Recently, Alchemer hosted a webinar with HR.com to talk about the challenges of returning to the workplace after 14 to 18 months away. The panelists – Vanessa Bagnato, Director of Enterprise Solutions, and Sue Bonsor, Director of Customer Support at Alchemer – talked about the different workplace models and considerations for developing a return-to-work plan, and involving employees in the decision during the webinar.  

Different Work Models 

Returning to the Way it Was. Even though we now must create more hygienic work environments with less communal food, this model tries to recreate the way the organization worked before the pandemic.  

Clubhouse Model. This hybrid model encourages employees to come to the office when they need to collaborate, and work from home when they need to work without interruptions. In this case the office serves more as a hub. 

Activity-based Working. In this model, employees work from the office, but no longer have assigned desks. Instead, they spend their day working where it makes the most sense – in a team huddle, with one other person, or alone. Some companies use a reservation process to ensure each employee has a desk. This allows organizations to operate in smaller spaces with fewer desks than employees. 

Hub-and-Spoke Model. This approach creates smaller satellite offices closer to where employees live, cutting commute times while giving employees the benefits of face-to-face interactions. 

Fully Virtual. This model is how most companies worked during the pandemic, where employees work from any location, such as home or anywhere they like.  

How Others Are Doing It 

A Gartner study showed that 82 percent of companies intend to permit some remote working as people return to the office. However, 30 percent of corporate leaders worry about maintaining their corporate culture without people in the office.  

Google has announced plans to reopen offices with some locations returning to work before September first. However, offices will operate at limited capacity, taking regional health guidelines into consideration. Google also announced that they expect employees to live within commuting distance of an office – in effect, choosing a hybrid model over the fully remote model that some other tech companies, such as Twitter have chosen. 

Allstate Insurance surveyed employees and found that many employees did not want to return to the office full-time. After analysis, Allstate realized that most functions don’t require an office setting. They announced that 75 percent of the roles can be performed remotely, while 24 percent can be done on a hybrid basis. The remaining 1 percent will return to a pre-COVID style of office setting. This includes some top executives and certain customer-facing roles. 

Apple employees did not feel heard and are pushing back against a new policy that required them to return to work three days a week. Employees wanted a more flexible approach to work remotely with over 80 employees writing a letter to leadership expressing their thoughts and desire to be asked. Many employees have chosen to leave, especially in light of both Facebook and Twitter telling employees they can work from home forever. 

Atlassian revealed a new Team Anywhere policy, the company requires staff to travel to their nearest office four times a year. Based on employee surveys, the company expects to have about 50-percent office attendance. 

Considerations 

When you develop or finalize your Return to the Workplace plan, there are several considerations to take into account.  

1. Establish what your employees want and what your company needs to maintain your corporate culture, then determine the return-to-work approach that is best for your organization. 
2. Map out a timeline to set expectations for employees. Employees need to plan for childcare, family care, commuting, pet care, and other situations that might have changed over the past 16 months or so. Even if the timeline changes, employees will be more understanding if there is transparency about expectations. A McKinsey study found that employees want more certainty about post-pandemic working arrangement, even if businesses don’t yet know what to say. According to the McKinsey study, organizations that have already articulated more specific policies about the workplace have seen employee well-being and productivity rise. 
3. Get feedback from employees on the plan.  
4. Evaluate the physical workspace and ensure that it is safe for your employees.  
5. Consult with local government guidelines, which can vary by city, county, state, province, and country.  
6. Determine policies surrounding employee screenings and protocols. 
7. If you require daily health assessments or other check-ins, Alchemer found that posting a QR code at every door really simplified compliance. 
8. Determine how you will deal with vaccinated versus non-vaccinated employees. This is a very sensitive topic that could become an inclusivity issue. 
9. Decide what, if any, protective gear or cleaning supplies you need. 
10. Determine your corporate travel policy both domestically and internationally. 
11. Do not expect your plans to be static. You will need to monitor employee satisfaction (pulse surveys really help here) and be flexible with iterations due to employee feedback or changes to government guidelines or other factors. 

With the dangerous Delta variant cropping up, we all should plan to have our plans change. Remember to continue to communicate with employees and government health officials to protect your people. 

To learn about Alchemer’s Return-to-Work solution, click here. 

The post Returning to the Office Creates New Concerns for HR appeared first on Alchemer.

As an HR leader, creating a great place to work by improving the employee experience is at the heart of everything we do. It keeps employees engaged, productive, and loyal. It boosts productivity and enhances customer relationships. Our role and responsibilities as HR leaders must also align strategically with executive goals, and support the growth of the business. One study found that companies that invest in their employee experience see double the revenues and are four times as profitable compared to their less engaged counterparts.

Yet Human Resources teams are often spread thin. Responsible for the entirety of the employee experience – recruiting and retaining the very best people, developing meaningful benefits and rewards programs, providing professional development, and managing day-to-day employee needs – our plates are full.

When you add in the new demands of an elastic (heavily favored to remote) workforce, along with highly managed budgets and teams, building an employee-centric culture and great place to work just got exponentially more difficult.

The Employee Engagement Solution: An HR Success Story

At Alchemer, the employee experience is at the core of everything we do. We constantly strive to improve our employee experience because we know that happy and engaged employees perform better and that translates into a better experience for our customers and company growth. Just like many other HR teams, we are challenged to deliver this experience while balancing our budget and resources.

To find a better way to free up our time to focus on what really matters – building and maintaining a world-class employee experience – we enlisted the help of our Alchemer Solutions team. By listening to our customers in similar situations while exploring solutions to our own challenges, the Alchemer Employee Experience Solution was born.

