*How Employee Engagement Software Solves Four Critical Business Challenges*
Workday Staff Writer
In our global survey report of 1,150 senior executives Closing the Acceleration Gap: Toward Sustainable Digital Transformation, more than half of leaders (52%) said there was a growing divide between where their business was and where it needed to be in order to compete. As businesses face pressure from competitors as well as major economic uncertainties, employee engagement can’t fall behind.
To effectively navigate major economic shifts and changes to company culture, you need to listen to your employees. That’s where an employee engagement solution is crucial. This article explores four major risks faced by businesses during periods of uncertainty or transformation, before outlining how employee engagement solutions provide a fix in each instance—what we’ve termed “The engagement solution.”
The difficulty with periods of change and uncertainty is self-evident—try as you might, you can’t plan for every variable. What businesses can do is learn from prior shifts in the way we work together. Having just undergone the most significant change to working life in memory, there are plenty of lessons to learn.
What the pandemic highlighted most acutely was the potential disconnect between companies and their people. The introduction of home and hybrid working setups has broken down the view that company culture is linked to a physical location. Instead, companies now have to consider how their goals and values are communicated outside of the workplace. Culture shouldn’t be limited to beanbag chairs and social events.
According to our Closing the Acceleration Gap report, 35% of executives say organizational culture is the biggest block they face. But how can companies promote a strong internal culture that connects to their values and overall strategy?
The biggest benefit to improving company culture through employee engagement software is that simply asking your employees for feedback yields positive results. According to data from our report “Creating an Employee Engagement Strategy for Your Organization,” 45% of organizations with high engagement scores ask for feedback on a quarterly, monthly, or weekly basis versus just 26% of low-scoring companies.
As always, good internal communication is key. Here are three areas where an engagement solution can help create space for frequent employee feedback across the employee lifecycle:
Institute regular employee engagement surveys. Issues shouldn’t only come to light during a performance review or exit interview. The cornerstone of any successful engagement initiative is a pulse survey. By delivering these at a higher frequency, you make sure your data is accurate and relevant at the point of contact.
Touch base with your managers. People leaders are at the heart of a cohesive company culture—that’s why an employee survey is just as important for management as it is for the teams they manage. Bring your managers into the fold at every level, listen to what they have to say, and respond with meaningful, measurable actions.
Enable your managers to act. Company values mean nothing if you don’t act on them. With Workday Peakon Employee Voice, managers can take action straight from their dashboard, highlighting areas their team members are having issues with and engaging in confidential conversations.
People are typically afraid of change, especially if it has the potential to impact their livelihood. Whenever a company is facing a period of uncertainty—whether it’s the result of an internal company transformation or external economic circumstance—your employees will naturally be apprehensive.
If unaddressed, those anxieties can quickly lead to lower well-being, deteriorated customer relationships, and increased levels of employee burnout. Looking to the pandemic as an example, our 2021 report “The Great Regeneration: Turning the Tide on Employee Resignations” found that 27% of employees had engagement scores that indicated they were at a high risk of attrition. When faced with periods of difficulty and unclear direction from management, employee well-being declines.
Right now, we’re facing a burnout crisis. Of the 10 industries analyzed in our report “Addressing Employee Burnout Risk in 2022,” 7 either maintained or saw increased levels of burnout risk between 2021 and 2022. But how can businesses identify and address employee concerns when they arise? And how can managers address questions about the future that they might not be able to answer?
You can’t address a problem if you don’t know it exists. As the pace of workplace evolution increases globally, your ability to respond to employee concerns also has to increase at pace. That’s where an employee engagement solution is invaluable.
A manager might not be able to predict the future, but they can show their team the ways in which they’re proactively making changes for the better. Here are three ways an engagement solution can help:
Focus on real-time data. With employee engagement software, not only do you provide employees with a platform to voice their thoughts, but you also get access to real-time data. In doing so, you dramatically increase the relevancy of your data and significantly decrease HR workload.
