CLIENT: QUALTRICS
Qualtrics, the leader in customer experience and creator of the Experience Management (XM) category, is changing the way organizations manage and improve the four core experiences of business—customer, employee, product, and brand. Over 11,000 organisations around the world are using Qualtrics to listen, understand, and take action on experience data (X-data™)—the beliefs, emotions, and intentions that tell you why things are happening, and what to do about it. The Qualtrics XM Platform™ is a system of action that helps businesses attract customers who stay longer and buy more, engage employees who build a positive culture, develop breakthrough products people love, and build a brand people are passionate about.
THE CHALLENGE
Qualtrics has seen record growth across the company in the past few years. To support the company’s impressive year-over-year growth, leaders hired new employees at an impressive rate.
According to Joel Huntington, Director & Global Head of Delivery for CoreXM, BX, and Research Services, their growing workforce and rapid recruiting strategy created natural onboarding challenges. Leaders were looking for ways to help new employees quickly integrate into the business and be productive and effective starting day one—a challenge in such a fastpaced environment.
That’s why, in addition to measuring top-line revenue, margin, and customer satisfaction, leaders watched employee engagement scores closely as a vital sign of success.
THE SOLUTION
To address the challenges, Qualtrics sent forty members of the Qualtrics delivery team to Getting Things Done®, a one-day course by Crucial Learning. GTD™ skills enable people to make more strategic decisions about where to invest their time and energy, focus on the right priorities, and prevent critical projects from slipping.
The course taught employees new skills for managing the constant flow of requests, tasks, and interruptions people face at all levels of the organisation.
To ensure success and skill transference, employees attended a one-hour booster session six weeks later. Huntington also provided coaching and support at the executive level. He told his team he was so committed to the practice; that if they observed him not using his GTD™ skills, they could take a book from a stack of GTD books on his desk, each stuffed with a $10 bill. His leadership support was vital to embedding the skills into the team’s culture.
THE RESULTS
Following the Getting Things Done™ learning experience, Huntington saw improvements in the team’s ability to organize and prioritise work.
Stephen Kelly, Operations Manager in the Qualtrics Dublin office, says his team members are more organized and have enjoy better work/life balance as a result of the course.
“My team is much more organized with their lists or apps that help them track their inputs and ideas,” says Kelly. “ They are also minding their calendars and blocking out time to get work done so they aren’t taken over with meetings. It’s those kinds of small things that have actually made a big impact on employees.”
As the team continues to practice the skills and see results, GTD is increasingly becoming part of the culture. So much so, that many of the principles and skills have been incorporated into their employee onboarding program and resources.
“We’ve tucked the language of GTD into onboarding,” says Kelly. “New team members will be familiar with some of the GTD principles very early on in their career with Qualtrics.”
According to post-training surveys, the GTD skills have significantly impacted team members across the board. Twelve weeks after they took the course, results show:
- 96% of GTD graduates report they save time EACH day as a result of using the GTD skills. Specifically, 31 percent say they save 1–20 minutes, 46 percent save 21–40 minutes, and 19 percent save 41–60 minutes a day.
- 88% say GTD has helped them reduce their daily stress on the job.
- 100% report an improvement in their ability to hit deadlines and deliver on commitments.
- 96% say GTD has helped them improve their daily effectiveness or ability to execute and stay on course.
- 9 out of 10 say they process more of their email inbox after GTD.
In addition, Huntington sees how Getting Things Done has contributed to tangible financial results with his team’s overall profitability.
“GTD obviously correlates to productivity and efficiency,” he says. “It’s clear to me that results of profitability are driven by the greater amount of efficiency gained by people and leaders who are just more productive and who are getting things done.”
RESULTS AT A GLANCE
- 96% of GTD training graduates report they save time EACH day as a result of using the GTD skills
- 88% say GTD has helped them reduce their daily stress on the job
- 100% report an improvement in their ability to hit deadlines and deliver on commitments
- 96% say GTD has helped them improve their daily effectiveness or ability to execute and stay on course