The Employee Experience Solution streamlines some of HR’s most time-intensive tasks, allowing you to focus on employees and not on processing daily tasks. With pre-configured and customizable surveys, it makes collecting employee feedback easier than ever. It also includes the Employee Request Portal, which centralizes and automates the process of managing everyday employee needs.

To learn how to build a better employee experience, watch the free webinar.

Providing a Better Experience – For Both Employees and HR Teams

By improving our ability to collect continuous feedback, the Employee Experience Solution has made us a more nimble organization. We can easily leverage insights to act quickly, making incremental changes that net big results in driving our employee experience. Centralizing and automating the employee request process has given us the time-savings to improve our HR department operations.

For example, during the pandemic, we deployed the Employee Connection Pulse to our team, who were all working from home. The results told us that Alchemer people wanted more ways to connect outside of work meetings. Within a week, we were setting up game nights and a book club for those who wanted to join. With the Employee Experience Solution, you can achieve many of the same benefits. This out-of-the-box solution lets your HR team focus on what matters most – building a culture that fosters aligned, engaged, and productive people. Let me explain how.

Honing Your Feedback Skills 

Feedback is the backbone of any employee experience initiative. Yet too many companies relegate data collection to a once-a-year exercise and wait too long to make any meaningful changes. In comparison, we designed the Employee Experience Solution to help you capture the voice of your employees through continuous, meaningful feedback. From employee engagement to manager assessments to exit interviews, you’ll have the customizable surveys, workflows, and reporting to measure and improve your listening strategies throughout the employee lifecycle. 

A Common Scenario. Using the Core Employee Engagement Assessment each quarter, you can uncover key engagement drivers and areas of improvement. For example, if employees provide feedback that your benefits are confusing, you can work to develop educational resources about your offerings. If they would like more corporate transparency, you can collaborate with senior management to improve communications.   

The Employee Pulse then lets you evaluate these efforts, asking targeted questions that measure your progress against your benchmarks. Informing your work with real-time insights, this hones your efforts to improve experience faster and more efficiently.  

Taking Back Your Time Spent on Day-to-Day Needs 

We understand how employee requests can add up. It’s all too easy to become inundated by emails, texts, and phone calls from employees asking for everyday changes. These one-off requests not only take time but lack the visibility and adequate tracking mechanisms needed to manage them properly.

We built the Employee Request Portal to specifically address these issues. From request to review to implementation, this centralized hub streamlines the entire process and eliminates confusion from employees on the correct process to follow. If an employee wants to request a name change after getting married, they simply open the Employee Request Portal and fill out the appropriate request. A customized workflow immediately routes the request to HR for review and approval. Once approved, a notification is sent to the employee, automatically closing the loop. All requests are consolidated within Alchemer’s platform and the data collected can integrate with the HR systems you already have in place. This facilitates better tracking and reporting so nothing falls through the cracks.  

Launch Your Improved Employee Experience in 30 Days

You work hard to create a great place to work and to improve your employees’ experience. The Employee Experience Solution works to improve yours. With more effective feedback cycles, streamlined processes, and automated workflows, the demands on your team are significantly reduced. At the same time, your employees enjoy an improved experience. This empowers your people to become active participants in the organization while allowing your team to take on mission-critical initiatives that can transform your culture and your business.

The Employee Experience Solution lets you accelerate the launch of your new processes as well. We include six hours of onboarding coaching from our Professional Services group, so you’ll be up and running with your people-focused efforts in as little as 30 days.

For more information on the Employee Experience Solution, click here. 

The post Deliver on the Promise of Creating a Great Place to Work appeared first on Alchemer.

The Competitive Advantage of Engaged Employees

More and more companies are recognizing the human and business benefits of prioritizing employee engagement. And at the forefront of this trend is Four Winds Interactive (FWI). They are infusing engagement into their company DNA and, together with Alchemer, have created a continual feedback loop to fuel a 10-fold increase in their Employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS).

Employee engagement is more important than ever before. To attract and retain top talent, companies must keep employees engaged or lose a vital competitive edge. According to a report from The Engagement Institute, disengaged employees cost U.S. organizations up to $550 billion in lost productivity each year.

On the flip side, engaged workers are not only happier but have a direct impact on customer experience and the bottom line. A Gallup survey reported that highly engaged teams deliver a “10% increase in customer ratings and a 20% increase in sales.”

Supporting an Innovative, People-first Culture

As a leading software provider for enterprise-grade digital signage networks, FWI is transforming the way organizations communicate with their customers and their people. Today FWI supports more than 6,000 clients, powering millions of screens around the world. They are known for working with organizations in every major industry, helping them reach their target audiences with the right message at the right time.

Leaders at FWI attribute much of the company’s success to its people. As Chief People Officer, Courtney Graham wrote in a recent article, “The brilliance of a company happens when an innovative product collides with talented and happy people.”

That’s why, two years ago, Graham and the entire FWI team embarked on a mission to create and nurture a more intentional, people-first culture – with employee engagement as a core pillar to their innovative people strategy.

The first step was to tap into the pulse of the company – and this meant collecting better data. That’s when FWI turned to Alchemer to design and implement a quarterly eNPS survey. Their Director or Organizational Development, Tor Stenbakken, explained, “With Alchemer, we can survey our entire employee base, then segment the data so we can take immediate action on that feedback.”

