systems, as well as our 25-year experience and ability to interpret data insightfully, ensure efficient, practical and productive utilisation and facilitation of results.

To read more, contact us or sign up, please visit www.corporatespirit.eu

Corporate Spirit CS Ltd.• private independent research company established in 1986• experience of 3,000 employee surveys, many for global

companies with 10,000+ employees• thirty+ full-time HR survey professionals and consultants • offices in Helsinki, Turku and London• ESOMAR member• highest AAA credit ranking 2012 by Soliditet• ISO 20252:2006 certified

Aino-maria hansénresearch director & Quality Managerturku

eve rokkaSenior project Specialistespoo

sami elmroosSystem designerturku

mika tenhunenresearch directorespoo

soile brushaneSenior Consultantespoo

soili AnttonenSenior project Specialistturku

sanna koivistoproject Specialistturku

hannele vallaassistantespoo

turning humAn resources into competitive AdvAntAge

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