interview
FROM LEFT Jillian Williamson, industrial psychologist at Paragon Interiors, and the company’s marketing manager Lucy le Roux
and education to ensure staff are comfortable and familiar with the new environment. “What has been a really exciting outcome of this endeavour is that we are now the first South African interior-design firm to have our own industrial psychologist, and also the first to introduce change management (or onboarding, as we like to call it),” says Le Roux. “We understand that South African businesses today are hard-pressed to cut costs and thus have created a service offering that is sympathetic to this. We decided, as a business, to absorb this additional service as an overhead because, ultimately, the success of our projects is a reflection of our brand. Since launching the programme in May, all of our projects now include change
management to some degree, dependant on the project timeline, and at no extra cost to our clients.” The introduction of change management into the roll-out of corporate interior-design projects appears to be far more than just a “nice to have”. Addressing the needs and concerns of employees has a knock-on effect for achieving maximum productivity and staff engagement. Research from the 2007 Global Workforce Study by Towers Perrin reveals that the global driver of employee engagement, the desire of an employee to give their full passion, commitment and effort to an organisation, is the belief that senior management is sincerely interested in employee wellbeing. Despite the importance
of this factor for staff, research shows that more than half of global business leaders are missing the mark in this area. “How businesses choose to handle something as personal to staff as where they spend their nine-to-five is a key opportunity for organisations to send the message that employees are valued,” says Jillian Williamson, the industrial psychologist at Paragon Interiors. “The types of companies that are increasingly successful globally are those that have realised the fundamental shift in the employer-employee relationship to one of mutual caring, trust and respect. Get this wrong and no amount of cost-cutting will result in the desired business performance.” SOUTH AFRICAN PROPERTY REVIEW
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