Sent out to all employees, the survey asks respondents if they would recommend FWI as a great place to work. It also includes follow-up questions to provide further detail. Once the data is collected, Alchemer’s flexibility and reporting capabilities enable FWI to drill down to the department level, using both scores and commentary to uncover valuable insights and trends.

This information delivered transformative results. Using the data collected, Stenbakken and his team work closely with individual teams to create action plans to increase both engagement and productivity. Data from these surveys informs the entire FWI employee experience, including everything from benefits to development to diversity and inclusion initiatives. According to Stenbakken, “We saw a 10x increase in our eNPS, putting us well above the national average for employee engagement.”

Feedback Fuels Company-wide Decision-making

Feedback is a central component of decision-making at FWI. In addition to employee feedback, the company integrates data from Alchemer into decision-making across the entire company. From supporting the design and implementation of orientations, corporate events, and marketing programs, the company continually finds new ways to employ Alchemer. As Stenbakken reports, “Thanks to Alchemer’s unique combination of simplicity, flexibility, and features, we continue to find new uses cases for the platform at FWI.”

Download a copy of the Four Winds Interactive case study here.

The post How Four Winds Interactive Increased Employee Engagement 10-fold by Taking Immediate Action on eNPS Feedback appeared first on Alchemer.

As the healthcare industry becomes increasingly competitive, it is imperative for healthcare organizations to invest in their patient, employee, and brand experiences.

In an industry already facing a talent shortage, Compdata’s 2017 Compensation Data study found that healthcare turnover rates exceed 20 percent, which further proves that employee engagement is crucial to an organization’s success in the new era of healthcare consumerism.

Employee engagement is much more than making employees satisfied or happy; however, many companies do not truly understand the large difference between employee satisfaction and employee engagement, which leads to underinvestment in employee engagement initiatives.

Employee engagement is far more about the employee’s deep emotional investment in the company’s values and goals as well as their personal commitment to achieving those goals.



Related: 3 Types of Employee Satisfaction Surveys That Will Benefit Your Business


Template: Employee Engagement & Workplace Happiness

Why is successful employee engagement so important in healthcare?

Mercer, a global professional services firm, recently found that, by 2025, the U.S. will need to hire 2.3 million new healthcare workers in order to meet the demand of its patient population and will not have nearly enough skilled workers to fill the positions.

In order to recruit the best talent and effectively engage employees, healthcare organizations must begin understanding their employees’ beliefs, values, and motivators on a level never before explored. 

Disengaged employees have a higher chance of feeling burned out and not providing the highest quality services possible, which is why nurse engagement was the number one variable that correlated to patient mortality, a 2010 Gallup study of 200 hospitals found.



Related: 3 Steps To Creating a Winning Employee Experience

All in all, healthcare organizations simply cannot provide the high-quality experience their patients are demanding without investing in employee engagement; they are each other’s yin and yang.

In addition to its effect on patient experience, low employee engagement can drastically impact a healthcare organization’s profitability and competitiveness.

According to Healthcare Finance News, “…if the average cost of an employee is $60,000 and an organization loses 20 percent of its 3,000 employees with an average salary of $45,000, turnover's hefty price tag tops out at $27 million.”

Additionally, Gallup found that 70 percent of employees are either “neutral” or “actively disengaged” — meaning they are willing to leave and/or do damage to their company — and that companies with low levels of employee engagement experience a 33 percent decrease in operating income.

The data tells a powerful story, one that demonstrates the very real challenges many healthcare organizations face when it comes to keeping employees engaged. 

How to leverage data to engage employees 

With many variables feeding into the high-level engagement equation, healthcare organizations must prioritize investing in engagement initiatives throughout the employee journey.

By collecting both qualitative and quantitative feedback data through surveys at each stage of the employee lifecycle, healthcare organizations of any size can develop a holistic picture of current processes and begin to pinpoint where improvements must be made.

Data at each stage of the employee lifecycle should be collected and monitored continuously — rather than taking a “one and done” approach — and should include data points such as:

Recruiting/Acquisition/Selection

• How they found the job
• The interviewers/interviewing process
• The job offer process
• Communication with the organization
• Overall satisfaction with the hiring process
• Ideas for improvement
• If they would refer others to the organization for employment
• Job offer acceptance/rejection rates

Onboarding/New Hire

• Depth of content covered
• Preparedness to do well in their job
• Effectiveness of trainers
• Feelings about communication with other staff during onboarding
• Ideas for improvement

Culture/Inclusion

• Overall satisfaction with company culture
• Interdepartmental communication effectiveness
• Satisfaction with the organization’s technology stack
• Feelings about job responsibilities/workload
• Time to respond to employee concerns/problems
• Ideas for improvement

Continuous learning and development

• Amount of development opportunities
• Effectiveness of existing development opportunities
• Ideas for improvement

Retention

• Compensation
• Reasons employees leave
• Overall satisfaction with team/manager relationships
• Ideas for improvement
• Turnover rate
• Average length of employment

Related: How to Build an Employee Engagement Roadmap (With Template) 

In addition to monitoring overall company trends over time, it is beneficial for healthcare organization leadership to segment the data received based on:


• Department
• Tenure
• Job role
• Supervising manager
• Seniority level within the organization 
• Accepted versus denied job offers
• …and more

This level of granularity makes it easier to determine precisely where the most urgent improvements must be made. Tailored employee engagement goals for various groups or individuals throughout the organization can be developed using the above data points.

Key takeaway

The biggest lesson for healthcare organizations when investing in employee engagement initiatives is that data plays a critical role. It is imperative for healthcare organizations to collect, measure, analyze, actionize, and communicate the available data from every point in the employee journey.

