Engaging Employees

During Times of Change:

The Orbitz Approach October 17, 2016

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About Us

• Lisa Sandora

– Orbitz/Expedia

– Industrial/Organizational

Psychologist

– Dog lover

page 2

• Laura Jones

– GGP

– Orbitz

– Aon Hewitt

– Avid Traveler

– Chicago Bears Fan

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Where Did We Come From? Our History

> Founded in 1999 by Five Leading Airlines

> Leading global player in online travel

• Over $11 billion in annual gross booking

• Over $750 million in annual revenue

> Brands reaching across North America, Europe and Asia Pacific

attracting over 18 million monthly unique visitors

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What Was the Business Environment? Competitive Landscape

> Expedia, the No. 1 player. Priceline, the No. 2

> Orbitz, No. 3 in market share

• Overreliance on flight bookings

• Struggling to gain ground in lucrative hotel bookings

> Consolidation and acquisition

• Expedia – Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Trivago, Hotwire, Wotif. HomeAway

• Priceline - Priceline, Booking.com, Kayak and OpenTable

> Acquisition announced Feb 12, 2015, pending DOJ review

Our New Mission – Strengthen the Core

HR Call to Action - Drive retention and engagement during a time

of significant change and uncertainty

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How Do We Define Engagement?

Engagement is the state of emotional and intellectual involvement and commitment that leads

people to do their best work.

We see engagement when people:

Consistently speak positively about the organization to

coworkers, potential employees, and customers

Have an intense desire to be part of the organization

Exert extra effort and engage in behaviors that

contribute to business success

Strive

Stay

Say

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Quick Poll

What is the highest driver of retention for employees during periods

of mergers and acquisitions?

A. Understanding of Career Path

B. Senior Leadership is Visible

C. Employees are Involved in Decision Making

D. Employees make Personal Sacrifices to Help the Organization

6 - Confidential

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Quick Poll

What is the highest driver of retention for employees during periods

of mergers and acquisitions?

A. Understanding of Career Path

B. Senior Leadership is Visible

C. Employees are Involved in Decision Making

D. Employees make Personal Sacrifices to Help the Organization

7 - Confidential

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What should we focus on? Drivers of Engagement During Change

Source: Aon Hewitt. Engagement During Times of Change Chicag

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What Did We Do? Engagement Workstreams

Help Managers

Understand their Role

Engage Workshops

Promote Management Development

Provide Clarity and

Transparency

Leader Visibility

Career Framework

Play – Create Connections

Fun Events

Strengthen the Core

Build Capabilities

Learning Opportunities

Mentoring

Monitor Progress & Celebrate Success

Employee Pulse

Surveys

Progress Reports

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Help Managers Understand Their Role

> Engagement Workshops

• Objective: Involve and empower

managers to drive engagement

– What is engagement and why

does it matter

– Engagement during times of

change

– Overcoming obstacles to

engagement

– Taking action

• Activities: Facilitate more than 20

Engagement Workshop for all people

managers

• Outcome: 98% of managers

attended

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Help Managers Understand Their Role – Engagement Activity

11 - Confidential

If we know what drives employee engagement during M&A, what would be

some obstacles of employee engagement?

> Break into teams:

• Pick an obstacle:

– Discuss how you would

solve it

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Help Managers Understand Their Role

> Promote management development

• Objective: Ensures all managers are provided the opportunity

to attend our foundational Leadership Development

Workshop

– Support and encouragement from executives

– Provided tools they could use in any leadership role

• Activities: Increased class availability and broadened topic

areas

12 - Confidential

March 16 Manager Essentials

Mar 24-25 Foundations of Leadership

April 21 Effective Delegation

Apr/May: Managing through Change Workshops

May 6 Manager Essentials

June 9-10 Foundations of Leadership

July 21 Effective Feedback

Aug 4 Manager Essentials

Sept 9-10 Foundations of Leadership Chicag

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Provide Clarity and Transparency

> Leader Visibility

• Objective: Keeping transparent lines of

communication open with employees

• Activities:

– Twice a month SLT brown bags led by 2

Executives

– Small intimate setting, no more than 10

– Sign up on-line

– No agenda, focused on for Q&A

– Increased Town Hall “all employee” meetings

frequency to monthly

• Outcome: 8 brown bag sessions completed between

July and October with full attendance

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Provide Clarity and Transparency

> Career Framework

• Objective: Continue business as usual in defining job

levels, titling and career levels

• Activities:

– Completed design of outstanding frameworks

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Play – Create Connections

>Have Fun!

