How GWI Uses Lattice to Build a Culture of Excellence

The Challenge: Operating in a Highly Competitive Market with a Small Talent Pool 

GWI is a leading consumer research and SaaS company in the global marketing industry. Since 2009, it has been delivering game-changing insights and technology to decision-makers worldwide. 

GWI thrives on disrupting the industry. It achieves this by focussing on growing and developing its talented team using a unique skills-first strategy, then empowering them to be ambitious initiative-takers who lead the conversation in every aspect of their role internally and externally. GWI operates in a highly competitive market with a small talent pool. To attract and retain the best people, it’s vital GWI is always intentional in how it invests in their individual performance and growth, and builds a thriving culture of collective excellence.   

A data-first business, GWI was struggling with a Frankenstein-like mishmash of HR solutions, woven together but with little real or impactful connection. Unwilling to hamper its agility, energy, or spirit with poor quality people insights, GWI’s HR team deployed Lattice to ensure its employee experience is superior by design.

“As a business, we democratise access to data and insights for our customers — with Lattice we now also do the same for our people. Our business feels on the inside how it looks on the outside — a group of ambitious high-performing people making informed decisions with intelligence, that is both of the moment and future-focussed,” says Chelsea Coates, Chief People Officer.

A Skills-First Approach

A core focus of GWI’s people strategy is building a skills-first approach to talent acquisition and retention.  

Forget rigid career paths. Instead, think detailed mapping of individual skills. GWI connects the dots on what employees can do now, and what they want to do next for dynamic people development. It also identifies transferable skills, gaps, and the skills needed for future business success and competitive advantage.

“Lattice is the power behind our skills-first approach, which is the cornerstone of our entire people strategy,” explains Chelsea.  

“Tools such as the competency matrices with Lattice Grow have been great for helping us with this. We’ve mapped the skills we have now and what we need for the future, so that we’re always making informed decisions and having the right conversations at the right times. The learning, development, and growth of every member of the GWI team is aligned to the business strategy, and the business is likewise always perfectly in sync with what our people need. Importantly we know where the gaps are and can strategically target talent acquisition to keep the business moving forward at pace.”

Keeping Close to the Employee Experience

Another core focus of GWI’s people strategy is manager brilliance. After all, who else is better positioned to get close to the employee experience, drive engagement and performance, develop talent, and maintain culture and wellbeing?

“We believe managers should be the driving force behind our collective excellence,” says Chelsea. “Lattice is woven into how we train our managers and therefore how they operate daily. Lattice’s clear people dashboard puts data and insight on every aspect of team performance right in front of them, in a slick and easy to access way. This empowers them, drives greater accountability, and boosts credibility.”

Lattice keeps managers close to their people — the pain points they’re experiencing, how they’re engaging and performing, what learning and development needs they have and where compensation and growth conversations are needed. It also fosters a culture of honest, open communication and continuous feedback. 

The results are compelling — 91% of employees now complete engagement surveys, and 98% of managers complete performance reviews. No wonder GWI is regularly ranked as one of the world’s best places to work.

“Lattice drives manager brilliance. It keeps them really close to the employee experience so that we attract and retain the best talent, and build a differentiated skills-first culture in a highly competitive market,” says Chelsea.

Attracting and Retaining High Performers When the Talent Pool is Small

GWI operates in a highly competitive market where the talent pool is small. For example, when recruiting for a recent coding role GWI identified only 60 people in the world that had the range of skills it needed.

“This is where Lattice really comes into its own”, says Chelsea. “Because we’ve mapped the skills we need, we know exactly where to target recruitment. Likewise, when attracting highly skilled people to our business, we know it can’t just be about money. We don’t compete on compensation alone, we attract people based on experience, culture, and demonstrable opportunities for growth. This is thanks to the data and insights Lattice delivers and how it drives our people strategies.”

Likewise, GWI differentiates when it comes to retention. “People are more likely to stay in roles when they feel invested in and they can see opportunities for growth and development,” says Chelsea.  “We retain people because, thanks to Lattice Grow, their goals and aspirations become ours. We can be intentional about having structured plans in place, and importantly, can push and pull these plans in an agile way. This constantly gives people what they need in order to progress both professionally and personally.”

Leading the Conversation with DEIB 

Chelsea believes that diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) will become a key focus of their investment in Lattice in the next couple of years. 

“The connection between [DEIB] and performance will become an important metric for us to track, both in terms of the impact on employee experience and bottom-line success,” explains Chelsea. “This is where Lattice will be a very interesting tool because it will help us demonstrate the value of D&I initiatives and their impact financially and morally.”

The GWI team believes that, thanks to their investment in Lattice, they can lead the conversations that count.

The Future of HR

“Lattice busts the stereotype that HR is clunky and process-driven,” concludes Chelsea. She believes that Lattice is delivering a new era of human-driven HR. 

“Lattice is designed with humans in mind, and like us is thinking about both right now and also what next. Importantly, Lattice ensures people teams are no longer seen as disconnected from strategic decision making. Eighty percent of what we do now is focussed on driving the business forward rather than reactive people work, making us a vital component in business success.”

Takeaways

• GWI benefits from a future-focussed skills first approach and as a uniquely tenured scale-upattracts and retains high performers from a small talent pool.
• The company achieved an exceptional 91% engagement rate on the latest engagement survey and a 98% performance review completion.
• GWI has a manager-led and experience-driven approach to its people strategies.
• The company and its managers are able to be far more proactive — acting off real-time people data.