SSO EEG – flying the flag for colleagues

At Carnival UK we celebrate the diversity of colleagues, encouraging everyone to bring their
whole selves to work. Being free to be yourself means being free to use your voice. That’s why we’ve built a network of Employee Experience Groups (EEG) across Carnival UK to give our people an informal voice to share opinions and experiences.

Working locally within their departments, they use the results of the Pulse Survey to focus their efforts on parts of the employee experience that are most relevant to their teams, They also drive directorate initiatives, supported by their senior leaders, and seek feedback from colleagues on proposed Carnival UK changes and new ideas. 

Speak Up and be heard – the Pulse Survey is your opportunity to tell us what it’s really like working here; the good and the not so good. Survey closes on Friday 26 March.

Take part here. 

To showcase the benefits our EEGs bring to the business and to the colleagues in their departments we’re continuing our series of ‘Flying the flag…’ EEG articles.   

SSO (Shared Services) EEG represents multiple departments across Carnival UK, and is one of the largest EEGs in the business. To ensure all colleagues are fairly represented, the SSO EEG consists of colleagues from each Shared Services department; Planning, People Services & CSSI: Louisa Murray; On Board Revenue, Insight & Data Science: Laura Delcie Davies; People Services: Jo-Ann Gibbs, Molly Wotmon, Rosie Kent; Contact Centre: Jess Sherwood, Sonja Cross, Laila Smith, Emily Hodges, Kerina Young; Technology: Anita Van Den Broek, Sue Still; New Build: Kevin Cheung; Procurement, Supply Chain & Facilities : Carly Yates and Sue Kench.

Representing almost 400 colleagues, the SSO EEG was newly formed not long before the Covid-19 pandemic took hold in early 2020.  Reacting to the new situation we all found ourselves in, the EEG supported, motivated and engaged SSO colleagues by focusing their efforts on creating positive and fun experiences for people to enjoy together while everyone adjusted to remote working:

For 2021, the SSO EEG have three clear objectives:

1. Working with the SSO leadership team to grow and support an environment where everyone can speak up
2. To support our colleagues in creating a consistently positive, engaging culture where we can all thrive
3. Driving change by having open, honest, improvement orientated conversations with the SSO leadership team

As part of their objectives they’re also committed to measuring their impact on the employee experience. In addition to the twice yearly Pulse Survey, the SSO EEG share a quarterly survey with department colleagues to find out more on such things as whether colleagues know who their EEG reps are and how to contact them, what they find useful/beneficial about EEG activity, any ideas for what the EEG should focus on in the future. 

With the support of Chris Lees, their ELT member, they use the results to make sure what they’re working on (as a result of the last Pulse Survey) is still current and relevant to colleagues, alongside identifying future department specific actions and areas of focus. They are also looking into how they keep everyone updated on the positive changes that have happened as a result of the Pulse Survey and their local EEG activity. 

EEG activity within Contact Centre Operations

Jess Sherwood is the SSO EEG lead and representative for her colleagues in Contact Centre Operations (CCO). Here she explains the EEG activity specific to her CCO department: 

“As CCO work differently to the rest of the business (hours, ways of working, IT systems etc) we’ve added extra questions to the EEG survey that really target what matters most to this group of colleagues. Using these results, and those from the Pulse Survey, we’re currently focusing on: 

EEG members focus on improving the employee experience for their colleagues, but there’s lots of positive personal experiences to be had too, as Jess shared;  

When i joined the EEG the role of lead naturally fell to me, but it’s absolutely a team effort – we all play to our individual strengths; i’m just facilitator! Since we started we’ve worked hard to establish EEG process and make the EEG meetings a place where we’re comfortable having courageous conversations.

Personally I really enjoying the networking opportunities the EEG brings – SSO is such a wide spread area of the business, i’d never have met the people i know now if it wasn’t for my EEG role.”

Look out for the next EEG story as part of our ‘Flying the flag,..’ series. 

If you missed it, read ‘Flying the flag for P&O Cruises’ here.