Improving agility through rich, real-time employee feedback

The Challenge

Stroke Association is a not-for-profit organisation established to prevent stroke and help stroke survivors. With a team of 3,200 – made up of 700 staff and 2,500 volunteers – Stroke Association is represented across the UK, from roles in the community to multi-directorate office hubs. That means it can offer support to those affected by stroke throughout the country, but it also means that finding ways to stay agile, by understanding both volunteer and employee engagement, can be challenging.

After launching its new strategy in 2019, it needed to make sure their people stayed engaged to deliver it. That required rich, real-time feedback that would enable leaders and managers to make Stroke Association a great place to work, support volunteers and grow – with increased motivation and engagement.

“As we looked to become more agile, understanding how our people felt became critical – feedback loops needed to be strengthened, and made more meaningful.“

Kyla Lacey-Davidson | Associate Director of People Experience

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The Solution

Qlearsite began a listening journey with the Stroke Association back in 2019. Their focus was to provide an opportunity for staff and volunteers to share how they felt about working or volunteering at the Stroke Association, and collect data and insight on what worked and what needed to improve, including where and how their experiences differed.

In the first year, we ran an Engagement Survey – allowing Stroke to more easily understand both their volunteer and employee populations, thanks to the ability to separate out groups and demographics on our platform. This also gave them both a traditional ‘engagement’ score, and our Organisational Fitness overlay for a deeper understanding of overall resilience.

“Needed a partner that was an expert on the questions. Someathing that would work across two audiences – staff and volunteers.“

Kyla Lacey-Davidson | Associate Director of People Experience

The Impact

Not only did the Stroke Association receive an overall engagement score of 84%, it also became clear that there was significant overlap between staff and volunteer experiences – so differentiating their approach didn’t need to be a focus.

Proactively uncovering the nature of their high engagement score meant the Stroke Association could continue nurturing their strengths – ‘Experience’, ‘Customer’, and ‘Motivation’ – and focus on opportunities to drive change, like ‘Innovation’. Having that sense of direction meant they could be effective in pushing towards becoming a more agile and empowered organisation.

“We wanted to focus on the rich narrative that open text questions give us, moving away from expecting numbers to speak for our people. But we needed the right technology to analyse that data quickly and cleverly.”

⁠— Kyla Lacey-Davidson | Associate Director of People Experience