The best company to be a part of! That is something Kollmorgen is trying to live up to. We had a conversation with Malin Nielsen, Global HR Manager, and Martin Törnqvist, Application Engineer Manager, to talk about how they analyze the temperature in the company – focusing on the positive to aim for a culture where everyone feels they can contribute.  

“We are using a weekly pulse tool for our organization, which makes it easier to gather our teams and talk more in-depth about a situation and compare it to an ideal situation. It’s a good tool to answering questions and then talk about them with your colleagues. It develops good conversations where different opinions get discussed.”  

But does it only take one tool to work on the engagement in a company of over 100 employees? Of course not. Malin Nielsen emphasizes the importance of working continuously with engagement. In addition to the weekly survey, we are doing a bigger survey every year – to gather more in-depth information on how everyone feels in the company.  

 

” It’s super important to work with the employee engagement – it does not only increase the company’s revenue but also increases the motivation and efficiency as well as having more fun at work. That’s why we work with continuous improvements regarding engagement, weekly follow-ups, and yearly action plans. Our differentiator is not that we work with our mission, vision, and values but how we do it. A couple of years ago, we had a workshop with all our employees – to get aligned on what kind of behaviors we see that we need to live our values and reach our vision. These behaviors were gathered and are now our compass. It was a bottom-up process where everyone was included.”

  With more attention to our culture, you can tell that the helpfulness and the entrepreneurial spirit are what was central when we developed our compass words.  

“You don’t build a culture. A culture lives, develops, and changes through time. The more we talk about the purpose of our culture, the more genuine it becomes. To find the time to discuss and describe to others how you want things gives a certain value itself. You can tell we are all different individuals while discussing different topics. It makes it effective and also gives the employees the feeling of inclusiveness and ownership.”

    But one of the best things about using an engagement pulse tool is that you can catch things early on. Martin explains:  

” The key to success is that people in a managerial position walk the talk. We need to show why this is important to use and take action on the things you see in the app survey. People will not take it seriously if you don’t show what difference it makes. We need to use the results from the weekly and yearly engagement surveys to get the best value from it. And I think we do that here at Kollmorgen.”