• Objective:

– Create and sustain personal relationships

– Build a sense of community

• Activities:

– Tickets to summer events for you and a guest

– Surprise and delights at work

• Outcome: Over 300 tickets per event distributed

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Play – Create Connections

Strengthen the Core

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Play - Create Connections

Strengthen the

Core

• Objective:

– Maintain the health and well-being of employees

– Combat the effective of extending sitting

• Activities:

– Monthly “WOW Walks”

– Walking meetings & other physical activities throughout

the day

– Set up “Activity Areas” with pads, rollers, balls

– Exercise bands provided to all employees

– Activity briefings with chiropractor

– Daily 3 minute video on workstation activities

• Outcome:

– More than 500 employees participated in training

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Workouts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPYVuQ_Sa0

https://www.fitnessblender.com/blog/the-cubicle-workout-how-to-workout-at-work

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOPYVuQ_Sa0

> Station 1 – Exercise Ball – 8th floor hallway

• Y,T, W’s on ball

• Shoulder stretches on ball

• Ball squats

• Low back extension over ball

> Station 2 - Foam Roll – 8th floor hallway

> Station 3 - Lunge Station – 9th floor kitchen

• Reverse lunge

• Lateral lunge

• Other movement examples that can be done

• Hip hinge

Play – Get Up and Move

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Build Capabilities

> Learning opportunities

• Objective:

– Provide opportunities for employees to build upon their

skills and knowledge to better position them for a role

with Expedia or their next external opportunity

• Activities:

– Monthly “Talent Talks”

• Outcome:

– Over 150 people in person and more than 90 people

joining virtually

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Title Date

Personal Branding for Professional Success March

Ignite your Emotional Intelligence April

The Brain Advantage – Becoming more Effective in Business May

Maximizing your 401K & Retirement Planning June

The Power of Intentional Networking July

Mapping your own Professional Development Plan August

The Power of World Views – Diversity & Inclusion 2.0 September

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Build Capabilities

> Promoted Informal Mentoring Options:

• WOW Events:

• WoW Speed Mentoring Event – Provided table

topics with facilitators at each table

• WoW Walks – opportunity to link VP/Sr. Director level

women with others during events

• External Speaker events with networking opportunities

• Volunteer events

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Monitor Progress

> Employee Pulse Survey

• Objective: Create a process to gather and share feedback from

employees

– Give employees a voice: an opportunity to be heard

– Allow us to establish a benchmark and track trends

– Help identify new or emerging issues or opportunities

– Provides information that can be used to develop solutions or adjust

plans, as needed

• Activities: – Monthly Pulse survey

– Streamlined Engagement Index - 3 versus 6 items

– Research based items aligned to:

– engagement drivers during acquisition

– established items traditionally used during M&A or engagement surveys

– Representative, random sample of employees selected each month

– Limited demographics captured on the back end

• Outcome: Survey administered monthly, May through August. Results

reviewed with SLT and posted throughout office

– 832 employees submitted their feedback May – August (52%)

Let the dataset

change your

mindset Hans Rosling

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Overall Pulse Survey Results

74

82 79 79

65

79 82

53

67 67

79

90

84

75

67

85

90

57

78 75

81 81

75 78

68

80 82

52

65 63

80 79 75 74

62

80

88

52

64 67

50

55

60

65

70

75

80

85

90

95

Stay Say Strive Try NewThings

MgmtListens

I have fun People Iwork withgo above

andbeyond

OWWInvests inmy dev

Authorityto make

decisions

Shareopinionsw/mgmt

Pulse Survey May - August

May June July August

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Results & Learned

Learned

> Need to give employees something to rally around – “Strengthen the Core” and

continued meaningful work

> People that left, left early due to uncertainty

> Employees were hopeful that environment would return to normal

> Execs need a “push” to stay engaged and connected to all employees

> Benefit from empowering managers and giving actionable tools

> Not everyone wants to “exercise at work”

> Have an action plan, communicate, communicate, communicate!

Results

> Retained 84% of employees at close of deal

> Engagement remained fairly stable

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S t a y C u r r e n t !

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32

“ The power of any

strategy is only in the

implementation”

1

Employee motivation and retention solutions

June 2015

MANAGERS DRIVE

CHANGE

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2

What is employee engagement?

31

What is most energizing about your work?

Are we fully utilizing your talent?

What is inhibiting your success?

What makes for a great day?

What makes you jump out of bed in the morning?

What makes you hit the snooze button?

What can I do to make your job more satisfying?

What can we do to achieve your career goals?

How often would you like to receive recognition?

What can we do to keep you here?

What might entice you away?

If you were to win the lottery and resign, what would you miss the most

What would be the one thing that, if it changed in your current role, would

energize you most?

Stay Interview

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30

Don’t take your people for granted. Remember keeping motivated and

engaged is a an ongoing process, not only for your team , but also yourself. So

its important to set aside some time on a monthly basis to check progress on

all the engagement strategies and review individual and team drivers, as they

can reality change over time.

