How do you make sure every voice is heard? (Marriott Support Services)

With the organisation emerging from a major restructure, Senior Manager People Safety and Wellbeing Athena Madams says "people are feeling the pain."

Recognising the importance of understanding how staff were experiencing that change, Marriott embraced the free, WorkSafe-funded Mentally Healthy Workplaces Program as an opportunity to take a deeper look at workforce wellbeing. The program helps businesses identify and manage psychosocial risks while strengthening psychological health and safety at work.

Making participation accessible

The challenge, however, was ensuring every employee had the same opportunity to contribute to the process. With around two-thirds of the workforce made up of supported employees, traditional survey methods were not going to work for people with diverse needs.

Working closely with AP Psychology & Consulting, the organisation redesigned the survey experience to improve accessibility. Paper-based options replaced online-only formats, questions were supported by plain-English explanations, facilitators were trained to guide participants consistently, and employees were given extra time, breaks and additional support where needed.

Madams says the changes ensured employees could participate in a meaningful way.

"The best thing so far is that we've been able to work really well with AP Psychology to make the survey really accessible." 

Customer Engagement Manager Kellie Carruthers says the effort was essential to ensuring the organisation received an honest picture of employee experiences.

"Truly understanding where my cohort is at is massively important. Misunderstanding that means we could be bringing in the wrong solutions."

The approach resulted in strong participation, with more than 70 supported employees completing the survey and contributing insights that may otherwise have been missed.

Understanding the impact of change

The organisation has since moved into the discovery and action-planning phases. Madams says senior leaders recently came together to review the survey results, which highlighted both strengths and areas for improvement.

"We had the Discovery session today. Our lead executives and senior managers attended, and we worked through the survey results, looking at our strengths and the things that need work."

The findings highlighted leadership, change management and workload as key issues, with the corporate office - where most staff reductions occurred during the restructure - showing the greatest impact.

At the same time, the results identified a number of protective factors the organisation can build on as it develops its action plan.

As Madams puts it, the program is helping ensure support is grounded in what employees are actually experiencing, rather than what leaders assume they need.

"People have been hurting and they want to see outcomes. We've said to them that we're working with WorkSafe, we want people to understand that we're accountable."

Turning insight into action

Looking ahead, Marriott sees potential for the insights generated through the program to inform improvements beyond Victoria.

"Next we will draft the action plan and then work out where we go from there. There might be insights from this that we can pilot across our whole organisation nationally."

With more than 3,500 employees across Australia, the learnings from the program could help shape a more psychologically healthy workplace on a much broader scale.

Like Truffleduck and Safe Steps, Marriott's experience demonstrates the value of listening to employees and testing assumptions. By ensuring every voice could participate in the process, the organisation is building a clearer understanding of what its people need and how to support them through change.