Calgary-based Smart Technologies, maker of Smart Board interactive displays and software used in education and business, has seen firsthand the importance of connecting directly with employees, says CEO Nicholas Svensson. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Svensson took an unconventional step — calling employees individually across the company’s 27-country network, according to Business Insider.
“One day, I decided I needed to call everybody. It was during COVID. Maybe it was just because I was sitting at home going, ‘I wonder what they’re up to, what they’re thinking, what they’re worried about,’” he said, according to report.
The calls quickly became a rich source of insight. “It turned into this really interesting collection of perspectives because we have employees in 27 countries. You get a view of how they’re seeing the economy, their work — what’s working for them, what’s not working.”
From ‘transmit mode’ to ‘receive mode’
According to Business Insider, Svensson said that the calls revealed shortcomings in how the company communicated with its workforce. “Let’s say we just had a town hall. I might ask an employee, ‘What were the things that we talked about?’ ‘Oh, I don’t know.’ Then you go, ‘Clearly the town hall wasn’t grabbing your attention.’”
The experience led Smart Technologies to scale back town halls from monthly to quarterly, focusing more on understanding whether employees actually received key messages. “The other thing that it highlighted to me is that, as a company, we were on ‘transmit mode.’ We never were on ‘receive mode’ for, ‘Did the message sink in? Do you understand what I just told you?’ It’s a basic leadership thing that we were just missing.”
Learning from feedback and addressing mistakes
Direct conversations also influenced decision-making and organizational changes. Svensson shared an example: “We made a couple of changes to our organization last year. We said, ‘We’re investing too heavily in this area. Let’s take the money out of there and park it over here.’ Based on the data, it was the right decision. Based on the feedback from employees, that was the wrong decision. It was like, ‘I can’t believe we did that. We were just turning the corner.’”
Listening closely to staff, particularly engineers, helped shape how projects were managed. “One piece of feedback I got from talking to the product development group was ‘Man, we’re always jumping around from project to project,’ and ‘You guys are changing your minds all the time.’ So, we said, ‘OK, once we start, we’re going to finish a project.’”
The CEO noted that employees now engage more fully, knowing their input is valued. “Engineers are now willing to start new projects more quickly. They’re less cagey about, ‘Is this going to happen?’ So they’re much more apt to engage themselves fully, which is what you need.”
Calls as an ongoing pulse check
Svensson said that calling employees has become a regular part of his leadership approach. “Calling employees has become more of an annual thing — about 10% of the job. The calls are 30 minutes a person. It gives me a sense that I have a finger on the pulse, and so there’s a certain level of kind of calm that comes with that. You have a feel for what’s going on — what’s up, what’s down.”
He added that the one-on-one conversations also help with managerial oversight. “After I had a one-on-one with somebody, I could ping their management saying, ‘Hey, where are we with this?’ — already knowing the answer. So it’s kind of like an audit.”