HALO’s Listening Programme Recognised At HR Culture Awards
- Connecting with over 11,000 staff across 30 programmes globally
- Average score increased from 7.5 in 2022 to 8.3 currently
- Response rates as strong as 95%
About The HALO Trust
The HALO Trust makes land safe by clearing landmines, IEDs, and other explosives, allowing families affected by conflict to return home and rebuild their lives. Once mines are cleared, former battlefields become safe spaces, and fear is replaced with hope.
HALO also provides risk education to protect communities until explosives can be fully removed, focusing on keeping children and families safe.
While HALO is best known for landmine clearance, their efforts extend to securing weapons and ammunition left behind after conflicts. By working with recovering countries, HALO ensures towns and villages are safe, restoring confidence and stability to communities.
The Challenge
For over 30 years, The HALO Trust has been helping communities in war-torn countries to recover by clearing landmines and making their land safe. The organisation’s employees are distributed worldwide, and often work in challenging conditions. HALO has grown significantly in recent years and it is important that all employees feel supported in their work. However, given the organisation’s size and complexity, it can be challenging to understand how people are thinking and feeling.
As the team at The HALO Trust explains: “It is critical for us to partner with an organisation that mirrors our values and shares the same level of commitment to our listening project. Throughout the selection process, THI consistently demonstrated these qualities. We also needed a partner capable of developing a solution that could help us connect with all our colleagues irrespective of literacy, internet access, or English proficiency.”
The Solution
For the past 2 years, The HALO Trust has been working with The Happiness Index to measure employee happiness and engagement. The organisation has been rolling out its listening programme to locations as disparate as Kosovo, Columbia, Syria and Somalia. There are plans to extend the programme to countries including Afghanistan, Ukraine, Cambodia and more.
In order to provide flexibility, The HALO Trust uses our survey personalisation tools to adjust our pre-built Cultural Assessment survey for their team in the field. This allows the organisation to extend its listening project to all staff, whether they are based in an office or a more remote location. To enable this personalisation, HALO’s team works closely with our data experts to ensure they gain the actionable insights they need.
Having staff located in war-torn environments presents challenges which require a highly bespoke approach to listening. By working in partnership with The HALO Trust, we’ve been able to tailor a structure that provides support for the organisation’s people wherever they are.
As Jenna Davy and Richard Gordon, from HALO, say “We have 11,000 staff across 30 programmes globally. As most of our staff are from the local communities within the countries we support, we need to consider language, literacy and connectivity. The Happiness Index is enabling us to systematically access all our staff and hear how they think and feel about working at HALO."
The Results
The actionable insights uncovered by their surveys have allowed their HR team to create a programme of actions including supporting personal growth, internal communication and employee wellbeing.
These targeted efforts have resulted in an improvement of HALO’s average score from 7.5 in 2022 to an average of 8.3 currently. The Net Promoter Score (NPS) has also improved by over 150% in just one year, thanks to their targeted interventions. This is remarkable, especially considering the increase in survey respondents.
Jenna and Richard explain “By partnering with THI we have been able to understand themes and trends within our programmes and at an organisation level. This has enabled the leadership teams to focus on clear actions that can improve the working environment and wider employee experience for our staff.”
The Impact
This incredible work has been recognised not only by the individuals within the organisation, but also by the British HR Awards, where The HALO Trust won Highly Commended within the Culture Initiative of the Year category. We’re really proud of what The HALO Trust team has been able to achieve using the insights from our platform.
Hayley Powers, who works closely with the team at The Halo Trust, says “The team at HALO Trust have worked so exceptionally hard to give a voice to all their staff, far and wide, in areas that have challenges both geographically and culturally. Due to their location, HALO’s national staff have to deal with political challenges in war torn countries on top of the already incredibly high risk work they do, and often have to spend significant periods of time away from their families.
So it absolutely baffles me that the teams at HALO have managed to achieve the results they have despite all these challenges they face and it is honestly a privilege to work alongside this fantastic team supporting them on their listening strategy journey.”
Jenna and Richard conclude: “THI provides a flexible framework to reach out to all our staff. Underpinned by neuroscience, it allows us to share a credible product which we can tailor to our global / local requirements. The platform is easy to navigate with a wealth of filtering and data presentation options, empowering us to tailor the information and maximise its impact. THI’s exceptional customer service is always attentive, responsive and highly knowledgeable, ensuring a great user experience.“
