Putting Employees First: How We Value Our Most Important Assets

I can list dozens of details that I love about my job at Cubic Transportation Systems. Whether it’s working at the cutting edge of transportation technology that makes a difference to around 40 million people every day, collaborating with incredible industry partners and customers, or taking on a diverse and fascinating range of challenges, I am always excited to come to work and see what’s next on our agenda. But without question, the part of my work that I enjoy the most is interacting with our employees and learning more about the amazing people who make our progress possible.

While the nature of our business brings us in contact with powerful technology and resources, I firmly believe that our talent is our most important asset. Discovering, motivating and rewarding our employees is the key to our success.

Here are three ways we maximize our employees at Cubic:

1 | Regular Feedback and Reflection

It’s not a groundbreaking statement to say that employee surveys and interaction to receive feedback should be an integral part of business. However, it’s the way in which we conduct our reviews and surveys that makes the difference between a productive process and a simple, routine exercise. It is one of my goals as a leader to create a culture at Cubic where our employees feel comfortable speaking openly. What good is a town hall meeting or survey if an employee can’t be honest about their experiences? I have enjoyed being challenged by the honest feedback in our employee surveys, and I’ve been pleased to see that our employees recognize improvements in all categories but in particular those like “innovation,” “leadership” and “teamwork.”

In addition to looking back on the experiences of our employees, it is also an important aspect of our review to include the experiences of our customers. In many cases, we find that the feedback of our customers echoes that of our employees; this well-rounded picture of Cubic performance is vital to shaping our strategy for both short-term and long-term plans.

2 | Free Flow of Information

There are some organizations and businesses where it’s considered good strategy to keep employees focused only on the specific job in front of them; too much information about larger company news or long-term goals is thought of as a distraction. Perhaps that works in other industries, but I believe that the thoughtful and transparent sharing of information is a crucial component of reaching our goals as a company. In addition to making sure that we are all on the same page and working toward the same ends, this transparency helps to keep employees motivated. Young students are often unmotivated when they don’t see the reason for a task: “When will I ever use this?” or “what is the point of this?” Making sure that each employee understands the reason for their work and how it fits into the larger picture as a company is directly related to employee satisfaction.

3 | The “All Hands on Deck” Approach

Cubic is surely not the only company to realize that good employees are the most important resource for success. We can see this in the way businesses compete over talented and promising candidates. Finding and retaining excellent employees is at the top of our priority list, and we maintain a watchful eye on consequential metrics like our number of voluntary exits and the time it takes us to fill an open position.

This is one area of business where getting our current employees involved is absolutely essential: No one can offer a better assessment of what is attractive or unattractive about working at Cubic than our own people! I encourage our employees to get involved and make their voices heard with new strategies for recruiting and rewarding talented workers. When recruitment becomes a company-wide initiative rather than the purview of a few hiring teams, we are able to reach a more rich and expansive pool of potential team members. In this case, we view it as finding both quantity and quality.

What are you doing to motivate your colleagues and team members?