How satisfied are employees at Albi, a company that specializes in gifts of all kinds? This is what the HR department has repeatedly employed Arnold to ask their people over the last two years. There were some administrative complexities to deal with, but everything was sorted out in the end and the survey produced interesting results depending on the different branches.
Albi operates in a somewhat specific way. Its people are spread across the country, whether in sales offices, headquarters or warehouses. This is why Albi didn’t want to use a consultancy company to go around the branches mapping employee satisfaction. So when Lenka Němcová, head of the HR department, read in the LMC magazine about the possibility of using a chatbot for the survey, it became clear. Questionnaire surveys via Google forms, which Albi had used a few times until then, did not have a very high return rate.
Albi launched their first satisfaction survey in October 2020. Approximately 75% of their 450 employees responded. And their satisfaction? It turned out to be 95%. “Our people especially appreciated the company benefits, which we do in our own way, a range of somewhat tailor-made experiences. I’m quite proud of that,” says Lenka Němcová.
In addition, the survey revealed how much employees care about the company’s environmental performance. Therefore, based on the results, they added bins for sorting waste to the workplace. A third important insight that Albi could quite easily help some of its employees with was a lack of company uniforms. That’s why they increased the amount per individual.
However, in the case of some employees, it wasn’t easy to send out the survey. They don’t have company email addresses. This involved some of the salespeople and warehouse workers. “We therefore had to obtain private email addresses from them, as well as consent to the handling of personal data. That delayed the survey a bit,” explains Lenka Němcová. However, it was not an insurmountable problem. The company also let the managers know about the upcoming survey and held several meetings with them. A third form of communication was leaflets sent out to the branches.
A second satisfaction survey was completed by Albi employees in 2021. Again, three quarters of respondents answered, but satisfaction had fallen by 4%. The HR department, however, does not see this as fatal. Thanks to Arnold, they found out, among other things, that some employees lack information, because they only receive it through team leaders, and this communication channel is sometimes a little rusty. One branch was also lacking a forklift, which the company didn’t hesitate to purchase.
The experience with Arnold has proved so successful at Albi that they’re planning further surveys. They’re going to investigate the topic of onboarding, and after that they want to use it to identify corporate values.
