How USAirtours Increased Sales by 20% With Lattice

USAirtours is a tailor-made holiday business with a 40-year heritage, yet with a modern scale-up mindset. With a desire to increase its share of the personalised holiday market, CEO and people leader Guy Novik knows that advisors are the company’s most valuable asset — and that when they perform at their best, so does the business.

The Challenge

In the aftermath of the pandemic, work-life balance became more important than ever. USAirtours took the bold decision to transform from a traditional office-based operation to a fully virtual business. In doing so, its lean people team of three needed to move away from centralised and time-intensive manual HR processes to a technology and insight-driven approach that would empower every member of the 85-strong team to achieve their goals.

“We needed a solution that would make best practice people programmes achievable even with a lean people team. Lattice has given us an enterprise-grade people strategy that aligns every part of the business on the achievement of our shared goals,” remarks Guy.

Implementing Lattice

After recognising the need for a better approach, USAirtours set out to find not only the right solution, but the right support for its people team. Faced with a final choice between Leapsome and Lattice, Guy and the team opted for the latter, recognising that Lattice offered far bigger bang for buck.

"We chose to go with Lattice, not because of price but because as a small business, we need to be very intentional in our software investment. Lattice not only offers us the right tools, but also superior post-sale support and resources,” explains Guy.

“We knew we made the right decision almost immediately,” he continues. “As the saying goes ‘you don’t know what you don’t know.’ The implementation of Lattice certainly had plenty of ‘aha!’ moments. We spotted gaps in our people strategy we didn’t even know we had. By the end of implementation, we already had a comprehensive people strategy and had become a better-run organisation, and we hadn’t even really started. I underestimated just how valuable our investment in Lattice would prove to be.”

Using Lattice to Drive Performance and Engagement

“We have very distinct values, but they mean nothing if we can’t live them or measure our ability to continually improve”, remarks Guy. “With Lattice, we have a blueprint for success whereby everyone now lives our values because we tie them directly to our people programmes.”

USAirtours invested in Lattice Performance, Engagement, Grow, OKRs, and Goals. By utilising a phased approach to implementation, the people team secured a high level of buy-in from day one. The resources and support provided by Lattice helped managers and advisors make iterative changes in a way that embedded Lattice as a part of the everyday running
of the business.

Guy particularly values the impact of Pulse Surveys on employee engagement and satisfaction. Every member of staff is asked three questions at the same time every other week. By using the same recurring questions, the people team can easily report on and spot trends over time. The feedback scores and insights gleaned are shared with managers so they’re always aware of how people are feeling, what support they need, and the next best actions to drive continuous performance improvements in meaningful ways.

This continuous feedback loop also feeds directly into monthly and quarterly performance reviews. “This has been transformative,” says Guy. Not only have we achieved 95% participation in our pulse surveys, but this is driving an 80% uptick in completion of performance reviews, and close to 100% active manager feedback. The way Lattice is built means we have embedded a best practice approach to continuous feedback, transparency, and accountability that is improving performance and engagement by both managers and employees alike.”

Guy and the team also love how Lattice OKRs and Goals have made an indelible impact on both engagement and performance. Having a single view of individual, team, and company goals within a user-friendly dashboard gives every employee a clear understanding of how their objectives align with those of their team, and in turn how team success ties directly to overall company goals.

“We’ve set a gold standard for what individual and collective success looks like. Total alignment ensures every member of our team has a true sense of their purpose and their impact on business success. It’s a virtuous circle — our people have measurable goals and a plan to achieve them, and they can see how this directly links to company goal achievement, which increases engagement and productivity.”

Impact of Lattice

Lattice is now an integral part of the USAirtours business and is having a huge impact on success and competitive advantage.

“Sales have increased 20% year-on-year, and we are winning more market share than ever before. We haven’t changed our pricing or marketing, so this must be attributable to our investment in Lattice and how it’s empowering our people towards even greater levels of performance and productivity,” explains Guy.

Guy believes that USAirtours now delivers a big business-style people strategy despite being a small virtual organisation. He views Lattice as so much more than a performance management platform, because his people don’t feel like their performance is being managed. Instead, they are invested in collective success and feel motivated and supported to achieve their goals.”
USAirtours views itself as an enlightened organisation that is 100% focused on the importance of employee engagement and authentic leadership. Lattice is the power behind this unique culture.

In summing up the ROI of Lattice, Guys says, “Lattice intuitively ties everything together and comes with so many resources that it really does stretch the budget. It helps our small business achieve a best practice approach to people success — and is therefore an enabler of overall success.”