Making all the right connections in China

Jaguar Land Rover colleagues in China are making strides to improve the workplace experience and how they share knowledge and ideas with each other.

Jaguar Land Rover colleagues in China are motoring ahead with a busy programme of initiatives designed to further improve levels of engagement and create an even stronger connection with the brand and its products.

The wide-reaching campaign has already secured some impressive results and supports the Accelerate Workforce Experience objectives of seamless knowledge-sharing and ensuring that over 800 colleagues have a good experience in their workplaces. Mark Wilson, Executive Vice President for Human Resources, comments:

“We had some invaluable feedback from our Pulse Survey where we got lots of ideas from colleagues on what they wanted to see, and we’re focusing our activities around the positive workplace experience we want our colleagues to have. Especially, employees themselves take the initiatives through EDC (Employee Development Committee of JLR China).”

Activities have included a Share Fair event led by the JLR China Office & Property team, where people had the opportunity to recommend new and improved office processes and also suggest extra facilities to ensure this workplace was even more user-friendly and designed around their needs. A survey was used to capture people’s feedback and several key recommendations are being actioned.

Through EDC, more personal touches are designed to create a real sense of Jaguar Land Rover being a family and not just workmates who share an office are also underway.

Everyone’s birthday is recognised and celebrated with a monthly gathering at all sites, which is very well-attended (the lure of cake works the world over) and a Buddy scheme is in place and being further developed so that any new starters feel properly welcomed and successfully inducted into our organisation.

The hugely popular and influential China-based social media app WeChat (which has estimated 1 billion users) is also used for two-way communications with employees. An estimated 95 per cent of colleagues in China have followed the Internal WeChat account – WeJLR. It proves to be a successful way for colleagues to feel fully engaged because they can keep track of company news and events the moment they’re available and just as importantly, join any conversations themselves.

Live video feeds, pictures, surveys, event registration forms and key bulletins are instantly available on WeJLR, and this is proving to be an excellent way to share knowledge and also increase awareness about the Jaguar Land Rover brand.

These activities - designed to ensure colleagues can have a clear input over their working environment and are always in the communications loop - are part of an even more far-reaching programme which Team Talk will be taking a closer look at shortly.