The Road Map – EMBARK’s Employee-driven Transformation Plan

Target Audience: The primary target audience of The Road Map is EMBARK's 300+ employees in the Oklahoma City metro area, including transit professionals from frontline bus operators, mechanics, and supervisors to administrative staff and Executive Leadership. Secondary audiences are customers and stakeholders who will be experiencing positive benefits from TRM.

Strategy Objective:The Road Map is a multi-faceted strategic plan outlining our Vision, Mission, Core Values, and Initiatives, and it serves as a guide for setting organizational priorities and leading employees toward cultural transformation. Elements include an organization-wide message management system, employee recognition programs, and all-agency town halls. Like a transit system, TRM has its own journey-planning map that displays where we are going (our vision), why we exist (our mission), and how we will get there (our initiatives). Rather than being implemented from the top down, TRM is driven by project teams comprised of employees from every rank and department, including supervisors and frontline staff from operations, maintenance, customer relations, and administration.

Situation Challenge: Established in 1966, EMBARK's habits, employee experiences, and guest experiences were visibly archaic while community support for public transit has been at an all-time high. For EMBARK to meet and exceed community expectations, cultural changes would have to come to all levels of the organization. The challenge was heightened not only by the diverse employee disciplines who work varied hours and locations but also by the pandemic. Organizational transformation spurred by The Road Map would have to involve all employees by flattening the hierarchy and rallying everyone behind a single vision for the organization, not a collection of department-level goals.

Results Impact: Phase One of The Road Map has been driven by employees from every rank, including supervisors and frontline transit professionals from operations, maintenance, customer relations, and administration. Since TRM launched, nearly 25% of EMBARK's workforce across all departments participated in one of the six project teams. In 2022, the TRM website had 2,804 unique views and 60 news updates were sent to employees via SMS with 10,231 total click opens. The S.T.O.K. Storytellers program saw 601 peer nominations submitted by employees. Fourteen COORDINATES town hall sessions were held in 2022 with a total attendance of 508 employees. Finally, 20 employees were recognized as EMBARK Legends, and 48 internal videos promoting TRM were shared with employees.

Why Submit: The Road Map has rallied EMBARK employees behind a single vision as one organization instead of a collection of departmental goals. While recognizing that change can take years, TRM is proving to be worth the investment of time and resources necessary to build a more inclusive culture that will benefit employees, customers, and stakeholders. The second year of TRM involved and engaged employees at levels never seen before, and that energy will be essential for the upcoming rollout of customer-focused Phase Two initiatives to enhance the status, use, and understanding of our services.