Suncorp’s annual engagement survey previously offered the financial services giant a snapshot of employee sentiment, but with limited context. In March 2020, faced with a work-from-home order, Suncorp wanted to know more, and more often. “We needed a more regular check-in: How were our people feeling? What did they need from us?” says People & Culture Leader Matthew Leslie.
Suncorp was also concerned that in the absence of regular engagement insights, teams were doing their own individual surveys and the business was missing out on the aggregated insights. “We had to rectify that, so we created what we call the ‘Loop Platform’ based on Workday Peakon Employee Voice,” Leslie says.
We achieved a very short time frame from idea generation to implementation . . . this is rare in my experience.
Executive General Manager, People & Culture
Identifying pain points during change and challenge.
Leslie says Workday Peakon Employee Voice comes into its own when the business needs answers to specific questions. “When our frontline turnover went up, we were able to triangulate the data to discover what people told us before they left. The biggest driver was autonomy. The Loop told us that improving our autonomy score by 1 would decrease turnover by 4.5%.”
The platform also enabled Suncorp to understand employee sentiment when the proposal to sell its bank was announced. “We asked specific questions only of people in the bank so we could get an immediate read on how they felt. What was troubling them? What other information did they need? That data contributed to our next steps,” Leslie says.
When you’ve got Workday Peakon Employee Voice, you don’t need all the other surveys. You just tailor it to meet your specific circumstances.
Executive General Manager, People & Culture
Making culture assessments more efficient and effective.
Leslie says Suncorp’s 2020 culture survey required the support from an external agency. “It was expensive, because we needed our partner to deploy their own survey platform and then support us in assessing all the data and insights.”
The difference with Workday Peakon Employee Voice is like night and day. According to Leslie, “This time we just stopped the engagement survey for a month and went live with the culture assessment through the platform. We deployed it ourselves, and we can still benchmark the questions against our 2020 survey. Most importantly, our employees already knew what the platform looked like and how to navigate it. So we had a really good participation rate, and it was much more cost effective.”
If we’d had to recruit 1,000 people 3 years ago, it would have been much more difficult.
Executive General Manager, People & Culture
Helping to recruit 1,000 staff members within a month.
After the 2022 weather events, Suncorp—as one of Australia’s largest insurers—had more than a year’s worth of claims in a matter of weeks. “We needed to recruit 1,000 people immediately,” Leslie recalls.
Suncorp was able to use data from the Loop to create a highly successful recruitment campaign. According to Leslie, “We knew exactly what employee sentiment was in the areas where we were recruiting, so we used that insight to inspire people to join us.”