Engagement
The productivity, motivation and engagement of our workforce directly affects PPG's financial performance. Through the guiding principles of The PPG Way, we create a company where everyone can thrive, deliver and grow.
Listening to employees
Our 2023 Employee Voice survey results, powered by Gallup, showed a higher level of employee engagement than any year prior. We also saw record employee participation, with 89% of PPG employees responding. PPG's employee engagement score has improved across every category that Gallup measures, and our overall score increased at a rate 30% higher than the industry average.
A key aspect of our employee engagement strategy is to focus on improving personal connections between people leaders and their teams. Throughout 2023, we encouraged management across the company to have more frequent, quality conversations with their direct reports, by providing additional training on how to facilitate these conversations. We also encouraged actionable, ongoing performance feedback. Together, these resources help people leaders across PPG empower their teams and ensure that our people have the opportunity to hold transparent conversations, celebrate successes and voice their concerns to management.
Organizational alignment in Huangshan City, China
When we acquired Huangshan Huajia, a powder coating manufacturer based in Huangshan City, China, with over 600 employees in six plants in six cities, our engagement team identified the need to proactively assess cultural differences and align Huajia's culture with PPG. We engaged an external partner to objectively assess the cultural differences between Huajia and PPG using a blend of interviews and cultural diagnostics. We then involved business leaders at both Huajia and PPG in a series of culture and engagement workshops with action plans cascaded.
In our 2023 engagement surveys, we found that this approach led to one of the highest year one results for an acquired company. Employees at Huajia had higher engagement levels than PPG's overall score, as indicated through record survey participation. In 2024, we are continuing engagement training and are developing action plans with leaders at Huajia to further increase engagement. We are replicating this model for other acquisitions as we work to drive employee engagement across PPG.
Recognition
We recognize the achievements of our team members through the One PPG Recognition and Rewards Program. Through the program, employees receive a thank you or congratulatory message and reward points that can be redeemed for gift cards, travel or other items. Recipients can be nominated by their peers or leadership for living our core values, aligned with The PPG Way and The PPG Way to Lead. The program also recognizes certain milestone achievements, such as birthdays and PPG anniversaries. In 2023, we gave more than 300,000 unique awards to PPG people.
Leadership development and accountability
2023 marked the first full year that we aligned our engagement activities to The PPG Way to Lead, our leadership competency model. We used specific metrics from the Employee Voice survey to create PPG’s leadership index, an evaluation rubric to track how people across the company are growing their leadership skills. The leadership index has already helped us identify opportunities to enhance leader performance across the organization. After our 2023 Employee Voice survey, we worked with select leaders on techniques to enhance team engagement. In some cases, we reviewed individual responsibilities and shifted leaders into new positions that better align with their unique skill sets.
Employee retention and turnover
In 2023, turnover across PPG remained higher than pre-pandemic levels. A closer look at these numbers revealed that we continued to experience elevated turnover across our frontline employee population, or those working in a manufacturing or retail environment. We are seeking to reverse this trend through targeted engagement measures with frontline employees. As part of our annual process, our talent acquisition and total rewards team conducted a complete compensation review of our frontline workforce to ensure our employee value proposition is in line with the rest of the market. The team also worked with frontline leaders to help create a more positive, caring and growth-oriented environment for our people. We are already seeing improvements in engagement across all six categories measured by Gallup and are working to build on this momentum in 2024.
For more detailed information about our ongoing approach to employee engagement, see below.
Turnover Rate
Percent
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2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | |
Overall | 20.90 | 22.80 | 20.00 | 17.61 | 18.16 |
Voluntary | 15.00 | 17.40 | 15.20 | 11.74 | 13.02 |
Involuntary | 5.90 | 5.40 | 4.80 | 5.87 | 5.14 |