How Strauss Adriatic used Heartcount as an additional communication tool

From the very beginning, they paid a lot of attention to building their name, as it stands for high standards and product quality. In 2003 Strauss became a part of Strauss International, which meant more investments in both technology and the people. Their core values are: passion, responsibility, care, courage and team.

What challenges did you face before using the tool?

As always, when starting to use something new, the obstacles are more in our heads than in reality. This is why we, at HR, were mostly skeptical about whether the digital platform for something so delicate like employee satisfaction and motivation would be easily accepted by our employees in the production department and sales. Despite the fact that we know that most people are digitally literate today as they use phones and computers actively, we were still afraid that we won’t be able to motivate our colleagues to actively participate in this initiative.

How did you overcome your challenges, and what results have you achieved using Heartcount?

There are two ways to overcome all the obstacles and motivate employees to take part in any initiative, including using this kind of platform. One of them is good and transparent communication of the purpose of what we do. Heartcount is presented and explained in just the right way: it is an additional communication tool, a way to improve working conditions and business processes.

Another way is to show employees that this platform would allow their voices to be heard and that their decision to use this tool is recognised and really appreciated. This is how you motivate employees to stay engaged. In Strauss Adriatic, we seriously considered all the information we gained through the platform — we communicated with our employees directly, and took notice of all their alarming behaviors. We were also additionally engaged on many fields, from making small changes like getting new water thermos for every employee on the field to making more complex and more demanding changes like improving leadership skills in some teams.

Which HeartCount features do you like the most and why?

I get the impression that employees mostly like the praise feature, which allows them to praise each other. This is not something unusual: people like to hear good things about themselves or be recognized by their teammates. This is an important part of Heartcount because it helps the management to learn more about which employees make our work easier and nicer.

This also inspired us to award not only the people who were praised by their colleagues but also the ones who gave praises because this identifying good teamwork and making recognitions is the behavior we want to nurture.

Can you share the 3 HeartCount’s benefits you liked the most?

This is not a hard question, as the most important impacts of the platform has been clearly recognized by the entire team:

• The opportunity for each employee (from different cities, production department, from the field…) to directly communicate with HR and the management. This is important on so many levels: employees can give their suggestions, recognize risks, complain about problems, address certain needs.
• Making notes of trends and tendencies like in a “live” show. Since we were accustomed to measuring our employees’ level of engagement once a year or once in two years, this is a complete change of the approach to this important business aspect. Now nobody has an excuse for not taking preventive measures and reacting to many situations, which is great.
• Praises our colleagues receive from each other: the culture of recognizing someone’s contribution is precious. It makes us be more positive, more constructive, and willing to show our gratitude. This culture is important on so many levels, and this is why it is necessary to emphasize this capability of Heartcount.