People enjoy working at ARN!

An employee motivation survey is an excellent way of gauging the mindset of employees. Studies carried out by research agency MonitorGroep has shown that satisfied and happy employees are 21 per cent more productive, 37 per cent less likely to call in sick and will remain with the organisation for an average of two years longer. Some 20 ARN employees participated in the survey, which was carried out in October 2022. The results were made public in mid-December.

High score for variety at work

“Practically all our employees are proud to work at ARN, satisfied with their job and feel that they are a good fit with the organisation,” says Communications Manager Martijn Boelhouwer. Employees also displayed a high level of trust in one another, with the average overall score rising from a 7.3 to an 8. As the person responsible for communication within ARN, Boelhouwer is pleased that communication scored an 8. However, “variety in the work” got the highest appreciation score, at 9.3. This was closely followed by the 9.1 given for the options available for working from home, which seems to have become the norm since the outbreak of the corona crisis. “And now that the rules have been relaxed, we often work hybrid, which is to say partly from home and partly from the office. What we are seeing at the office in Breukelen, for example, is that most people spend two or three days a week at the office and, depending on their contracted hours, the other days at home.”

Also well worth a mention is the fact that employees felt that ARN made improvements in several areas, scoring particularly well when it comes to the clarity of the objectives and their own contribution to realising them. The introduction of the A3 year plan by Managing Director Paul Dietz, as well as the entire team’s contribution to its implementation, undoubtedly played a role in this. This plan lists the most important activities for the coming year and specifies the intended results. Being aware of ARN’s objectives, the department’s contribution to realising them and employees’ related performance also scored well.

More systematic approach

While Boelhouwer applauds the good scores for the most important aspects, he concedes that there are also areas in which there is room for improvement. As in the previous survey, in 2021, employees acknowledged that their workload is high, with 67 per cent admitting that time pressure prevents them doing their work as well as they would like to and about half of the respondents saying that they left some work unfinished. “This is certainly an area we intend to work on. We have identified ways we can improve matters by adopting a more systematic approach. Tightening and automating the organisation will create a better overview and offer frameworks in which the work can be done. We also need to be continuously aware of the importance of holding each other to account when it comes to agreements.”

What also stood out in the survey results was the relatively low score for the perceived appreciation of the work done, a point that was also raised during the previous survey. This is now being addressed by inviting an employee to take to the stage during monthly drinks and tell everyone else what he or she is currently doing. “We also intend to celebrate our successes and milestones together more often, encourage one another to compliment colleagues or pay them a little courtesy.”