December 2, 2021
Amy Bouthilet, Vice President of Global Talent at Alta Resources, was recently interviewed by Gallup, the global analytics and leadership consultancy firm, for its ‘Called to Coach’ podcast. In the episode “How an Engaging Culture Positions Alta Resources for Going Beyond Boundaries”, Amy discusses the decision to make employee retention a top-tier priority nearly five years ago, the continuous improvement strategy developed with Gallup’s mentorship, and the results Alta has seen since its first company-wide engagement rollout.
“Alta Resources’ mission is to provide resources and create solutions that maximize customer relationships. Well, our resources are our people––people who serve our client program partners to take care of their customers. So, it was important to us that we take care of our resources.” said Bouthilet. In 2017, Alta deemed Employee Engagement a Strategic Mandate, making it one of Alta’s top four highest-level company-wide priorities, requiring a strategic solution put in place.
Alta partnered with Gallup, who then navigated Alta through best practices and actionable strategies around employee retention. From there, Alta developed its own engagement framework, including leader coaching, employee-empowered opportunity development, and team building.
Alta first surveyed its employees in 2018 to establish its baseline. “The survey is not a measurement tool––it is part of a leader development and engagement process, where employees understand their voices matter, and leaders understand where continuous improvement opportunities exist. Seeing the results, we can determine how to move forward,” said Bouthilet. Samantha Reshel, Regional Manager at Gallup said, “Engagement does not happen overnight. You take your first measurement, you get your baseline, and then the ultimate goal is to see consistent, sustainable progress over time. The data Alta shared, complementary to the actions leadership took to drive engagement within their organization, is such a great example of what can be possible with that consistent, intentional effort around engagement within your organization.”
In fact, in 2021, Alta has seen some of its lowest attrition rates, with a 20% reduction in turnover. Bouthilet reports team members and leaders are feeling more connected than ever, both groups feeling more empowered. “Our employees have a collective knowledge that affords them to solve some very complex challenges, so we want to foster a culture where those decisions are made from the bottom-up, side-to-side, and anything in between. It is not only productive, it builds trust and credibility at all levels.”
It was important that the engagement strategies didn’t distract from Alta’s other pillars. With customer care being Alta’s core service, team performance had to be another key metric during engagement implementation. “We’ve got seven Guiding Principles at Alta, and the top one is Results. We’re constantly asking, ‘What justifies us to say whether an engagement strategy was successful? What measures are we going to look at?’” Performance didn’t waver, and Alta saw an increase in customer satisfaction and loyalty in 2021.
“The work-from-home flexibility led to some really strong results from a retention perspective, but had we not had that Gallup foundation, and had we not already rolled out [our leader coaching], it could have backfired pretty significantly, because employees would not have felt cared for. A lot of the steps we’ve taken over the course of the last few years made us even more ready for the recent global external factors and changing the way we work. And we’ve had great results because of those efforts.”
Listen to the full Gallup “Called to Coach” podcast episode. To read Gallup’s case study, click here.
