Arrow Child & Family Ministries

THE OPPORTUNITY

Arrow Child & Family Ministries has been helping kids and strengthening families since its inception more than 30 years ago. Originating in Texas, Arrow has expanded its core foster care services across the country to also include health solutions, behavioral and therapeutic services, residential treatment and education opportunities. From Texas to Maryland, the organization serves approximately nearly 3,000 kids, and the need for help continues to expand.

With rapidly expanding services, Arrow Child & Family Ministries was interested in maintaining consistency of service and culture across geographies. As C-suite executives considered the pace and scale of expansion, they kept a careful eye toward solutions that would help them manage employee engagement and manager effectiveness in hopes of preventing frustration, burnout and turnover.

THE FORESIGHT

“What we do is really hard work,” said Amanda Cloessner, Organizational Improvement Manager. “People get burned out.”

Cloessner explained that the Arrow leadership team recognized the SigBee platform as an opportunity to address potential retention issues, especially for staffers working 24-hour shifts with little-to-no chance of connecting to supervisors while on the clock.

INTERDISCIPLINARY INTEGRATION

Looking toward the future of children’s services, Arrow‘s leadership elected to create an interdisciplinary, cross-functional team to help improve communications and employee engagement. While the team was not targeting one specific data point, they were hopeful that the SigBee platform could be helpful in aggregating data that could provide actionable executive insights.

THE APPLICATION

Arrow initially opted to pilot the SigBee employee engagement platform across its programs that were demonstrating lower retention rates. After 90 days and in preparation for a full-scale deployment, Cloessner said, “What we’ve seen is folks appreciating the connection.”

Supervisors value the talking points the application provides to facilitate staff connection. Cloessner explained that the platform has been helpful in terms of connecting and making intentional space for conversations that let employees know that Arrow leadership cares about their wellness and is invested in their future with the organization.

THE TAKEAWAY

After the first two months using SigBee, Arrow surveyed its staff on the effectiveness of the platform.

“What we found is that this tool is helping us to make advances more organically than some of the other tools we have,” said Cloessner. “Folks should never underestimate that art of personal connection. There’s a lost art in terms of the importance of connecting with people you work with and for. SigBee has shown us where we have some opportunities for improvement to make sure our supervisors understand that part of their role is to be human beings and check in and make sure their teams are OK.”

Cloessner believes SigBee can help supervisors with the soft skills that are part of their role, especially in the realm of communication.

“If you’re going to lead people, you need to understand how people work,” she said. “You need to be intentional, and this could open doors to conversations that don’t come naturally.”

THE SIGBEE SOLUTION

SigBee is an innovative platform for employee engagement, organizational health, and effectiveness. Ours is an easy-to-use application that provides real-time data to direct supervisors and leadership so they can support their teams.

SigBee combines the science of technology with the art of human interaction, creating a powerful system for checking in with each other. We’re changing the way people show up for each other, one check-in at a time.