Creating employee engagement and sustainable business iperformance

Creating employee engagement and
sustainable business performance
The Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation story
October 2012
Lomkhosi Magagula, Group HR Manager
Rod Warner, Building Resilience

Agenda
1. Open Space Technology
2. Teambuilding contracting
3. Contracting between processes
4. Building personal resilience
5. IR teambuilding contracting

Purpose
Case Study
“Achieving sustainable business performance
through employee engagement”
 Share processes, interventions, experience
which you can use for your organisation
Our aim: To enable you to follow a similar
process

Royal Swaziland Sugar Corporation (RSSC)

RSSC Profile
 Largest employer in Swaziland, after Government
 Listed : Swaziland Stock Exchange
 Shareholders : diverse & international
 Cane Growing Operations : 20,000 Ha irrigated
directly managed & 10,000 Ha outgrowers
 2 sugar Mills, Sugar Refinery, and Ethanol Distillery
 Part-own a packaging plant

Economic Contribution
 Production: 66% of Swaziland’s sugar & 30M litres
Ethanol
• Indirect employment : contractors and suppliers
• Services open to general public : Clinics, VCT etc
• Assist police, customs, schools
• Education contribution : Allowances (E3.7m) &
Bursaries (E1.2m)

Business Challenges
 Rooted in Swaziland (E) & operates in an international
environment (€ : R : P : N$ : )
 Business environment constantly changing placing
pressure on profitability & sustainability
 Embarking on an ambitious business strategy
 Restructuring business for competitiveness
 Increasing input costs (electricity, fuel, molasses)
 Increased focus on productivity & profitability

1. Open Space Technology
Open Space meeting at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

What is it?
 Harrison Owen “Organisation Transformation”
 Approach of engaging 5 - 2,100 people
 On a specific & complex topic or theme
 Begins without an agenda
 Room arranged in circle
 Bulletin board
 Marketplace
 Action plans

Case Study : Manufacturing
 Causal analysis : plethora of causes but
engagement was one of them
 Interventions
 Quarterly reviews focused on 5 performance
indicators (LTA, overall recovery of sucrose, DIFR,
budget utilisation & through put)
 Translation of performance indices for individuals
 Securing skills
 Open Space Technology
 Resilience Workshops

2. Teambuilding
• First teambuilding:
– Trust and interdependency teambuilding exercises
– Factory personal and team behavioural
commitments
– New targets for each process to meet factory
overall goal
– Actions to meet the targets and create excellence
in process

Team Effectiveness Model
Competence:
Performance
Knowledge and skills
Co-operation:
 Relationships
 Communication
Client
Commitment:
Hearts and minds issues
Resilience

Creating employee engagement and sustainable business iperformance

The Six Personal Commitments:
1. Achieving “Less than 10 in 2011”
2. Providing leadership that is accountable for factory targets
via my decisions and actions for the success of the
organisation
3. Using our skills and innovation to achieve individual and
factory targets
4. Communicate daily meeting outcomes every day to my
staff, keep colleagues informed of all relevant issues which
affect them and listen to feedback from staff
5. Timekeeping for myself and my team
6. Creating a high-performance culture by holding each
other accountable and engaging in crucial conversations
when necessary

The Team Work Commitments
1. Taking team work back to the factory and sustaining it
2. Incorporate our teambuilding outcomes into Toolbox Talks, including
and using the Team Effectiveness Model
3. Explain the value chain and each individual’s role in achieving it
4. Communicate the six personal commitments to the rest of the staff
and get buy-in. Posters to assist in awareness creation
5. Walk the talk and be a role model of team work using the six
personal commitments
6. Review, discuss and finalise the functional team commitments that
have been made, taking into consideration requests from the other
teams, and then communicate them

Measuring and Tracking of Team and
Personal Commitments
 Measure and track via daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly
performance discussions/reviews/action plans
 Use electronic display boards, online, for information
dissemination
 Restructure morning meetings (Toolbox Talks) agenda to
include production targets and performance
 Ensure up-to-date PJO and KPA for every individual
 Encourage "raising the red flag" when a blaming culture
develops
 Encouraging sharing of resources , especially with
breakdowns, no matter where they occur
 Celebrate achievements

RSSC Factory Staff Negative Reinforcing Cycle
Board becomes
concerned about
manufacturing
productivity and
puts pressure on
GM-Manufacturing
GM-Manufacturing puts
pressure on Factory
Managers, who put
pressure on their senior
staff
Factory staff become
disengaged, and less
proactive in addressing
problems. Senior staff
become frustrated.
Factory staff don't identify with the values
of the organisation; don't see a direct link
between their jobs, productivity
improvement and the prosperity of the
organisation; some are not resilient and
some not pro-active
Factory productivity
increases after
interventions, but
over time falls back to
previous levels
Senior staff sometimes intervene directly to
address problems, and sometimes use
disciplinary process rather than performance
management process to deal with mistakes.
Pressure is increased on all.

