Neil Hayward, HS2 Chief People Officer and WorkBuzz discuss how HS2 reinvented its Employee Experience (EX) by:
Ultimately improving employee engagement by 18%, boosting retention by 9% and becoming the first UK company to achieve the Clear Assured Platinum Award for Equality & Diversity.
High Speed Two Ltd (HS2) is the organisation tasked with building Britain’s high-speed rail network. It is the largest project ever invested in by the UK Government. Phase 1 of the new network, London to Birmingham, is now under construction and is scheduled for completion towards the end of the decade with a price range of c£40-£45 billion. Some 17,000 people are now working on the programme, and this is expected to climb towards c30,000 at peak construction. HS2 is a ‘mega project’ of a size and scale never previously attempted in the UK.
When Neil Hayward, Chief People Officer, joined HS2 back in 2017 he found a company that was in danger of failing.
“There were clear signs of distress in terms of HS2’s reputation, and performance. Their people were disengaged and unmotivated. A lot of change was required. That change had to embrace every aspect of their operating model – structures, systems, processes, governance, as well as their people. The Board signed off a new People and Organization strategy which committed us to doing things differently, with focus on building HS2 as ‘an effective client organization with the right capabilities’ and developing ‘a talented workforce and an inclusive culture’.
Employee voice, a corner stone of engagement wasn't working at HS2. It had run a traditional bi-annual staff engagement survey – it was laborious process and by the time the results were shared with people managers, the feedback was dated. And the single snapshot in time wasn’t keeping up with the rate of change at HS2.”