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Keystart empowers employees with Korn Ferry Listen

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About Keystart

Keystart has partnered with Korn Ferry to continuously show capacity to listen and act transparently on employee feedback – leading to an increased confidence in the company's leadership.

Keystart is a progressive, purpose-driven organization that delivers high social impact by making the dream of affordable home ownership a reality for thousands of people. Keystart is listed on the AFR Best Places to Work 2021 list and continues their vision of improving the work experience for all employees.

Employee pride and recognition

At Keystart, leaders often talk about their people by using words such as ‘proud’ and ‘pride’ in team meetings. This shows that not only are people proud to work for Keystart as a business, but they are also proud of the people they work with. How did this sense of pride develop?

Using Korn Ferry Listen to generate breakthrough insights

Keystart has previously run surveys which highlighted the need to take action in order to increase communications and overall employee engagement. By partnering with Korn Ferry to implement Korn Ferry Listen, an application which provides survey research solutions that deliver insights across all the touchpoints of an employee’s experience at work, Keystart was able to analyze the data provided and create a strategy plan to move forward.

With Korn Ferry Listen, Keystart was able to generate breakthrough insights, enabling them to attract, motivate and retain talent; improve operating effectiveness; and drive customer loyalty.

With the insights they needed, they made significant improvements in communications and were more effective when addressing the organization. They were also able to address resourcing concerns, which was flagged as an area for focus in the previous survey.

Keystart's leaders continue to show capacity to listen and act transparently on feedback and employees have reported an increase in their confidence in leadership.

Keystart’s value of and commitment to workplace diversity has also showed significant advances.

Korn Ferry Listen

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What sets Keystart apart?

Keystart significantly outperforms the High Performing Norm (a stretch target showing scores from the highest performing organizations) in a number of items, with the greatest standouts around timely decision making (+27), work life balance (+26), receiving feedback (+22), organization being effectively managed (+21) and sharing of ideas and resources (+21). To learn more, download the case study.

Insight from Keystart stakeholders

We spoke to key stakeholders to find out how the company plans to maintain its employee enablement and engagement over the coming months and years.

A strength of yours is around timely decision making and the sharing of ideas and resources. This is something other organizations can struggle with. Do you have any practical examples of what this looks like for Keystart?

The whole business operates under one way of working so there is one rhythm to how things operate. The senior leadership teams meet at frequent intervals to set up priorities, which means the rhythm the business follows and operates under is clear and transparent and things being prioritized are discussed. These decisions are also guided by our values and behavioral framework, which means that people are always clear why a certain decision has been made.

Our leaders are enabled to make decisions, with the business set up in a way which allows them to be quick and agile with decision making.
- Lindsay O’Sullivan, Chief Operating Officer & Claire Properjohn, Executive Manager – Organizational Capability

One of the challenges when you get such great results is how to maintain them. Looking ahead, what are some of the key challenges you may be facing?

We have had a spike in turnover last year like many other organizations. With turnover, you have the risk of losing organizational memory, so when you can see the makeup of a team includes many new people who have not gone on the journey, it’s important not to lose the essence of the organization. This is a really big priority for us – making sure everyone is getting on board with our values and understanding the journey we have been on.

Our genuine commitment to the learning and growth of our people will always continue to be a big focus, not only to add value for employees but strategically it’s important for us to continue to upskill our people.
- Lindsay O’Sullivan, Chief Operating Officer & Claire Properjohn, Executive Manager – Organizational Capability


To read more of the interviews and gain insight on how your organization can benefit from Employee Engagement insights and data, download the case study.