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Strategic Well-being Work with Measurable Impact

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Danish Crown is a global food company with more than 130 years of history, proud traditions, and a focus on good craftsmanship. The company employs around 25,000 people and supplies food to more than 130 countries. Among Danish Crown's most important goals are the ambition to create a production that is less harmful to the climate and a strong global competitive position.

www.danishcrown.com/global/about-us/
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Area Employee Experience
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Solution Employee Engagement Survey

Danish Crown has set the bar high for employee satisfaction. Since 2007, they have conducted regular engagement surveys in collaboration with Ennova every two years. Thanks to targeted follow-ups, Danish Crown has made it natural to focus on employee feedback and well-being, resulting in positive trends in well-being, engagement, and leadership. With a response rate of 88% in the latest survey and given that 4 out of 5 employees are distributed across factories and production sites throughout Europe, Danish Crown is an inspirational case for companies with a high proportion of hourly-paid employees.
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THE CHALLENGE

A Tool to Put Employee Well-being in Focus - and System

At Danish Crown, employee well-being is a high priority. The organization needs to have a finger on the pulse across departments, levels, and countries - and to allow all employees to share how they feel at work:

"We want to be a decent and responsible company and have an ambition for our employees to come to work happy, feel safe, and be able to develop."

- Susanne Søndergaard, Senior HR Specialist, Group People & Culture
Danish Crown

With approximately 25,000 employees, 80% of whom are hourly paid employees, Danish Crown needs a systematic tool for collecting employee feedback: A setup that creates the framework for employees to express their opinions on everything from the daily work environment and collaboration to the assessment of the daily management, factory management, and senior management. At the same time, Danish Crown needs a tool that can track development over time:

"Competitive conditions, customers, and markets change, and so does our business situation. That's why we mustn't just sit back."

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Susanne SøndergaardSenior HR Specialist, Group People & Culture, Danish Crown
THE SOLUTION

Recurring Surveys With a Strategic Aim

Danish Crown conducts recurring engagement surveys to track the development of well-being and engagement over time and collect employee feedback systematically. The organization has collaborated with Ennova since 2007. There are several reasons why Danish Crown has stuck with Ennova as a partner throughout the years: 

"It's both the easily accessible platform itself and Ennova's way of being - partly on the service front and partly in terms of keeping up with technological and professional developments. And we trust Ennova to store and process our data properly."

The engagement surveys provide Danish Crown with both quantitative and qualitative data to work strategically with employee well-being and engagement, and a good starting point for ensuring continued progress and growth in the business. At the same time, the surveys send a clear signal to employees and managers:

"Measuring well-being also signals to our employees that we really care about them. And it's a signal to our leaders: we set some requirements, and we need to follow up properly."


- Susanne Søndergaard, Senior HR Specialist, Group People & Culture
Danish Crown
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Employee Engagement Survey

Empowers leaders, managers and the organization to drive the changes in the workplace that will have a sustainable impact on employees and on business performance.
See the Solution

The result reports from the surveys are used as a starting point for important conversations about what adds value and where there are elements of the employee experience that can be improved. In this way, the engagement surveys become a dialog tool that helps Danish Crown in their well-being work:

"We can see in the reporting where we as a company have a problem: Is the problem overall strategic, or does it only apply to one unit or one department? We can see very concretely what calls for action."

- Susanne Søndergaard, Senior HR Specialist, Group People & Culture
Danish Crown
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THE RESULT

Proof of The Power of Persistent Well-being Work

Danish Crown's survey results show that it pays to work strategically with employee satisfaction and engagement. First and foremost, 88% of the entire workforce actively participated in the latest survey. This shows that a feedback culture has been created where a large majority feel comfortable expressing their opinions. This is an inspiring result in an organization where the majority of employees are hourly-paid and spread across Europe, making it more challenging to collect responses.

Over the last four surveys, Danish Crown has achieved a constant positive development in hourly workers' satisfaction and motivation. On this parameter, they are significantly above the standard for similar companies.

They have also seen a constant increase in overall results, and throughout the four surveys, they have managed to halve the proportion of managers with low scores. This means that Danish Crown's managers are now rated significantly higher than average overall, and the proportion of managers with low scores is significantly lower than the average proportion in similar companies.

This allows zooming in on three elements of Danish Crown's well-being work:

The high response rate, the well-being of hourly employees, and the daily management.

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In 2024, Danish Crown achieved a response rate of 88% in their engagement survey. 

The High Response Rate: How do you Collect Responses From Hourly Employees?

The engagement surveys have included data collection among approximately 20,000 hourly-paid employees at factories and production sites across Europe, where Ennova has made iPads available for responses. Ensuring a high response rate among hourly employees requires a lot of communication and coordination work at the factories:

"We communicate in all the ways we can: via emails to leaders, via info screens at the factories, by letting managers know that the survey is coming and why participation is important. And we also financially prioritize letting employees respond during working hours, either by deploying replacements or temporary shutdowns while the surveys take place."

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Susanne SøndergaardSenior HR Specialist, Group People & Culture, Danish Crown

The Well-being of Hourly Workers: How do you Create an Attractive Environment for Everyone?

The high level of well-being among hourly-paid employees speaks to Danish Crown's ambition to create good jobs for everyone: a concept that emphasizes the importance of all employees feeling included and having the opportunity to develop their skills.

Several initiatives have been launched to create an inclusive work environment with development opportunities, such as upskilling courses for hourly employees.

To attract young people to the industry, Danish Crown visits vocational schools and offers factory tours so potential new employees can get an insight into the working environment before applying for a job.

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Day-to-day Management: How do you Make Progress on the Management Front?

Leadership has received even greater focus at Danish Crown over the past few years, and looking at the positive leadership results over the last four surveys, the efforts have paid off:

"We run leadership programs that all leaders go through with a focus on leadership and follow-up. According to employee feedback, they have contributed to better leadership and fewer low-scoring teams. These are some of the results we should be most proud of, but we will also take care to develop further." 

Part of the follow-up consists of making action plans based on the survey results. The presentation of results that Ennova holds after each survey helps to set the direction for the actions to be taken.

Despite the good results, Danish Crown is aware that there is still room for improvement, and they continue to brainstorm on how they can improve:

"This does not mean that we are not aware that there are areas where we need to take action and where we still need to work on some things. There is always room for improvement, and we must and will continue to do so to remain an attractive workplace for current and future colleagues."

- Susanne Søndergaard, Senior HR Specialist, Group People & Culture
Danish Crown

A long-standing collaboration with strong relationships

Danish Crown and Ennova have worked closely together on engagement metrics for more than 15 years. The many years of collaboration have created a special relationship between the parties and a strong foundation for finding the right solutions:

"Ennova knows our company and understands our business situation. I almost feel that Jesper (project manager at Ennova) is my colleague during the period we do the surveys." 

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Susanne SøndergaardSenior HR Specialist, Group People & Culture, Danish Crown
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