Without tangible data, leadership will have a much harder time developing realistic, informed goals. Executing positive change throughout the organization that will impact not only employee engagement but also patient satisfaction, and the bottom line.

The post How to use data to enhance employee engagement in healthcare appeared first on Alchemer.

Higher revenues, higher engagement, stronger loyalty, and a higher performing and ultimately more profitable organization are all key performance indicators (KPIs) of a winning employee experience (EX). 

Yet, I am hearing more and more from HR colleagues that getting their EX ideas off the ground is a tall hurdle standing in the way of reaching these goals. 

The hurdle to EX success feels even taller when you do not have a clear idea of what the big picture should look like. What helps me most when I find myself in a similar situation is mapping it all out.  

After all, HR professionals are the unofficial product owners of the employee experience. So why not do as product owners do, and create a simple product roadmap that outlines future developments and enhancements? 

Recent research suggests that companies with a great EX: 

• Outperform the S&P’s 500 by 122 percent (Glassdoor)
• Increase customer loyalty by 17 percent (Forrester)
• Increase revenue by 11 percent (Forrester)
• Are 21 percent more profitable than those with poor engagement (Gallup)

When you apply this kit to your organization, you can quickly identify gaps as they relate to your goals for both EX and the organization. 

Whatever the goals or objectives you are trying to solve for by investing in EX may be, this kit visually creates a clear path ahead and ensures you are not inadvertently leaving problems unsolved while aligning the “product” to your business and audience needs.

How to Define an EX Process

Any product expert will tell you a large factor in achieving and sustaining the success of a product is understanding the customer for which it is intended. 

For EX to materialize in the organization, you need to first learn the needs of its target customer — the employees.

We have discussed how much data we have available in HR, but the importance of the human element cannot be understated. Make it a regular part of your daily routine to interact face-to-face and gather input from current employees in addition to aligning initiatives with available data. 

Talk to current employees. 

The intel you gather from anecdotal conversations, “water cooler” interactions, and fly-on-the-wall observations are invaluable.

These feedback sources help to validate the numbers you are seeing from feedback surveys or other data collections, such as small focus groups and targeted interviews of employees/managers in critical roles. 

Create a strategic compass — set your true North. 

Begin by drafting a set of Principles that will guide your efforts and include intended outcomes. 

These Principles will allow you to communicate “how” you want to work as you build out the organization’s EX. 

Collect data on the workforce from:

• Engagement surveys
• Questionnaires
• Employees’ job applications
• Exit interviews
• What is stored in the HRIS
• Employees’ resumes

Combine all this data with the intel gathered from speaking with employees, and this will be your strategic compass.

This combined approach provides a more holistic perspective and ensures you are focusing the EX framework on what matters most to those on the receiving end. 

A company’s EX should be comprised of data points that support: 

• What employees are seeking to achieve every day when they come to work;
• A sense of alignment to what the company is striving to achieve (company goals); and,
• The common barriers or challenges in achieving these goals. 

Related: 3 Steps to Creating a Winning Employee Experience 

Creating an EX Roadmap 

How to think about and plan your approach.

Before you start developing the roadmap, ensure you are following your own “true North.” Here are the steps to complete before plotting out the roadmap. These steps are designed to ensure you are meeting the needs of the employees, the company, and the HR function. 

Craft your Principles.

These will guide your efforts, and define “how” you want to implement your EX. 

Define key objectives.

This is the problem you are solving, and it will be your measures of success (e.g., increase employee satisfaction (%) or decrease time to onboard new hires (# days).

Understand your target audiences. 

Define all stakeholders — employees and leadership — to ensure focus. 

Determine how you will measure success. 

This is where the “data-driven” parts come into play. Holding performance accountable to defined KPIs will help you steer the ship in the right direction forward, adjust course as needed, and calculate the initiative’s overall ROI.

You can collect EX data a few different ways, such as through surveys or assessments and can be collected throughout the employee lifecycle. 

What to measure:

• Time it takes to hire  – otherwise known as “Time to Fill” (screening, sourcing, advertising the role, interviewing, etc.)
• The diversity of new hires (age, race, gender breakdown compared to the demographics of your location)
• Offer acceptance rate
• Offer denial rate
• Average cost to hire per employee
• Number of promotions per quarter (broken down by employee demographics)
• Average employee tenure 
• Average rate of employee turnover (good/bad/overall attrition)
• Average cost of employee turnover
• Average revenue/savings generated for the business per employee
• Number of Referrals given by existing employees and alumni
• Number of employees participating in company culture events
• Number of affinity/community groups
• Number of employees enrolled in organizational programs that are not required (e.g., Wellness Program or a Remote Work Program)

Determine the benchmark. 

To see where you need to go, you need to find out how effective your efforts have been up to this point. Determine the average amount of time/effort expended toward crafting employee experiences over the last six months or year. 

You will then use these averages to see how any changes you are planning to implement will impact the EX.

Build your roadmap. 

This is a systems approach/lifecycle mapping to ensure integration of EX and can be used to maintain transparency with key stakeholders. It shows where you need to focus the overall direction of the EX. 

In the event that further investment or resources are needed to support additional EX development, the roadmap displays current efforts and clearly communicates gaps — making the ask supported by real-time activity and in-progress tactics.  

When plotting tactics to execute EX and business goals using the template kit, make sure you are plotting them as they relate to the first four steps of this process. Alignment is key! 