Treat these staff check in likes stat interviews you do exit interviews to see

why people are leaving, so why not do stay interviews? A stay interview is a

mini employee engagement survey.

So engaged they wont leave

3

Think about a time when you felt

engaged….

1. What made you feel that way?

2. What impact did that have on your performance?

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4

Drivers of engagement through change (Aon Hewitt)

General Drivers

Understand Career Path

Involved in decision making

Have the necessary resources to

do the job

Company provides encourage-

ment for development

Provided proper training to

do job

During Change

Involved in decision making

Understand career path

Co-workers make personal sacri-fices to help the organization

Company provides encourage-ment for development

Company provides 2 way dialogue

During M&A

Involved in decision making

Co-workers make personal sacrifices to help the organization

Senior Leadership is visible

Provided proper training to do the job

Understand career path

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“ Many people leave, not because there

is a great reason to leave, but because

there is no great reason to stay”

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28

staying

5

If we know what drives employee engagement

during M&A, what’s standing in our way of doing

so?

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6

“Are we still trying to

solve engagement

by doing the wrong

things?”

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Work Life Balance: Manager Implementation Strategies

Currently how well is this driver being satisfied for my team?

How important is this driver for my team?

What three things can I change specifically, in my area of control to im-prove this engagement driver for my team?

1.

2.

3.

Strategies

A)………………………………………………...

B)………………………………………………...

C)………………………………………………...

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Priority 1 Priority 2

Strategies

A)………………………………………………...

B)………………………………………………...

C)………………………………………………...

Strategies

A)………………………………………………...

B)………………………………………………...

C)………………………………………………...

10 10

Priority 3

10

10

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26

Work Life Balance

This self-assessment tool can help people get clarity on where they can

improve their work life balance.

Health Purposeful

Work

Family

Spiritual

Social

Contribution

to society

Creativity

Financial

Intellectual

Growth Relationships

Lifestyle

Priorities

Step 1: From the balance wheel , identify which three priorities would

contribute most to your happiness over the next 12 months?

Step 2: Score out of 10 how well you feel you are going in each of those three

priorities?

Step 3: Now write three strategies for each priority that would increase your score,

by asking yourself the question: “what would need to change or be different for my

score to be closer to 10 out of 10?”

7

creating

a plan for your te

am

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8

“Create a passionate fire within your

people not under your people”

25

Step 2: Brainstorm ideas that can make your work score even more fulfilling

Skills:

Challenges:

Meaning:

Step 3 Highlight in the above what you can do in the next 6 to 12 months.

Step 4 Imagine it is now 12 months down the track, and you are doing what you

identified. What are your new scores out of 30?

Job Fulfillment Manager Implementation Strategies

Currently how well is this driver being satisfied for my team?

How important is this driver for my team?

What three things can I change specifically, in my area of control to improve this engagement driver for my team?

1.

2.

3.

10

10

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24

Job fulfillment

This quick exercise helps you rate how fulfilled you are with your work and how

you can take positive steps to achieve even more fulfillment.

Step1: Rate yourself on the following three questions below for skills, challenge

Of the skills I love using, how much am I using them in my current work?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Skills

How challenged am I at my current work

Challenge

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

How meaningful is my current work to me?

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Meaning

30Total Score

Sore Rating 0-17 Score rating 18-24 Score rating 25—30

Worth Improving Normal Congratulations

Your job fulfilment would

benefit from some career

development to better suit

your capabilities, preferably

sooner rather than later. The

smallest things can make the

most difference

Some fine tuning may be

required. You may like some

re-assessment or refinement

in some areas

You are in the top 10% of the

population as far as having a

satisfying and fulfilling role.

Still, you may like to focus on

a couple of things for the

future to make sure you

maintain your level of fulfil-

9

Drivers to employee engagement

1. Reward: Clear links between employee performance and company objectives

where individuals are fairly rewarded for their contributes to the company’ success

2. Work life balance: An environment exists where people’s lives outside work are

supported and encouraged

3. Opportunity : a culture of constant learning, full of development opportunities

where people feel positive about their future career prospects. (career opportunity)

4. Relationships: Good positive, open and collaborative relationships exist between

leaders, co workers and teams

5. Purpose: the organization has a meaningful purpose, beyond just making money- makes a real difference.

6. Job Fulfilment: the nature of my day to day work consistently energizes me

7. Leadership. Inspiring leadership makes me feel appreciated and keeps me

informed.

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1. My employees like the kind of work they do.

2. My employees can see a link between their work and the com-

pany’s success.

3. My team goes above what required to do excellent work.

4. I have recognized or praised members of my team in the

past month for doing good wok

5. My employees know their opinions count and that I value their

input

6. I am in tune with how engaged my employees are

7. In the past 3 months, I have spoken to each one of my direct

reports about their performance

8. My employees know that I care about their professional devel-

opment

9. Overall my team thinks I do a good job of leading

10. My employees trust me

Know your team

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

5

50

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Personal Drivers

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Question 1: What are your current top three most important motivators?

