The Challenge

Recognizing that employees were an integral part of acquiring and keeping customers, a leading US health insurance provider sought to understand and improve the employee experience.

What We Did

Applied Marketing Science (AMS) evaluated the full range of employee experiences. Research included senior and mid-level managers as well as junior, newly hired personnel and support staff. Topics included everything from functional issues related to IT systems and training to more emotional issues, such as perceptions of fairness and manager objectivity in the workplace.

AMS led the initiative, which involved:

• Comprehensive qualitative research using our best-in-class techniques to identify a comprehensive understanding of the employee experience.
• Systematic quantitative research, including a survey of employees involving a tradeoff analysis (MaxDiff) to understand what is important to employees.
• Facilitation of an ideation-generation session to translate employee expectations into tangible actions our client could develop to improve the employee experience.

The Outcome

Our employee research provided guidance for the development of specific actions on the part of our client. Findings revealed significant differences in the perceptions of senior managers relative to mid-level, junior and support staff on issues related to fairness, objectivity and opportunity in the workplace. Perceptions relating to unsystematic handling of employee workload, vacation time, reviews and office space selection all contributed to an overall environment of perceived lack of fairness. In addition, mid-level managers in particular felt their concerns were ignored by senior management, and that senior managers were more concerned with themselves than the good of the company or team. The findings provided specific guidance for the company, who implemented short-and-long term changes in several areas