This is the process that I have put to work when shaping and refining an effective and lasting EX. So, what are you waiting for? Just start. I am confident it will be the best EX your company has ever offered before! 

Jeffrey Belanger is the Head of Leader Enablement &  HR Business Partnership at Pandora. His passion is helping companies drive transformation and global scale initiatives while creating effective, inclusive, and engaged organizations and company cultures. Connect with him on LinkedIn. 

The post How to Build an Employee Experience Roadmap (With Template) appeared first on Alchemer.

If you feel like you’re not getting the results or insights you need from employee engagement surveys, it’s most likely because you’re asking the wrong questions. While building and designing an employee engagement survey, determining the appropriate questions to ask is an absolutely essential part of the process. 

Below we’ve listed ten questions to consider including in your next employee engagement survey. These questions will yield impactful responses from employees that can then be analyzed and acted on to create buy-in across the organization. 

Employee engagement surveys, when utilized properly, can improve organizational culture, which ultimately boosts your bottom line.

RELATED: The Importance of Keeping Connected to Employees

10 Questions to Include in Your Next Employee Engagement Survey

1. How happy are you at work, on a scale of 1 to 10?

In order to continuously measure employee engagement over time, this question should be asked to all employees routinely. 

By directly asking employees how happy they are at work, you are getting right to the heart of what drives employee engagement — happiness and satisfaction. 

People feel happy or unhappy for various reasons, so this question will need to be leveraged in conjunction with other questions that aim to contextualize why people are experiencing particular levels of happiness.

2. Would you refer a friend or family member to work at this company?

This question further contextualizes how happy your employees are with their experiences. 

If the majority of your employees say that they would definitely refer a friend or family member to work at your company, it’s likely that your employee engagement levels are high. 

However, if most employees respond to this question saying that there’s no way they’d refer people they care about to work at your company, you’ll need to do some digging to figure out why that is the case.

3. Do you feel confident in your understanding of your career path at this company?

In order for employee engagement levels to remain high, it’s imperative to proactively inform your employees that you are invested in them, and their future. 

One of the most optimal ways to do this is to work with each employee to ensure that they have a future at the company, and that that future is fueled by growth and promotion opportunities. 

If an employee feels that there is no future for them at a company, they will immediately start looking for other opportunities if they are looking to grow their career.

4. How would you rate your work-life balance, on a scale of 1 to 10?

Work-life balance has become a hot topic and key driver of employee engagement in today’s business landscape. 

While each individual varies in terms of how work-life balance affects their ultimate level of happiness, it’s important to get to know your employees and learn what optimizes their performance.

If long hours in the office are mandatory, that doesn’t always mean increased production. Instead, finding the balance between office hours and free time that works for the employees of your business, while the office hours may be shortened, will result in a more lively work environment and inherently more productivity in shorter time periods.

5. How frequently does your manager recognize your performance and contributions?

This questions aligns with question number three. In order for employees to be engaged, they must feel recognized for their performance and contributions. 

If the appropriate processes are not put in place, and hard work and accomplishments are not recognized, then what is your employees’ motivation to keep working hard and delivering value?

6. Do you see yourself working at this company in one year?

This question aims to measure the elements of longevity that your employee engagement plays on retention. Obviously, if employees are unhappy and unengaged, they will not stay at your company for long.

If you ask this question to employees regularly, and yield responses saying that most people plan to leave within the year, it’s definitely time to focus on evaluating internal growth opportunities, raises in salary, and other methods that will boost retention and decrease churn.

7. Do you feel that the management at this company is transparent and communicates effectively?

Management and the C-suite can often separate further and further from employees over time if proactive measures are not taken. 

In order to maintain employee engagement, the leaders of your organization should prioritize communication to employees that will contextualize the strategic decisions being made behind closed doors.

By explaining the reasoning behind important, organization-impacting decisions, employees will better understand why they are doing the work they are doing, which will create buy in and enhance employee engagement overall.

8. How comfortable do you feel giving feedback to your supervisor, on a scale of 1 to 10?

This question also aims to mitigate the distance between the leaders of your organization and its employees. Communication is a two way street.

Employees want to feel like they are part of a team with their manager, not that they are on a team being managed by their manager. A critical component of this is the ability for employees to provide feedback up the chain of command. If managers and leadership constantly provide the message that they do not want critical feedback, then employees will ultimately feel that their voice does not matter, which has a severely negative impact on employee engagement.

9. Do you have fun at work?

Work should be fun! Not all the time, but at least sometimes.

No employee wants to feel like they never have any fun at work. If you ask this question and receive feedback that your office is a generally fun-sucking atmosphere, it might be worth your while to consider exploring solutions such as company outings, happy hours, and other fun activities that will make working at your company less of a drag.

10. What three words would you use to describe the organizational culture at this company?

This open-ended question allows for a lot of flexibility and potentially diverse feedback. Ultimately, the three words that employees provide to describe your company culture should align with the core values of your business. 

If they don’t, then it’s time to double down on defining the organizational culture, and communicating that culture to employees so that they are intimately familiar with it. Once they feel familiar with the ideal culture that the company is striving for, they can adjust their own individual behavior to better fit that culture.

RELATED: Best Practices for Implementing an Employee Engagement Survey

When to Distribute Employee Engagement Surveys

Employee engagement surveys should be distributed routinely, and as often as on a weekly or biweekly basis. 

A lot of the power that comes with employee engagement surveys comes with the consistency at which they are sent to employees. By maintaining consistency, you can establish a baseline in terms of your survey response data, and measure the changes to that baseline over time. This enables you to record what is working, and what is not working for your employees.