3. Teambuilding Process Contracting
• Second teambuilding:
– Trust and cooperation teambuilding exercises
– Review personal and team behavioural commitments
– Shoes exercise for each processes:
• What we think it must feel like to work in that team
• How we think they feel about us
– Ask and offer exercise for each process (incl. targets
and actions)
• What we ask of that team
• What we offer that team

Teambuilding Process Contracting (cont)
• Third teambuilding:
– Interdependency teambuilding exercises (brief)
– Review personal and team behavioural
commitments; shoes exercise and ask and offer
exercise
– Feedback to each process: carry on, stop and start
– New ask and offer for each process (incl. targets
and actions)

4. Building Personal Resilience
Purpose: build people’s individual capacity to
deal with change, stress and adversity

What is meant by “resilience”?
 Task focused and productive whilst experiencing
tough times
 “Bouncing back”
 Emerging stronger and more resourceful

Resilience Workshop Content
 Resilience Principles to deal with the “daily grind”
as well as the “darkest night”.
 Change and resilience
 Reconnecting with personal meaning in life.
 Identifying and using unique personal strengths.
 Building “grit” and mental toughness.
 Reframing adversity.
 Practical methods of increasing realistic
optimism.
 Identifying personal strategies for dealing with
change and tough times.

Resilience Workshop Outcomes
 Understand how to remain task focused at work
during periods of prolonged change and stress.
 Increased adaptability and confidence when
experiencing tough times.
 Ability to reduce the negative impact of stress on
work outputs, colleagues and family.
 Experience more hope, optimism and positivity
and so better cope with job demands.

Experiencing adversity with resilience:
Phase 1: Eroding - encountering and assigning meaning to the adversity
Phase 2: Reconciling - coming to terms with the impact and implications
Phase 3: Navigating - moving forward and dealing with the issues
Phase 4: Thriving - experiencing enhanced resourcefulness and strength
Level of resilience
Usual
conditions
Adversity
encountered
Eroding
Navigating
Reconciling
Thriving
Time
© Copyright Performax Consulting 2006 No part of this material may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, displayed or distributed without written permission

Experiencing adversity with poor resilience
Phase 1: Eroding - encountering and assigning meaning to the adversity
Phase 2: Reconciling - coming to terms with the impact and implications
Phase 3: Succumb - overwhelmed; dysfunctional coping
Phase 4: Disabled - resistance; survival coping or “stuck”
Level of resilience
Usual
conditions
Adversity
encountered
Eroding
Disabled:
survival coping or
“stuck”
Succumb:
dysfunctional coping
Reconciling
Time
© Copyright Performax Consulting 2006 No part of this material may be copied, stored in a retrieval system, displayed or distributed without written permission

Resilience is thus needed to:
•Deal with “bad hair” days
•Cope with the “darkest night”
•Develop and flourish on the journey towards
self actualisation
We define resilience as the life force to overcome
adversity, heal and strive towards fulfilling your
potential

Resilience building blocks domains
Core
Internal External

Building Resilience Principles
1. Connect to your meaning in life
2. Use your unique strengths
3. Maintain perspective
4. Generate positive feelings
5. Be realistically optimistic
6. Persevere by being open minded and flexible
7. Reach out to others

Building Resilience impact
 Enabled staff to cope better with the
increasingly demanding work environment
 Better handling of stress and also
identification of people needed assistance
 Teambuilding effect of getting to know
colleagues as people
 Common language of hope

5. Industrial Relations:
Negotiating parties teambuilding and contracting
RSSC: union, staff association and management teams
• First annual teambuilding:
– Trust and interdependency teambuilding exercises
– Negotiating parties behavioural commitments
• Second annual teambuilding:
– Trust and cooperation teambuilding exercises
– Review personal and team behavioural commitments
– Shoes exercise for each party:
• What we think it must feel like to work in that team
• How we think they feel about us
– Ask and offer exercise for each party (incl. targets and actions)
• Third annual teambuilding:
– Interdependency teambuilding exercises (brief)
– Review personal and team behavioural commitments; shoes exercise and ask and offer exercise
– Feedback to each party: carry on, stop and start
– New ask and offer for each party (incl. targets and actions)

Industrial Relations:
Negotiating parties teambuilding and contracting
 Historically adversarial approach
 Interventions implemented to facilitate a
collaborative approach
 Off site negotiations
 Presentations of negotiation positions
 Business context and economic context
 Step change achieved - settlement in record 3
days
 Challenge : changes in committee members

Results : Step Change in Manufacturing
 Distillery
Design
Production rate
 Factory
2009/10 2010/11 2011/12 2012/13
136 KL/day 80 110 120 136
Industry LTA
standard
2009/10 2010/11 2011/12
5% 19% 19% 10.6%

What would we do differently?
 More involvement of senior management
 More integration of interventions and
reporting structures
 Identify and capacitate resilience champions
 Communicate corporate-wide
 Measure impact of specific interventions

Creating employee engagement and sustainable business iperformance

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