A strategic approach to employee engagement has helped global manufacturer IFF achieve an exceptional 75% response rate on its diversity and inclusion survey, with employees across 21 countries queuing at workplace kiosks to participate. Jessica Gilbert, IFF’s Global Head of DE&I, attributes this success to three key elements: advance planning, engagement with operational leaders beyond HR, and equipping local teams with culturally adapted communication tools.
Engaging with employees at any level is a challenge. There will always be those who are disengaged, disinterested or for some other reason unwilling to participate in employee surveys.
Engagement rates, of course, vary across industries, across geographies and by size of organisation. Companies with fewer than 1,000 employees tend to achieve higher engagement levels than those with more, and those with large operational populations with thousands of employees who are ‘un-desked’ present a greater challenge than service-based companies who all have a regular seat!
A particular challenge is when an organisation is seeking to engage with staff around a specific topic, such as Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I). But this is where Jessica Gilbert, Global Head of DE&I at IFF appears to have found the winning formula: “It comes down to three key elements,” she explains.
“The first, is that you must plan for the initiative well in advance. In our case, we started work in April for a survey that was planned for October. The second, is that you must engage with stakeholders beyond the HR team to encourage employees to take part, as management have an influential role in positioning this as impacting business strategy. Your regional and local HR people will always be important to you, but so too are the operational leaders like individual plant managers (in our case) who run your manufacturing sites.”
“And third, you must give your partners and cultural ambassadors the right tools to communicate with their spheres of influence. For us that included a communication playbook. We also created posters and flyers that were translated into local languages to make it an ‘easier lift’ for those responsible.”
Putting gender and intersectional equity at the heart of your business
The EDGE employee survey is an integral part of IFF’s drive for the next stage of EDGE Certification. Having partnered with the organisation for the last eight years, IFF was recertified to the ‘Move’ level globally in 2022 – demonstrating that it puts gender and intersectional equity at the heart of its business. Jessica also positioned the survey as part of a larger “We’re Listening” initiative inviting employees to share their voice, as opposed to something separate done solely for EDGE Certification. The EDGE survey, along with the annual employee engagement survey contribute to the development of our people and culture strategy.
The DEI Center of Excellence has intentionally cultivated a trusting working relationship with its regional HR teams and at an individual country level. That trust has been central to the success of its DE&I journey to date. “There was a feeling and recognition that we came in a spirit of partnership,” Jessica continues. “This was not about telling them to ‘do as we say’ without regard to other initiatives impacting our partners’ bandwidth.”
“It was about making it clear what we were trying to achieve, giving them the tools to support their communications, and giving them the flexibility to adapt to when and how they engaged with their own team.”
The structure and concise nature of the survey was useful in encouraging more employees to take part, but so too were some of the practical steps taken by managers in the field. “These included setting up kiosks on site,” Jessica adds, “where people actually queued to take part, in addition to making the survey available through QR codes posted in other areas where employees congregate.”
By any measure, the engagement rates have been exceptional, with an average of more than 75% across the 21 participating countries in which IFF has 200 or more employees.
What we have learned is that you don’t have to control everything, neither is it possible to do so. However, if you give your leaders the right direction, and the right tools, and trust them to know their country, their culture, and their people better than you do, then you can achieve remarkable things.”
Jessica Gilbert
Adopting the EDGE survey as a powerful instrument of change
Jessica describes the EDGE survey as being “a powerful change instrument” and will be comparing the results with the findings of a wider employee engagement survey where similar questions may have been asked. “Because the EDGE survey is specific to DE&I, it asks questions in a very specific way,” she explains.
“A typical employee engagement survey may ask whether an employee would recommend their employer to a friend. The EDGE survey, however, breaks this down further, to distinguish whether there is a difference if the ‘friend’ were a man or a woman.”
Jessica says it is now about connecting the dots between the EDGE survey and the wider piece, and how they can both be used to inform a future DE&I strategy, as well as the whole employee engagement strategy. “To achieve long-lasting change in organizational culture you can’t just ‘react’ to an employee survey and tick boxes. Employee engagement informs your talent strategy, which is also connected to your business strategy.”
Since joining the organisation 18 months ago, Jessica is proud of what the team has achieved and the progress they are making. At the beginning of the year IFF was named the top company in the US for gender equality and 10th globally by Equileap, a benchmark of equality. This represents a jump of 15 places over the previous year.
Nonetheless, there hasn’t been a moment where Jessica thinks she has all the answers. “No one does,” she laughs. “DE&I is constantly evolving, to be successful organizational strategies must continually evolve or they will fail to drive outcomes. This is one of the reasons we appreciate our long-standing partnership with EDGE—as the equity and inclusion conversations evolves, EDGE Foundation has its eyes on the future and looks at how it can continuously raise the standards of what ‘Leading’ looks like.”
“What we have learned is that you don’t have to control everything, neither is it possible to do so. However, if you give your leaders the right direction, and the right tools, and trust them to know their country, their culture, and their people better than you do, then you can achieve remarkable things.”