The post 10 Questions to Include in Your Employee Engagement Surveys appeared first on Alchemer.

The terms employee satisfaction and employee engagement are often used interchangeably, but as we discuss in this article, employee satisfaction and employee engagement are actually separate concepts. 

Employee engagement refers to the degree to which employees love their work, and continually look for ways to improve their work experience. 

Related: What Does Employee Engagement Look Like, and How Should We Measure It?

Employee satisfaction refers to the degree to which employees are happy with their routine at work, and the expectations that they are required to fulfill. Both employee engagement and employee satisfaction are elements that together comprise the bigger product at hand — employee experience. 

Both employee engagement and employee satisfaction are metrics used to gauge overall employee sentiment and business value. Surveys are a commonly used tool to collect supporting data in order to quantify these key business metrics. 

Related: Why Employee Engagement Matters to Your Business

Why Should Businesses Focus on Employee Satisfaction?

By consistently measuring employee satisfaction through surveys, businesses are able to shed light on elements of their culture and corporate structure that have room for improvement. Identifying gaps in the overall employee experience enables the company to shift overarching strategies to align with the pain points that employees are experiencing.

If your average employee is not truly satisfied with their role and the work that they do, they will be less invested in their projects. As such, key deliverables will be compromised, which ultimately negatively impacts the bottom line.  Unengaged employees are costly for the business — costing a business with 170 employees, and average of $8.6 million a year. 

It’s best practice to remain on the pulse of the state of employee satisfaction by distributing routine surveys. 

But the work doesn’t stop once the survey has been distributed. In fact, employees value action over autopilot. If employees supply feedback time and again and don’t see any changes, they will develop doubt in the process and skepticism in regard to if their opinion even matters. They will feel unheard. 

To avoid this scenario, after analyzing the survey data, ensure you are following-up with employees on their responses. Constantly keep the lines of communication open. 

If employee feedback gathered from surveys is valuable to the business, include the employee in the implementation process. This gives employees so-called skin-in-the-game, while positively impacting levels of loyalty and satisfaction. 

Related: Get The Truth of Employee Satisfaction in 15 Questions or Less

3 Types of Employee Satisfaction Surveys That Will Benefit Your Business

There are three types of employee satisfaction surveys that any business looking to keep their finger on the pulse of how their employees truly feel should distribute on a routine basis. 

Below we go into detail on each of the three types of employee satisfaction surveys. 

Employee Satisfaction Survey #1: Job Satisfaction

The first kind of employee satisfaction survey that you should consider administering to your employees aims to uncover insights into employee job satisfaction. 

In this survey, you’ll want to inquire about how the employee feels about their day-to-day work and job function.

For job satisfaction surveys, we advise that you provide answer options to survey questions on a five or seven point scale, ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree.” 

Below are some examples of questions to ask in a job satisfaction survey:

• After a day of work I feel that I have accomplished something meaningful.

• I have access to the resources necessary to perform my job well.

• I have clearly defined goals in regard to my job function.

• My work requires me to use my skills and abilities to the fullest.

• There is thorough communication down the chain of command when the leadership team makes decisions that will affect my day-to-day.

• Overall, how satisfied are you with your current job?

• Overall, how satisfied are you with internal corporate communication?

• Do you feel that you are in a position to learn and grow at the company?

• Do you have any suggestions for how to improve your satisfaction levels?

• Are there any other issues that are affecting your satisfaction levels at this company?


Employee Satisfaction Survey #2: Self-Evaluation

The second kind of employee satisfaction survey that you should consider administering to your employees will result in the employees performing a self evaluation of their experiences. 

By asking about the positive experiences that employees have on a day-to-day basis, leadership can derive insights into what the environment is like amongst employees in the office.

For experience-related self-evaluation surveys we advise that you provide answer options to survey questions on a five or seven point scale, ranging from “Strongly Disagree” to “Strongly Agree.” 

Below are some examples of experience-related questions to ask in a self-evaluation survey:

• I feel that I am leveling-up my skill set by being exposed to growth and learning opportunities.

• I feel that my voice is heard, especially by management and my superiors.

• My managers and coworkers encourage and push me to be my best.

• When I apply myself and give as much effort as possible, I feel that I am recognized for that effort.

• My manager values me.

• I am able to solve the recurring problems being experienced by customers.

• Overall, I’m satisfied with my job and the work that I am doing on a daily basis.


For performance-related questions in self-evaluation surveys, we suggest asking employees to compare themselves with an average employee in the same position. 

Answer options can again be a five or seven point scale, but instead of satisfaction levels, the scale should represent percentiles of the average employee. 

For example, the top percentile would be 5 percent of employees, while the bottom percentile would be the bottom 20 percent of employees. 

Below are some examples of performance-related questions to ask in a self-evaluation survey:

• How would you rate your overall productivity, and the ability to get your job done? 

• I go beyond what is expected of me on a routine basis.

• I respond to both internal, and customer-facing communications promptly and effectively, and in the best interest of the company and brand.

• I would rate my overall quality of the service I provide on a daily basis as a: XX.

• I spent XX amount of time spent on the tasks that are assigned to me.


Employee Satisfaction Survey #3: Job Retention

The third kind of employee satisfaction survey that we will discuss in this article is a job retention survey.

This survey differs from the two previously mentioned surveys, as each question that is asked to respondents will need to have customized and unique answer options available for selection.

