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News Release from: Eclipse Marketing
Edited by the Marketingservicestalk Editorial
Team on 13 June 2008
Project Saros takes off
Project Saros is one of the most important programmes that database marketing company Eclipse Marketing has run in recent years.
Project Saros is not a marketing campaign for one of its clients: it's more fundamental than that Launched with a flourish at the beginning of May, Project Saros is a far-reaching programme to enable Eclipse to develop and enhance its internal workplace culture
This article was originally published on Marketingservicestalk on 31 Jul 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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"We're running the whole project like a slick marketing programme, with a teaser campaign and promotional incentives in the run-up, and a website and blog to support the roll-out," said James Le Roth, Eclipse's contact centre director.
"And we've given it the project name of Saros".
At the start of the project, all Eclipse employees came to work to find goodie bags of sweets on their desks.
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"As with any marketing campaign, the idea was to arouse curiosity and whet their appetites for what was to follow," said Le Roth.
The methodology adopted is based on Appreciative Inquiry (AI), a technique that encourages organisations to look at what is working and finding ways to do more of that, rather than fixating on problems.
"AI is different because it focuses on positive experiences," explained Le Roth, who, having been through the process before with two previous employers, is an enthusiastic AI advocate.
"Instead of whingeing about the negative, AI looks at the organisation from a positive standpoint.
"It said, 'Let's focus on what we do well and do more of it; let's mould the way we work around our positive experiences; let's use them as a framework to change, starting from the positives, rather than the negatives.
"It may sound rather woolly and simplistic, but it's not: it's actually a very practical and commonsense way of developing a successful company culture.
"People may be sceptical at first but I can vouch for the fact that it is remarkably effective and useful".
Why embark on this soul-searching process? Eclipse is a company with ambitious plans for growth and strong ideas about the kind of business it wants to evolve into.
"While we recognise the many good things we do as a business, if we want to expand and achieve our plans, we have to change, adopt more efficient, effective and streamlined ways of working, and allow our staff to take on more responsibilities and be more accountable.
"It's about keeping the best of the good and moving on".
Eclipse is currently going through the initial phase of the programme, a discussion stage that involves everyone in the company, from all departments and at every level, on a one-to-one basis.
Everyone participates in the discussions.
Each member of staff gets the opportunity to assume the role of both interviewer and the interviewee in a closed loop, until everyone has had their say.
The questions have been agreed beforehand and are deliberately couched in plain English.
Key areas have been identified for scrutiny and the questions framed around them.
Some of the areas to be tackled are empowerment, recognition and reward, communication and collaboration.
"In the area of communication and collaboration, for instance, people might be asked to think about activities they've been involved in where they felt their team had collaborated and communicated really well.
"Then they look at why that approach worked and how it could be applied to other projects in the future," Le Roth explained.
"Improving collaboration within the company is one of our main priorities: we need to learn to work more cross-functionally.
"Our client services staff are at one location and our technical teams on the other.
"By learning to work more together, we hope to minimise the impact of that physical barrier.
"It's something like the technique of visualisation that plays such a big part in sports psychology:sports people imagine themselves winning as a way of improving their performance and that's just what we are doing".
The discussion part of the process over, the next stage for Eclipse will be to take the feedback from staff, analyse the responses, amplify the positive points that emerge and feed them back into the organisation.
What are the benefits of AI? Eclipse believes the technique will help it work more efficiently, cost-effectively and responsively, ultimately boosting the company's productivity and profitability, and providing a better service for clients.
In addition, it is anticipated that the positive effects will help reduce staff sickness and churn levels and improve retention.
This phase of project Saros will take approximately three months to implement, though the programme is ongoing.
"Saros will certainly continue as a workplace culture activity after this initial phase.
"What we will be doing here in three months time will very much depend on what we learn from this phase.
"We are committed to seeing it through.
"As a business, we are constantly aware of the need to gain a competitive edge.
"As an employer we want to engage and empower our staff, so they stay with us.
"As an agency we want to find better ways of doing a great job for our clients.
It's as simple as that," Le Roth concluded.
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