During their first year participating in Great Place to Work®’s Certification™ programme, Symphony RetailAI were accredited in all nine countries they were eligible.
Take a look at their latest employee survey scores and it’s easy to see how they achieved this impressive feat:
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95% of employees agree that open and honest feedback is a natural part of work at Symphony RetailAI.
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96% agree that Symphony RetailAI is a safe place to work regardless of sexual orientation.
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94% agree that Symphony RetailAI is a safe place to work regardless of gender.
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94% agree that Symphony RetailAI is a safe place to work regardless of race.
Keep reading to find out why Certification™ was so important to Symphony RetailAI and how they’ve been making the most of their achievement.
The Company
Symphony RetailAI provide end-to-end, integrated AI-powered Merchandising, Marketing and Supply Chain Solutions, for Retailers & CPG Manufacturers
With over 30 years of experience, Symphony RetailAI serve more than 1,200 organizations worldwide – including half of the world’s top 30 grocery retailers and all of the top 25 global CPG manufacturers.
The Challenge
Symphony RetailAI had been running employee experience surveys since 2015, and were happy to see increased engagement through the years. But, as Chief People Officer Samantha Sheriff explains, the pandemic brought a renewed focus:
“2020 and 2021 were years like no other, and we really doubled down on communication and flexibility. We’d also started, like many other companies, to take a much deeper look at how DE&I was perceived in the organization.”
Working with Great Place to Work® meant gaining deeper insight into their employee experience, and the opportunity to be recognised for the great workplace culture they’d worked so hard to build:
“At the end of 2021, we wanted to take a much deeper look at engagement across the organization and the questions with Great Place to Work were of significant interest to us for that reason – they are far reaching and cover many themes. Accreditation was a potential additional bonus if our engagement scores continued to be high – our focus was always about taking a really deep pulse of the organization and ensuring we acted on the feedback.”
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The Solution
Conducting employee surveys with staff spread over fifteen countries is no mean feat, but with Great Place to Work®’s Emprising™ software, Symphony RetailAI were able to do it with ease. With a 90% response rate and impressive Trust Index™ scores, they achieved Certification™ in all nine countries they were eligible.
“Just WOW!” says Samantha. “We are completely overwhelmed with receiving certification in all nine countries we were eligible… This is a collective achievement of all the global Symphony RetailAI employees who have always given such honest and solution focused feedback to help us all create a strong culture and the entire Symphony RetailAI senior leadership team couldn’t be prouder.”
Time to celebrate!
With this impressive accomplishment under their belt, it was time to share the good news with the whole team.
“We told our employees about certification at our quarterly all-hands meeting,” says Samantha. “The reaction was just great and our employees were genuinely happy and proud of the results. We also held a deep-dive session on the results.
Since we’ve shared the news on social media, our employees have been sharing across their social media platforms because they are so proud of working for a Great Place to Work certified company.”
Continuing the Journey
Driving Recruitment
It’s not just current employees who were impressed - Symphony RetailAI are already enjoying the benefits of being a Certified™ company when it comes to recruitment too, as Samantha explains.
“It's only been a month since we received certification but it’s already having a great impact. The face of Talent Acquisition has changed since the pandemic and employees now want more from organizations – having the accreditations puts us in a strong position to really differentiate and we’ve already seen that in the pro-active feedback we’ve received from candidates about being Great Place to Work-Certified.
We’ll be leveraging the feedback we’ve received in the survey to drive higher candidate pipelining for both country and functional specific roles. What a powerful tool we have in our toolbox!”
Samantha is confident that Certification™ will also bring increased retention rates, and has already had ex-employees reach out about returning to the company after the news affirmed what they already knew of Symphony RetailAI’s strong workplace culture.
Customer Impact
A great workplace culture doesn’t just benefit employees, but customers too.
“Engaged employees will always drive strong results and high customer satisfaction,” says Samantha
CEO Chris Koziol agrees, explaining “the people at Symphony RetailAI, who deliver innovation and excellence for our customers every day, show up in a way that is truly awe-inspiring, making a difference in everything they do and driving strong results for the Company and our customers. This only happens in organizations where people have high trust in the company and our results reflect that fact.”
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Lessons Learnt
So, what advice would Samantha offer to global companies looking to create consistently great employee experience across the world?
“Be visible, communicate and at times, over-communicate, be open to questions from employees and answer the tough questions as well as the easy ones. Doing so builds credibility.
This is important in any organization but even more so in a global organization like Symphony RetailAI, where we have employees across 15 countries (and increasing!).
All companies are to some degree, now remote, and doubling down on the genuine employee experience is so critical to retention, engagement and talent acquisition. Employees have lots of options outside of your organization and so your focus on the experience of employees is needed more than ever – it just makes great business sense!”
Spreading the word
Being Certified™ means Symphony RetailAI are part of a global community of people-first companies, and this Certification Nation Day they’ll be celebrating their achievement along with them.
Samantha and her cat preparing for Certification Nation Day
“What an honour to be able to celebrate our Great Place to Work Certification with other accredited organizations,” says Samantha. “We’ll be continuing to shout about our incredible achievements on social media and will be celebrating other organisations who have achieved accreditation too!”
Ready to get Certified™?
Find out more about how Certification™️ can give your organisation a workplace culture advantage here.
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