In this survey, you’ll want to ask some preliminary questions that will provide insight into the employee’s job function, the department that they work in, their managerial level, etc. 

Then, ask questions that will allude to how likely the employee is to stay with the company for the long-term.

Below are some examples of questions to ask in a job retention employee satisfaction survey:

• Which of the following departments of the organization do you work most closely with?

  • Customer Service

  • Finance

  • Sales

  • Marketing

  • HR

  • Other, please write-in

• Which of the following best describes your role at the company?

  • Clerical

  • Technician

  • Manager

  • Director

  • VP

  • Other, please write-in

• How long have you worked at the company?

  • Six months or less

  • Six months to one year

  • 1-3 years

  • 3-5 years

  • Five or more years

• How satisfied are you with your position, overall?

  • Very Dissatisfied

  • Dissatisfied

  • Neutral

  • Satisfied

  • Very Satisfied

• How motivated are you to see the company succeed in years to come?

  • Very Motivated

  • Somewhat Motivated

  • Not Very Motivated

  • Not At All Motivated

  • I’m not sure

• Would you recommend this company to friends or family as an enjoyable and fulfilling place to work?

  • Definitely

  • Probably

  • I’m Not Sure

  • Probably Not

  • Definitely Not 


Determining The Appropriate Employee Satisfaction Survey

Each of the three types of employee satisfaction surveys outlined above can prove extremely useful depending on how they fit into your overall employee experience strategy.

By consistently administering these surveys to employees in conjunction with other tools used to measure employee experience, you’ll be able to begin to frame the current state of employee satisfaction. 

Setting benchmarks for internal data as well as industry trends on the average employee satisfaction rate and other key performance indicators will help contextualize your insights.  

For example, identifying which groups of employees are less than extremely satisfied with the work they are doing, and the environment that they are working in, you’ll be able to highlight the areas where there is room for improvement from a leadership and communication perspective.

Surveys are an amazing tool for receiving this feedback due to their flexibility. You can survey one employee at a time, or all of your employees simultaneously. You can choose to direct the most appropriate type of employee satisfaction survey to those employees that would benefit the most from it. 

The possibilities are truly endless! 

In short, when evaluating employee satisfaction rates within your organization, surveys are the go-to tool in your employee experience toolbox. 

The post 3 Types of Employee Satisfaction Surveys That Will Benefit Your Business appeared first on Alchemer.

In This Article:

>HR has changed 

>3 Steps to Creating a Winning Employee Experience  

>Keeping the Employee Experience Simply Elegant

>To Build a Great Product, You Must First Learn What Problem Needs Solving

To stay competitive and relevant in today’s market landscape, businesses need to actualize a sophisticated operational framework that starts and ends with the employee experience. 

This term “employee experience” is starting to sound appetizing to businesses, in large part due to its positive ROI including higher employee engagement, productivity, profit, revenue by employee, and stock price performance. 

Investing in the employee experience has long been proven a worthwhile investment. 

Research on the subject from Gallup tells us that highly engaged workforces outperform their peers by 147 percent in earnings per share. Yet, 87 percent of employees worldwide are unengaged, the same study found.  

Research by author Jacob Morgan shows a strong correlation between organizations that invest heavily in employee experience and social proof benefits such as designations like “Best Places to Work,” “In-Demand Employers,” or “Most Innovative Company.” 

These accolades are imperative for potential employees to see during their research and recruitment stage with your company.

Looking at the financials is one important lens to apply when you’re seeking to improve your organization’s employee experience, but not the end-all-be-all way. 

For too long employee experience has been crafted not only on now severely outdated assumptions of what an employee values, but aligned with rigid top-down organizational structures. 

Much, if not all of this friction between business profit and employee experience can be reduced by reframing the role that HR can play in crafting, managing, and refining an employee experience aligned with today’s values and workplaces. 

Let’s discuss what this all exactly entails, and how you and all HR leaders can start building a  winning employee experience. 

First, know that HR is more different today than ever before 

The sooner a business can start seeing HR as more than just the compensation and benefits department or the hire and fire department, the sooner they will realize the powerful role that HR can play in architecting the business to achieve long-term success. 

One of the things that businesses and HR functions haven’t really put together is the role of HR in mainstream business environments. 

HR was built on years of solely managing risk, representing the business, and protecting the business to balance out the representation of the business with employees.  

When I really break down why employee experience is relevant to those like me in HR —  it comes down to this basic way of thinking: 

Employee experience is HR’s one and only product, the same way a technology company’s software is its product. 

…and at the heart of every product, is the customer. 

Therefore, at a very basic high-level, I am the product owner of the employee experience. 

Our product helps companies solve how to better manage and drive the rates of engagement, retention, tenure, turnover — and ultimately their connection to the core values of the organization.  

HR’s main role today is to foster and enable the employee experience through leaders and people managers. 

To drive the employee experience, HR is now not only on the front lines of best methods to attract, select, hire, and onboard employees, but they are anchoring the parts in between to engage, develop, and retain.

The latter — engagement, development, and retention — is what completes this newer employee experience framework. 

Now that we have defined employee experience, here are my top recommendations for crafting one that lives up to all the hype. 

3 Steps to Creating a Winning Employee Experience with HR at The Helm 

• Step 1: Define employee experience as it pertains to your organization – make it relevant 
• Step 2: Manage the employee experience – proactively
• Step 3: Change work habits to align with the employee experience – sustain and nurture it  

Define employee experience by making it relevant

Employee experience is the experience that is offered by the company to employees throughout their entire time with the company — from the early days of recruitment through their exit. 