Question 2: To what degree (score out of 10) are each of these three motivational

drivers currently being fulfilled?

Question 3: What would need to change or be different for your score in each

driver to be closer to 10 out of 10?

Question 4: What could you do personally to improve your score in each driver so

its closer to 10 out of 10

Question 5: What could I do to improve your score in each driver?

Question 6: Imagine you do the strategies you’ve now identified. Would your

score be at least 8/10? If not go back to Q3

Personal Drivers: Coaching Questions

Motivation Tool for you to facilitate with you people.

11

Score Category Description

< 25 Needs

Improvement

Have more conversations with your employ-

ees, ask how they feel about the transaction

and their future, and be more visible to the

26 —

40

Pretty good shape

but you can still

get better

You feel your team is engaged. But you could

always be asking more questions, be more

visible, and make more time with your employ-

ees. Ask yourself, 'What more can I do to

share information, invest in development,

know what motivates each person on my

team?”

> 40 In good shape but

don’t get

complacent

You are in touch with your employee/team's

engagement levels! Continue to be open and

transparent to keep engagement levels up.

Share your successes with your peers but don’t

get complacent. How can you continue to

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Action Plan

Area Addressed

What action will you take?

What is already occurring to address issue in these areas

21

The Power Tools

If you only take away one thing from this workshop, make it the following three

tools. They address all the seven employee engagement drivers.

1 Job Fulfillment

If I can work out what will make my team feel like they have more meaning

at work, I can improve the purpose driver.

If I work out what will make my team feel more challenged, I can improve my

opportunity driver

If I work out ways to allow my team to use skills they love more, I can

improve the job fulfillment driver.

2 Work Life Balance

If my team know what their top three life priorities are, and strategies to

improve them, this will help my Work Life balance driver.

All the lifestyle priorities are personally relevant forms of reward for my

team.

3. Personal engagement plan

If I share my top priorities with my team, and manager and they share theirs

with me, this will enhance my personal relationship driver.

If my I support my team in all of these, I will also feel more appreciated and

respected, which will improve the leadership driver. Chicag

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Although you may have already

created an action plan for your team,

it is important to work with each

team member individually to

customize a specific plan.

This involves working with each of

the employees you manage and going

through a similar process to the one

you reflected on your self.

Use the tools on the next page or the

hand out.

Some of the actions might involve action

on your part (such as redesigning some

aspect of their role) and others will

involve action on their part (such as

making more effort to get involved in

staff social functions)

The good new is that once employees

get clear on their action plans, they

can control the majority of their own

motivation and therefore

engagement.

It is bets to give people the option of

whether they would like to complete

these exercises at home or discuss

them with you as they go along—this

will accommodate the different

comfort levels of different personality

types. The main topics to discuss

with them are their top three drivers

plus what can be done to improve

their current engagement levels.

Personalization

“Highly engaged employees try 57%

harder and are 87% less likely to leave”

13

Expected impact on engagement?

What does success look like? Measurable targets and dates?

Who will implement the actions?

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Know

what m

otivates you.

19

“ What people become, depends on how

leaders communicate with them” Know

what m

otivates your people

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Know

what m

otivates your people

15

“ If employees don’t know what truly engages

them, managers have virtually no chance of

fully engaging their people ”

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Personal Engagement Plan

While you are a leader of people, you

owe it to yourself and those around you

to be as happy, motivated and engaged

as possible. As you were reading

through the seven key drivers, it is likely

that some of them resonated more

strongly with you then others.

Everyone can benefit by gaining clarity

on their motivational drivers and looking

at what they can do to improve their

current level of engagement. Some

things are easy to do, but they are also

easy not to do, and sometime the

smallest things can make the biggest

difference.

Knowing your drivers you will have a

better understanding and greater

confidence and commitment to

implementation and ongoing

employee motivation approach. You

will also have better empathy with

your team. Research has shown that

‘top down’ management buy-in

approach is extremely important to the

sustainable success of employee

engagement initiatives

According to Gallup,

managers account for

as much as 70% of the vari-

ance in the employee en-

17

Step 1: Identify what are the top three motivators that would most engage you and

write them in the appropriate boxes.

Step 2: Give each motivational driver a score out of ten for how well it is actually

driving you in our role.

Step 3: Identify some strategies that could be put in place to improve the current

score.

Strategies

A)………………………………………………...

B)………………………………………………...

C)………………………………………………...

10

Motivator 1 Motivator 2

Strategies

A)………………………………………………...

B)………………………………………………...

C)………………………………………………...

Strategies

A)………………………………………………...

B)………………………………………………...

C)………………………………………………...

10 10

Motivator 3

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