15Five Empowers Aptiv Connected Services to Thrive
Aptiv Connected Services Realizes a 640% Increase in eNPS with Support from 15Five’s Transformational Services, Coaching, & Development Team
ABOUT
Aptiv Connected Services (ACS) provides data acquisition and analysis solutions that help vehicle suppliers, manufacturers, and fleets turn vehicle data into actionable insights. Its end-to-end vehicle data platform collects, processes, and analyzes data within the vehicle to help lower costs, improve product quality, and enhance the customer experience. ACS is a division of Aptiv, a global leader in enterprise mobility solutions with more than 160,000 employees in 44 countries.
Size: 160,000+ employees
Problem
ACS needed to re-engage their people and culture, which had been negatively impacted by the sudden shift to remote work in early 2020. The majority of their employees had never worked remotely before and lacked the necessary skills to successfully adapt to a virtual work environment. Executive leadership was committed to providing their people with tools and training to help them lead, grow, and reimagine teamwork in a remote world.
Action
15Five coached and developed ACS managers to personally adapt to remote work, and to effectively manage their remote teams in maintaining productivity and resilience in the face of the dramatic change brought on by the global pandemic, including how to stay connected and aligned in the face of uncertainty.
Managers learned science-based, remote work leadership practices, including how to generate psychological safety and create a greater sense of autonomy across the business to increase productivity and improve results.
Employees and managers established new and more dynamic communication cadences, which helped people and teams stay focused, motivated, and more aligned with company goals.
ACS eNPS (employee net promoter score) increased from -5% to 27% in a single quarter.
Building the foundation for successful virtual teams
As COVID-19 became a worldwide affliction, organizations everywhere scrambled to shift to remote work. Many, including ACS, went online in a matter of days. Sending ACS employees home with laptops and monitors was one part of the solution, but Liz Florkowski, ACS’s head of global HR, wanted to ensure that their employees were able to thrive in their new virtual workplaces.
Prior to the pandemic, only 2% of ACS employees worked off-site. “[We] didn’t do remote work well,” Liz readily admits. While only a small fraction of ACS employees were remote at that time, many of them reported feeling disconnected from the rest of their colleagues. These sentiments contributed to low employee satisfaction and a dismal eNPS score.
As ACS shifted to remote work, many employees struggled with the transition. They had difficulty separating their personal and professional lives, and getting into a focused “flow” state while at home was a challenge.
“Our team is made up of knowledge workers who didn’t understand how to set up their work days so that they were conducive to focused work and coming up with new ideas,” Liz recalls.
“I normally hate leadership training (sessions). They are almost always a waste of time and money. But OMG, 15Five’s facilitators have the greatest vibe together. I appreciated how empathetic they are. I would pay for any training with 15Five. The experience working with them was mentally refreshing.”
ACS VICEPRESIDENT OF OPERATIONS
While ACS was able to swiftly transition its employees to work-from-home environments, it had a significant impact on employee morale and company culture. Realizing that ACS needed to address the nuanced physical and psychological differences that stem from working offsite, Liz turned to 15Five’s Transformational Services, Coaching & Development Team for help in positioning her team for success.
15Five’s facilitators helped ACS employees to retool their habits and environments—coaching them on how to set up intentional work environments, structure their workdays to minimize disruptions, and adopt behaviors to help them maintain a healthy work-life integration.
Helping employees feel connected in a remote world
One major challenge of working virtually is losing that sense of connection with teammates that naturally happens with impromptu office meetings and “hallway chats.” 15Five’s facilitators showed ACS how to maintain that connection despite the physical distance.
They taught ACS how to run virtual meetings that helped to foster a sense of community and shared techniques to help address feelings of isolation and meeting fatigue that team members were experiencing. Finally, 15Five’s facilitators coached ACS on how to conduct regular performance conversations, check-ins, and status updates to ensure open, fluid communication.
“I learned that feedback is more appreciated when it comes with questions and discussion. There is a difference between coaching and directing. I used to be more of an advice-giver. (After 15Five’s training), I feel better about coaching the team in solving their own challenges.”
MANAGER, APTIV ENGINEERING
Guiding managers to successfully lead high-performing, virtual teams
With ACS in high-growth mode, many people had recently become first-time managers with little experience navigating the complexities of virtual work environments. 15Five shared their best practices for coaching ACS employees, which included how to grant autonomy as a way to generate better results. Managers also received training on effective communication styles for building trust and developing an authentic rapport with their team members.
Finally, 15Five demonstrated how to choose appropriate technology depending on the context—either email, phone, or direct message — to improve communication and collaboration.
15Five’s training helped ACS develop a comprehensive remote work policy that ensured all team members stayed productive, connected, and aligned. Since participating in Remote Work Essentials training, ACS eNPS (employee net promoter score) increased from -5% to 27% in Q3 of 2020.
Driving innovation while fostering community
The ACS teams continue to support each other in their new virtual environments. For example, the engineering team created a stoplight kit for employees who have children at home that will light up to indicate when a parent is busy with work. The light kits are being sent to employees, and in many cases, families are putting them together over Zoom calls.
Helping employees feel connected in a remote world
“I’ve been in lots of manager roles in various companies. It’s not stuffy training at all. It’s very much real-life… human beings talking about a problem, having a dialogue and coming up with a solution.”
LIZ FLORKOWSKI, HEAD OF GLOBAL HR
Liz points out that ACS executives are very much aligned with HR, giving her team the freedom to invest in tools and resources that enrich their employees. ACS, as well as their parent company, Aptiv, have both found success with 15Five’s platform, education and services. 15Five continues to support the ACS team with a variety of customized programs, including manager enablement training, which the Aptiv team benefited from tremendously.
but only leading people on tasks — not coaching or supporting them. So I had no experience in managing friction or professional development. Being able to apply actual techniques and not just concepts was really useful for me. It’s conscious now.”
Through their partnership with 15Five, ACS created a stronger company culture that empowers every employee to learn, grow, and thrive in the modern workplace.
