Improving employee engagement at Toddle: How to keep people engaged during rapid growth.

At Weekly10, improving employee engagement is our main objective. First and foremost, the Weekly10 check-in helps employees become more engaged at work. When employees really click with their roles, it pays dividends in performance, wellbeing and a host of other supporting benefits.

We work with our clients to help them improve employee engagement. No matter where they currently find themselves on their engagement journey, our service has something for you.

And there’s no better example of that than Toddle.

But who are Toddle?

Toddle is a company specialising in natural children’s skincare products, specifically vegan-friendly ones.

Despite only being founded in 2017, Toddle has quickly become a highly successful brand. In just a few short years, they've gone from humble start-up to trusted brand. These days, you'll find their products stocked by likes of Boots, JoJo Maman Bébé and Johnson & Johnson.

But with growth and success come the demands of a larger infrastructure with more employees. As you can imagine, that made things a bit more complicated when it comes to improving employee engagement. So, as the company grew, the need for formal employee engagement policies became much more apparent.

Introducing Hannah

Hannah Saunders is Toddle’s founder and Managing Director, who started out by making lip balms in her kitchen. Before founding her business, Hannah served in the RAF for nine years stemming from her love of travel and adventure.

Toddle’s employee engagement challenges

In our own interview with Hannah, she broke down the engagement challenges her company had to deal with. That gave us the chance to deep-dive into what drove her to seek out Weekly10 and start improving employee engagement in the first place.

‘As we began to grow in early 2018, I found some of my key challenges centered around people; retaining my best employees and great workplace communication across sites and working patterns” says Hannah. I felt that in order to keep hold of the best “Team Toddle” talent I had to ensure that employee engagement became a KPI for the business.’

When we asked Hannah about the challenges she faced, she highlighted a few things in particular:

‘So, the biggest challenges we’ve had with people have been recruiting the right people, and I would say retaining the very talented people. And further to that, I think also making sure that they’re on board with the company direction, with our strategy, because it can be ever-changing in a start-up. And I’ve had some staff working remotely, and so it’s trying to make sure that we’re all working cohesively towards one set of goals.’

So, to summarise, Toddle encountered the following challenges:

• Effective recruitment and onboarding
• Retaining top talent
• Having employees engage with business goals and ideals
• Supporting remote workers and keeping them in the loop

And these are exactly the sorts of things that can be improved when people are highly engaged at work.

Improving employee engagement through Weekly10

Sure, you might be able to make do without formal policy when you’re a small group just getting started. But shoring up employee engagement at start-ups is essential for future success. Now that you know Toddle’s backstory, it’s time we came into the picture.

Let’s look at the role Weekly10 plays in improving employee engagement for our client businesses using Toddle as an example.

Weekly check-ins ensure quick response times

Perhaps the most important benefit of having a weekly employee check-in is its quick response time. Feedback will never have the same impact if it's delivered months after the relevant situation. But weekly feedback exchanges ensure that these events are fresh in everyone's minds. Improving employee engagement with feedback is one of the surest methods we could possibly recommend.

Compared to traditional annual surveys or more technically obtuse applications, Weekly10 is quick and easy to use. We’ve emphasized user-friendliness from the ground up. Our check-ins take just minutes to submit or review, which is just one reason why we’re Toddle’s preferred engagement service.

In Hannah’s own words, ‘Implementing Weekly10 was incredibly easy. A lot of it is automated, with anything that isn’t being a real quick and simple job to setup. I’m not that tech-savvy at all, so if I’m saying it’s easy, it really is!’

Our platform gives your employees a voice

Another reason employee check-ins and engagement go hand-in-hand is that they shed a light on the issues affecting your staff. If employees regularly feel ignored by their managers, any reason they had to engage with their role goes out the window. Ignored employees quickly become ex-employees, so check in now before it’s too late to think about improving employee engagement.

Visibility, clarity and alignment

These are three other ways Weekly10 contributes to improving employee engagement. The recognition-based check-in questions let employees highlight each other’s hard work. That makes it much easier for managers to stay aware of everyone’s contributions. After all, you can't be everywhere at once.

On top of that, our options for goal-setting help to ensure clarity and organisational alignments. SMART Goals make sure that employees receive manageable workloads with clear paths to completion. On the other hand, OKRs link employee contributions to wider company objectives.

And this is one of the main reasons why Hannah and Toddle chose to stick with our platform for the long haul:

‘Weekly10 helps Toddle achieve its objectives through allowing all of my staff to know exactly where we are and where we are trying to get to, without me seeing them every day, every week, every month.'

'The team all know what our KPIs are, what sales we need to be hitting and what conversion rates we need to achieve via the Weekly10 interface and are reminded of this every time they complete their updates.’

So, if you’re struggling to boost engagement in your business, and you’re not sure how to improve employee engagement with feedback, our range of tools and services can help you find your way!

Want more engaged people? Download our free feedback cheat sheet to see how to start.