Chamonix

Chamonix are a leading national IT services business that are Great Place to Work certified and an Employer of Choice winner at the Australian Business Awards.

They've been successfully using Teamgage across their organisation, with this customer story particularly focused on its use within their Early Careers Program.

Let's discover what happens when the latest entrants to the workforce are given a voice!

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Getting started

The Chamonix Early Careers Program really helps people make the transition from academic achievements to real-world impact.

One unique aspect of the program is how it requires participants to get involved in real projects at the first opportunity. This allows them to gain first-hand experience of what it means to work for a company that's always agile and flexible in their approach with clients!

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Offering early career employees a voice

Because of this, the Early Careers Program needs to offer a lot of support to those involved. It's here that Teamgage plays a role in acting as a safe, secure and anonymous forum for:

• suggesting an idea or improvement
• asking a "silly question" that otherwise might be hard to raise
• raising a concern or frustration

At Chamonix, these are addressed informally during a meeting where the team look through their Teamgage results together, just before Friday drinks, so everyone feels comfortable.

"It's really a safe space that everyone has access to. Using Teamgage and having that monthly catch up on results is very important to them" said Mandi Gregory, National People and Culture Manager at Chamonix.

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Closing the feedback loop

When using Teamgage, Chamonix make it clear to everyone involved that their voice matters and is heard by the Leadership team.

Without this, survey fatigue can set in and people start to feel anything they raise will just go into a black hole.

"I make it very known that the leadership team look at all Teamgage comments. We also make sure they're referenced in company updates and that we tell everyone how we're addressing certain things" confirmed Mandi.

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Choosing the right questions

For Chamonix, the focus was always on choosing the right questions to ask for each specific team in their organisation. For example, the Early Careers Team wanted to offer some focus to topics like Work Life Balance.

It's working well too, with it now sitting at 97 out of 100 at their last Friday meeting!

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How questions draw out risk

Another question that the Early Careers Team answer is around Innovation and that has surfaced some incredibly powerful insights.

"With Innovation, of course our Graduates can gravitate towards all of the latest technologies around today" said Mandi. "But, you know, our clients may not be ready or best served by using these. They may be a bit risk averse for example, so that has provoked a lot of really great conversations in the team."

Left unsaid, this risk aversion from clients could easily have built up into disillusionment and possibly even resignations within the team. Instead, Chamonix have used their Teamgage results to provide greater context and reassurance.

The same can be said for the Communication question, which initially prompted the Early Careers Team to suggest they'd like to hear more from the boardroom. Again, these Teamgage insights could be directly addressed and expectations set over what information to expect and when.

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3 steps to success

Through using Teamgage, Chamonix have been able to act on other ideas and insights from their teams using the following 3 steps:

1. Identify the main themes from Teamgage
2. Address those directly wherever possible
3. Communicate the theme and resulting action in company updates

This really is best practice use of Teamgage and can lead to lower staff turnover, reduced risk and greater productivity. And the best thing is that many of these actions were as simple as addressing a technical issue or communicating more around an office equipment refresh.

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Using Teamgage with team managers

For many Senior Leaders, Teamgage can also play a role in helping give their discussions with team managers direction.

For example at Chamonix, these meetings happen weekly with Teamgage as an agenda item. This allows space for the team manager to ask any questions they couldn't answer from their team, and for the Senior Leader to bring up any Teamgage comments or results to be discussed in more detail together.

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What they say

I think Teamgage for me is very important in a consulting environment. With our people being out, we don't always hear the water cooler chat, so this keeps those comments coming back to us.

We've also had a restructure in the last year, with new principal consultants in place who each have around 10 employees in their team. Aligning Teamgage to our new structure has really helped me work a lot more closely in terms of their people and teams.

It's made people feel supported throughout that process, so it's definitely helped our business.

Mandi Gregory ‍

National People and Culture Manager, Chamonix

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