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Call Me Maybe Team focuses on employee engagement
to drive communication

Sometimes the road you start out walking takes unexpected turns, and the final destination is not where you expected to end up when you first plotted your course. The Rapid Innovation/Leadership Summit “Call Me Maybe” communication requests team is the poster child for this sort of evolution.

The problem the team initially set out to solve had them look at the process of story submissions to the Office of Communication. However, as they explored that problem they discovered that employee engagement was really the core issue.

"ITD has a goal to reach a certain level of employee engagement as measured by the OCI culture surveys, but hasn’t yet reached that goal,” explained team member Travis Hitchcock. So we re-framed the problem: There is no strategic system identified that can be used throughout the majority of ITD to get us to our employee engagement goal.”

To address the employee engagement issue, the team used various problem-solving tools and models (root-cause analysis, impact matrix, accountability model) to come up with a system that would bolster engagement throughout ITD.

The team utilized surveys to arrive at a solution.

“Ultimately, we determined that using a Visual Management System (VMS) would fit the bill,” explained Hitchcock. The system contained two elements — a visual management board and a stand-up meeting.

Surveying employees, they found a 22% increase in employee engagement when a VMS is used. In addition, 82% of employees agreed that they would be more engaged if a VMS was present.

As far as “next steps,” the team proposed implementing Visual Management Systems throughout ITD, as well as sustaining ones that have already been implemented. The team will lean on the newly created Employee Communication Council (ECC) for this.

“Our plan is that the ECC will train workgroups on how to use a Visual Management System. and help sustain them across ITD,” Hitchcock said.

Three members from the Leadership Summit team — Hitchcock, Jake Melder and Laura Meyer — also serve on the Council, so they will spearhead the effort to carry out this plan of implementation and sustainment.

A number of sections within ITD are already using the VMS approach, and several others have expressed interest since the summit on Oct. 25, including the STaR (Supporting, Transforming and Reporting) group in DMV, the GEM Drivers Services User Acceptance group, and a group in District 2.

Watch the Call Me Maybe Team video.