Pulse survey has become part of everyday life at Gasum – Developing the employee experience is important for us all

Employee experience is an important element in Gasum’s strategy, and the Pulse survey was introduced in the company with this in mind. Emilia Einiö, HRD Manager at Gasum, says that Pulse was brought into use because they wanted to improve the employee experience and develop a culture of agile leadership. This is why the Pulse survey is constantly part of everyday life and the development of team activities at Gasum. This means it is also a continuous process which ensures everyone an opportunity to develop together with Gasum. Since the units and teams have access to accurate and up-to-date information about the employee experience, no annual input is required from the employee or line manager.

As a rule, responses to the Pulse survey are processed internally in teams but they can also be used for developing the activities of the entire organization.

“The Pulse tool helps us to improve the wellbeing of our employees depending on which matters are raised for development,” Einiö says.

The pulse-based survey, which measures employee experience, contains questions describing the employee experience in a different way and all employees can see the results of these questions. The privacy of the respondents is protected since if there are fewer than five responses, they are not published. Transparency and openness have been well taken into account.

The real work is done in the teams

According to Einiö, Gasum personnel generally values empowerment with regard to have freedom to choose how to best perform the job and the meaningful job. On the other hand, there is room for improvement in receiving feedback related to work and how the personnel feel that they can access the information they need to perform in their work.

”It’s important to be able to differentiate between where or from whom employees get the information or feedback they need and so the survey is just one element in the development of the employee experience. The issues that need improvement are discussed in more detail in the discussions within the teams,” Einiö explains.

It is HR’s job to support and help teams and their line managers in discussions and in drawing up improvement measures.

“Employees do not respond to Pulse surveys for the sake of the Management Team or HR, but because they are important for all Gasum employees,” says Einiö.

Gasum also utilizes the Pulse survey in personnel training and training topics have been chosen directly on the basis of results from the Pulse survey. Training deals among other things with giving feedback.

Pulse survey is an object of continuous development

Emilia Einiö thinks that the Pulse survey has been positively received.

”We ask the right things, and these topics are what personnel want to talk about,” says Einiö. Line managers want to know about the personnel’s sentiments, which is why they constantly review the results and ask employees to respond to the surveys. “The Pulse survey has become integrated into everyday life at Gasum,” adds Einiö.

Efforts will be made to continuously develop the Pulse survey to better respond to Gasum’s needs. The first objective was to make the survey part of everyday life and to make it as effortless as possible to respond to. Potential future developments include considering varying the questions to make it easier to prepare trend lines from the responses.

”We are currently reviewing the most important questions and which questions it would be more logical to ask only quarterly or even annually,” says Einiö.