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CASE STUDIES
Client Testimonial
Vice President,
Human Resources
The Client
Dover Downs Gaming & Entertainment, Inc. (NYSE: DDE) is a diversified
gaming and entertainment company whose operations consist of Dover Downs
Slots – a 91,000 square foot video slots casino complex; the Dover
Downs Hotel and Conference Center – featuring luxury, four-diamond
accommodations with conference, banquet, fine dining, ballroom and concert
hall facilities; and the Dover Downs Raceway – a harness racing
track with pari-mutuel wagering on live and simulcast horse races.
The Situation
When the current Dover Downs management team assumed control of the
company in 1999, they quickly realized that they had some real employee
relationship issues that needed immediate attention. Employees were
openly griping about work conditions, benefits and management responsiveness
to these problems, resulting in annual employee turnover rates approaching
the 90-percent mark. The costs to the company were both tangible and
intangible – while the bottom line suffered because of high
HR and training costs, as well as decreased customer satisfaction
and retention rates, perhaps more telling was the potential damage
to the company's reputation. As the major employer in a small town,
Dover Downs was concerned that the word on the street would be "don't
go to work there." Dover Downs attempted to address the situation
with a paper-based employee satisfaction survey beginning in 2000,
but found the reporting function too slow to address the pressing
issues they were facing and the survey itself too inflexible to meet
the dynamic needs of Dover Downs.
The Solution
In the summer of 2004, Dover Downs approached LRA about designing
and implementing an electronic survey to systematically study Dover
Downs employee engagement and to be able to react quickly to employee
feedback. After working closely with the Dover Downs Human Resources
Department to design the survey, LRA administered the eSurvey at both
the parent company location in Dover, as well as several satellite
locations across the United States via e-mail invitation, electronic
kiosk, and a customized, dedicated survey Web site.
The results were nearly instantaneous. "In the past it had taken us at least three months to begin to get any sort of data–with LRA we were able to get results immediately," explained Robin Roberts, Dover Downs' Vice President of Human Resources. "It allowed us to take the data and get back to our employees to work on the issues that they had identified in three weeks, rather than three months. Taking the survey was fresh in everyone's mind, so our employees felt a direct connection between taking the eSurvey and tangible action plans from management."
The Results
Dover Downs was able to access real-time results as the surveys were
administered via a customized Web-based reporting suite. In addition,
the Human Resources team in charge of the project could track participation
rates by location and department online, allowing them to encourage
involvement from certain departments in order to meet predefined participation
goals; as a result, the overall participation rate was far higher
than it had been in previous survey attempts. Most importantly, the
analysis and reporting provided by LRA allowed Dover Downs to focus on improving only the weak areas that were truly important to it's employees; in the past, the trouble areas addressed were those that
scored lowest, regardless of their role in employee satisfaction.
Where annual employee turnover rates had approached 90-percent, Dover Downs is currently in the 40-percent range. Correspondingly, Human Resources costs (the cost of hiring, training, etc.) have dropped substantially, allowing the Employee Engagement program to identify a concrete Return on Investment. In addition, Customer Satisfaction scores have risen since the employee measurement program was implemented.
Likewise, Dover Downs has revised its compensation structure to reward managers who successfully implement the action plan resulting from the Employee Engagement eSurvey. As Dover Downs gathers more data in subsequent iterations of the eSurvey, the plan is to tie a portion of management compensation to employee satisfaction and engagement levels benchmarked against previous years. Dover Downs' management views the Employee Engagement eSurvey as a significant sign of its commitment to its employees.
"[The Employee Engagement] eSurvey has been an absolutely fantastic tool, from beginning to end," Roberts continued. "And 'absolutely fantastic' describes our experience with LRA as well. Throughout the entire process the LRA Team really listened to our needs and adapted the product and its delivery to our culture and environment. It has been a truly effective business partnership–exactly the way a consulting engagement should work."