How Mars engages: A family business on a global scale
Liz Clayton-Jones’s role as Engagement Business Partner for Mars UK makes her responsible for enabling employee engagement through strategy, training and communication. Glass Digital Media were lucky enough to attend Liz’s talk ‘How Family Firm Mars Engages its People’ organised by Engage for Change as part of their #GrouchoBreakfast series at London’s Groucho Club.
Liz began by telling the audience about the history of Mars and how its early beginnings still affect the organisation’s core values today. Mars began as a family business in 1911 and is still to this day family-owned. Mars is more famously known for it’s chocolate but has a huge product portfolio under its belt: everything from pet food to coffee.
Liz introduced Mars’ five principles used across the organisation; Quality, Responsibility, Mutuality, Efficiency and Freedom. These principles were introduced in 1947 so have a deep-rooted history within the organisation; they play an important role in any decision-making and are the essence of engagement activities.
“If you are status-driven then Mars probably isn’t for you.”
Interestingly, Mars refer to their employees as associates in order to create a sense that they are working with Mars rather than working for Mars, creating a sense of being in it together. There are no PAs and a small number of secretaries that are shared between staff. There is a single status cafeteria and everyone is entitled to the same treatment throughout the organisation.
Having an engaged workforce didn’t happen by accident for Mars. Liz spoke openly about the first global engagement survey that the organisation conducted over its 32,000 employees.
“The results were quite shocking and in the bottom quartile of engagement levels; only 18% were actively engaged, with a worrying 23% actively disengaged.”
Liz realised that in order to make change happen Mars needed to take action and do things differently. Mars decided to set a robust strategy in order to increase engagement levels. The strategy focused on 5 key points of action.
- Hold managers accountable — the day-to-day relationship between a manager and their team is vital to how engaged people feel within an organisation.
- Recruit, develop and engage — Only 1 in 10 line managers will have the skills to manage; it’s highly important to nurture your staff.
- Celebrate and replicate the performance of your best employees.
- Identify systematic barriers to engagement and act upon them.
- An in-depth ‘onboarding programme’ helps new employees to learn about the history of Mars and its essence. In turn involving them in the core values and principles of the organisation.
By following these steps, Mars managed to really turn around the engagement levels of their employees. The organisation has seen rapid growth and now has 78,000 staff globally. Creating a truly engaged workforce isn’t always easy and there are no shortcuts but is vital to every aspect of an organisation; not just profitability.
Mars’ family values and core principles once again helped to mould their engagement initiatives and it sounds like they are reaping the benefits. Liz gave a truly insightful talk and left the audience with a lot of food for thought, and not just chocolate!
Check out the Storify of the event. For more information on upcoming #GrouchoBreakfast meetings you can follow Engage4Change on Twitter.
