SITUATION/PROBLEM DESCRIPTION: 
In its business, Provident cooperates with approximately 2000 permanent employees and about 11000 representatives in the field. Ensuring good communication and effectively functioning management system between the headquarters, employees and co-operants presents a great challenge.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION/SOLUTION:
The Project of the Employee’s Forum enables involving employees in decision processes, giving feedback and presenting one’s comments, offering streamlining proposals, integrating people and promoting employees with the biggest potential.

The Forum is a series of recurring regional and corporate meetings coordinated by one specially designated person who daily stays in touch with a group of 70 field representatives who closely cooperate with the headquarters. Representatives collect ideas among the employees in their branch or subsidiary and then they present them at the Regional Forum meetings. Then they take a joint decision which ideas should be shared on the Central Forum. The proposed solutions are discussed during the Corporate Meeting with the Board. The leader of the Forum is the Vice President of the company. He participates in all the Corporate Meetings and in the majority of Regional Meetings.
Since the Forum was created (three years ago) a number of improvements were introduced:

• The project was transferred from the HR to Communications department, which generated greater interest and involvement on the part of employees. It also benefited in acquiring a complete communication strategy making the forum a main tool of internal communication in Provident Polska;
• The tenure of representatives was prolonged to 2 years, which creates opportunity for better emotional involvement in the proposed projects;
• New rules enable many terms in the office, which cut the rotation of representatives and contribute to higher quality of their work;
• Direct involvement of the board (vice president) brought higher involvement among employees and gave the sense of weight to the project;
• A new job (Forum Coordinator) was created for a person who exclusively deals with matters concerning the Forum;
• Giving feedback has been emphasised – there are clearly defined communication paths within the Forum and they take into consideration particular levels of analysing ideas and informing the originator about the reasons for rejecting their ideas or about the effects of its implementation;
• Each edition starts with the meeting for all representatives and it is combined with the training which is additionally motivating for employees to take part in the Forum.

BENEFITS:

• Employees feel they have impact on changes in the company as well as they have a chance to realise their ambitious projects, and by doing this they get new experience and prestige;
• It develops the company and initiates a better flow of information between employees and the board, also improvement in the operation has been observed;
• The project became the basis for twin projects realised in other worldwide divisions of the company and in the headquarters, from where the representatives contact coordinators of the project with request to share information and experience;

CHALLENGES:

• Low innovative character of solutions proposed by employees;
• Decreasing interest among employees;
• Lack of support for the project from regional managers, who did not see benefits of sending a valuable employee to the Forum meetings;
• Insufficient communication about the Forum, especially of achieved successes;
• Ineffective territorial division made the representatives travel to the remote places.

WORTH REMEMBERING:

• Direct involvement of the board in the realisation of a given project shows employees that the project is important for the company, which makes employees more willing to get involved! They appreciate the employees who are engaged in the projects.
• Communication on the progress and implementation of the project proposed by the employees is essential.