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Mobilising Employees to Boost Growth

How a Medical Device Company Unified 90,000 Employees To Drive Free Cash Flow

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

A global medical device company partnered with BI WORLDWIDE to drive a unified corporate goal of improving free cash flow. Through a comprehensive employee engagement initiative, the company successfully aligned its 90,000 employees across the globe to meet their two-year financial target in just one year, leading to a substantial increase in their stock valuation.

Key Snapshots

90%

of offline employees, and 75% of online employees,

engaged in foundational learning

61%

of employees made role-specific personal commitments

30%

increase in stock valuation

The Situation

Unifying a global workforce around a common goal

A leading medical device company, renowned for its life-saving innovations, aimed to leverage its expanded market presence following a strategic merger. This strategic move broadened their reach and positioned them for significant growth. However, a crucial element for success was missing: a unified workforce aligned with the company’s financial goals.

The Challenge

Aligning the workforce with corporate financial goals

Despite the promise of growth, financial analysts reported that the merged entity had failed to meet performance expectations. Employee engagement lagged behind, and a significant number of employees had not registered their company-issued stock. indicating a disconnect with the company’s financial health. This suggested a lack of understanding of free cash flow, a metric reflecting the company’s ability to invest in growth and reduce debt.

Further complicating matters, 30% of the newly merged workforce spanned 60 locations across the globe, presenting a language barrier that needed to be addressed. To unlock the full potential of the merger and achieve their ambitious financial goals, the company needed to bridge this gap and foster a culture of ownership among its global workforce.

The Solution

Implementing the free cash flow initiative

To bridge this gap, BI WORLDWIDE collaborated with the company to create an integrated engagement initiative based on the “Progression of Engagement” model, which focuses on three pillars: Learn, Commit, and Act.

Learn: Employees received training on the importance of free cash flow, its impact, and how they could contribute. This was delivered through 90-second training nuggets, quizzes, and certifications. Managers were trained first to ensure they could reinforce the message with their teams.
Commit: Employees were asked to sign a pledge supporting the mission, with 61% making role-specific commitments. The initiative included over 60 actions and behaviours tailored to different roles within the company.
Act: BI WORLDWIDE facilitated idea blitz campaigns to encourage employees to brainstorm and implement ideas for improving free cash flow. This effort resulted in over 4,000 actionable ideas from around the world, identifying significant cost-saving initiatives.

The initiative was supported by a comprehensive communications campaign, including executive messaging, company-wide narratives, segmented content strategies, surveys, and local engagement materials. Recognition points, redeemable for rewards such as merchandise, event tickets, travel experiences and more, were incorporated to reinforce learning, commitment, and actions. These rewards were also tailored to be relevant to different geographies and work environments.

The Results

Strategic engagement for financial success

The initiative delivered remarkable results:

75% of online and 90% of offline employees engaged in foundational learning.
61% of employees made role-specific commitments.
90,000 global employees were aligned and inspired to contribute to the corporate goal.
The company achieved its two-year free-cash-flow goal in just one year.
The stock valuation saw a significant increase of 30%, with the CEO attributing a large part of this success to the employee engagement initiative.

This employee engagement initiative unified a global workforce around a common organisational goal, highlighting the transformative power of a well-designed engagement strategy in driving corporate success.