Take action when it matters. Since an employee engagement solution provides managers with real-time survey data, you can take action at the moment a problem emerges. Our report “Creating a Highly Engaged Organization” found that managers at highly engaged companies are 18% more likely to acknowledge employees having a low score compared to their peers.
Search employee comments with machine learning. Employees may not always use the same words to discuss an issue, but consistent sentiments still emerge. Using natural language processing technology, Workday Peakon Employee Voice enables managers to search employee comments for semantically grouped insights, ensuring you always know what’s top of mind for your teams.
When things are going well at a company, it’s easy to assume your employees are content with your business practices. But how can you know whether your employees feel safe speaking up until you’re facing more serious issues? If your employees don’t have space to raise their concerns, periods of uncertainty can lead to high levels of turnover.
Psychological safety refers to an employee’s ability to share their thoughts without fear that speaking up could impact their chances for professional advancement, or that their ideas may be criticized. Either way, it’s important for the ongoing success of a company that employees feel safe contributing constructive feedback without negative consequences.
Creating psychological safety across the board requires a change to culture as much as it does to process. That means creating clear spaces for employee feedback, whether in person or digitally, and understanding the importance of confidentiality.
According to data from our report “Creating a Highly Engaged Organization,” managers at companies with higher engagement have 16% higher conversation rates than companies with lower engagement. When employees feel heard, that recognition contributes to feelings of safety and engagement.
The role of employee engagement software in enabling these confidential conversations can’t be overstated. Here are three ways an engagement solution helps improve psychological safety:
Embrace confidentiality. By using an engagement solution that enables confidential conversations, you allow employees to speak up with conviction. Plus, by surveying employees regularly on a variety of different topics, you encourage them to contribute in areas where they may have otherwise lacked confidence.
Promote a culture of feedback. Regularly surveying your employees and informing them of the actions being taken as a result lets your people know that what they say matters. More than that, it shows that speaking up isn’t a problem—it’s welcomed.
Enable greater visibility. Confidentiality doesn’t preclude the involvement of senior leadership. In Workday Peakon Employee Voice, people leaders at each level can see relevant conversations from employees in their department. That way, employees know their comments won’t hit a wall due to an uncooperative manager.
Regardless of how well a company manages other concerns during periods of uncertainty, employee career growth and development will nearly always take a hit—and that’s a major issue. According to data taken from Workday Peakon Employee Voice, growth is one of the the three key factors that differentiates highly engaged organizations.
Tackling issues around growth can be difficult at a time when budgets are tight and the future is unclear. But growth doesn’t always have to manifest as a new promotion or a pay raise. Instead, businesses should look to create a culture of continuous learning across the company, encouraging smaller moments of growth and recognition.
Research from Deloitte shows that organizations with a strong learning culture have engagement and retention rates that are 30% to 50% higher than their peers. Not only that, but they are also 92% more likely to develop novel products and processes, 56% more likely to be first to market, 52% more productive, and 17% more profitable.
An engagement solution should be at the foundation of any company learning culture and performance management initiative. Here are three ways to embed conversations around growth and development:
Meet employees where they work. Learning needs to happen in the natural flow of work, in much the same way as engagement surveys. Confidential two-way conversations enable managers to share relevant support at the instant growth scores begin to decline.
Don’t ignore the warning signs. A robust engagement solution provides managers oversight on much more than just engagement scores. On average, the growth score of employees that remain with a business is 13% higher than the average score of departing employees (seen in “Employee Expectations Report 2022”). Make sure managers provide support where it’s needed.
Create personalized learning pathways. Resources should be tailored to the individual, providing relevant learning material based on an employee’s tenure, seniority, and area of expertise. Additionally, they should be tailored to an individual’s specific issues—another area where searching for semantically related insights promotes a more nuanced understanding of declining scores.
Read the full article “Four Reasons an Employee Engagement Solution Is Key in Periods of Uncertainty” on the Workday blog.
