Higher employee satisfaction: Doosan Lentjes strengthens its feedback culture

Comprehensive insights into the realities of work

The reasons for the offensive were manifold: "Due to well-filled order books, we grew strongly in recent years – many new colleagues have become part of the Doosan Lentjes family," says Linda Azmee, responsible for Recruiting & Employer Branding at Doosan Lentjes. "In order to counter the serious shortage of skilled workers, which we feel particularly strongly in engineering, we have been thinking about how we can make ourselves attractive to talented people as an employer. In doing so, we have asked ourselves what makes us special and unique as a company. But we didn’t want to do this secretly, quietly in our offices. Rather, we wanted to hear the voices of our colleagues. On closer consideration, we found that the relevant questions overlapped significantly with the topics of the legally required mental risk assessment. We combined the questions – the result is a comprehensive survey on employee satisfaction that gives deep insights into the working realities of our employees.”

Changing working environments

"The situation surrounding the global Corona pandemic has once again increased the need for a continuous feedback culture," adds Diana Baganz, Marketing Manager at Doosan Lentjes and responsible for the project together with Linda Azmee. "Many new colleagues have started their new jobs from the mobile office. How they are doing there, where they see strengths and weaknesses of the company, is essential for them to feel part of Doosan Lentjes. But also our existing employees suddenly found themselves in a changed working world – many meetings only took place via MS Teams. The personal exchange and agreements in the "short official channels" in the coffee kitchen were often no longer possible. And the nationwide trend towards mobile working will continue. The loyalty of employees to the company, considering these framework conditions, will play a decisive role in terms of economic success.”

Employees at the heart of success

"In response to the serious shortage of skilled workers and the changing work environments, we have been driving efforts to establish a stronger and more continuous feedback culture," says Dirk Stokvis, Managing Director of Doosan Lentjes. "Our goal is to make our employees feel like an important and valued part of the company through regular feedback. After all, we know that our products and services are only as good as our employees. They are the ones who develop our technologies and build state-of-the-art plants for our customers all over the world – in a very intense competitive environment." 

Digital extension of the feedback process

Until now, the feedback process consisted primarily of analogue 1:1 conversations between supervisors and employees. This process has now been extensively expanded digitally: Doosan Lentjes uses the CompanyMood software to record feedback for employees at all locations in Germany and abroad. In addition to a "major" employee satisfaction survey, which is conducted once a year, employees have the opportunity to regularly rate their personal mood and to send their feedback directly to their supervisor via a chat function. But CompanyMood also forms the core of the feedback culture that is lived beyond the evaluation. "All measures that we develop together with the colleagues from the feedback are stored in the system transparently and visibly for everyone involved," says Linda Azmee. "Every employee knows at any time which measures have been developed and how they are progressing. In this way, we aspire to optimise interfaces and ensure maximum transparency in the feedback process. It is important to us that everyone who works for us realises that their voice is heard and that it serves as a basis for improvement.”

Valuable information on corporate culture

The results, which have already been evaluated as part of the first employee satisfaction survey, provide valuable information on the corporate culture. They show where there is potential for optimisation, but also reveal clear strengths of the company. Particularly positive is the cohesion within the team and the great trust in the superiors: 96% of the respondents can agree with the statement that the employees help each other. Almost 100% of the respondents stated that they have trust in their colleagues. 94% have trust in their superiors. 96% rate the team cohesion as good. "Even before the survey, we heard many positive voices about social cohesion in our company," says Diana Baganz. "The results now also prove with specific figures that this is one of our greatest strengths. It will be our task to maintain this strength and thus not only to retain our existing employees, but also to inspire new talents to join us. We take this task very seriously. Together, we want to continue to reliably deliver technologies for thermal waste treatment and energy generation that contribute to the achievement of global climate goals".

Doosan Lentjes is headquartered in Ratingen, Germany, and is part of the Korean Doosan Group. In addition to thermal waste treatment, the company’s areas of expertise include technologies for sewage sludge incineration, circulating fluidised bed boilers and flue gas cleaning.