One definition I love is from Kate Le Gallez of Culture Amp: 

The employee experience encapsulates all that people encounter, observe or feel over the course of their employee journey at an organization. It’s an expansive view of the relationship between the individual and the organization, starting with the application process and continuing through to the day the individual exits the business and even beyond to when they join the organization’s alumni.  

The beauty of employee experience is that while it’s inherently the same concept, the diversity of its look and feel are totally contextual to the organization — making the “experience” a unique value proposition for the company. 

As you work through defining the employee experience as it pertains to your organization, ensure that this definition and the expectations of it are shared throughout the company, frequently and is aligned to your core values system and organizational DNA.

It takes at least a few times repeating something for it to truly resonate and become habit. The more your employees and leaders hear, feel, and think about the employee experience from key stakeholders, the higher the likelihood for it to stake claim in their memory. 

Ultimately this is evidenced by how employee behavior is influenced, and behavior change is what we’re after.

For example, are employees visibly living the tenets of employee experience as it is internally defined? If so, it’s starting to resonate and anchor. 

If not, keep using the bullhorn to make sure your messaging and values are peppered in every employee lifecycle touch point and in every company, internal communications in subtle and some not so subtle ways until these newer habits are imprinted on the organization’s DNA.

Manage the employee experience proactively

If you truly think about the employee experience from end-to-end — from what people are saying in public about the company, it’s products, it’s reputation, etc., to how we pitch the company to a potential employee to when they leave the company — all of that to me, is now the job of HR. 

We’re not exclusively responsible to manage compensation and benefits or learning and development, HR analytics or HR business partners — those are and always will be part of the function and the tools we use every day. They are our areas of expertise. 

But really, HR is all about proactively managing and being a part of the employee experience in every facet. 

Again, when thinking about employee experience as an iterative product that HR manages, the role of HR is to enable the creation and customer support for a set of products and services that help secure and ultimately anchor the employee, the leader, and the culture. 

For everything inside and outside the company, developing an action plan that is designed on a contextual almost personalized basis per employee — one that factors in their family life, facilitates work-life balance, works toward achieving milestones of a big picture career path — that’s part of the employee experience and it’s very powerful and core to that healthy employee/employer relationship. 

Recruitment experiences, for example, should be based on how well a recruiter can articulate the company’s employee value proposition (EVP) — what’s in it for the employee to work there — and a clear framework on what is expected from the employee.  

Competition is fierce out there for great talent. How a recruiter articulates the EVP, is a differentiator.

This product/service customer-first approach changes how HR frames the entire end-to-end employee experience. 

And as HR evolves and refines their product and service offering over time, so to speak, they find that a well-managed employee experience empowers managers and leaders to do their jobs better rather than it being dictated through policy and HR jargon. 

Change work habits to align, sustain and nurture the employee experience 

With HR leading the charge around employee experience, it’s a core responsibility to facilitate an ongoing empowering experience. Part of this involves letting managers actually manage.  

Looking over our shoulder, we see that we’ve given managers policies on how to manage — a binder an inch or thicker stuffed with paperwork all dictating, “This is how you’re going to manage here.” 

The benchmark around people management only went as far as providing guideposts and wishing for the best. This check-the-box approach is no longer going to cut it. 

If companies are not actively driving, defining, or managing the employee experience, then they are not effectively managing a business. 

Climbing the corporate ladder, so to speak, doesn’t take as long as it used to. Career path options are aplenty, and entry-level workers tend to jump ship after only a couple of years. 

Recent research out of Georgetown University Center of Education confirms this, out of 5.6 million US-based Millennials who held a job in 2000 did not hold one by 2010.

To that end, the incoming workforce — Generation Z — is predicted to challenge business’ approach to communication, which directly impacts how the employee experience takes shape.

As “digital natives,” those entering the workforce from this generation expect technology to be the primary model for interactions, according to Deloitte Insights.  

For those of us in HR, the gaps presented by the incoming workforce most notably around social cognitive skills like problem-solving, critical thinking, and communication, need to be considered when crafting and maintaining a diverse employee experience — especially the early stages of the employee lifecycle.  

“Organizations should reevaluate the skill sets that are critical for the execution of the organization’s strategy and the persistence of the company’s competitive advantage,” says Carolyn O’Boyle, Josefin Atack, and Kelly Monahan of Deloitte Insights. 

If You Keep the Employee Experience Simple — Elegance Will Follow 

When it comes to crafting an employee experience that positively impacts the business, simple is always better. 

I’m the first to admit that HR tends to over complicate things more often than not. 

And when we do, it doesn’t deliver on our main employee experience where people clearly understand what HR is doing and why — such as: 

• What are the company’s principles that all employees should live by?
• What are the frameworks that are going to be important and used every day to make decisions and do my job?
• What are the guideposts, and ultimately, how does it deliver on the overall employee value proposition? 

Removing the HR speak and communicating in plain language allows you to talk about and categorize what exactly is in it for the employee. 

Remember: if you can’t explain it to your grandmother — you’re not doing it right. 

Your organization’s EVP becomes the standard way you can talk about and categorize what is in it for the employee, what is in it for the business, and how you come together in that partnership. 

To set the stage for a powerful employee experience to grow, keep it simple, and clean. Cover the basics — share short and sweet policies that protect the organization and the employee, and what enhances the experience and the business, for example.  

The end deliverable should feel like adults thinking alike and working with and talking to other adults; not the stiff, exhaustively long, and overly formal employee handbook. The barrier to entry should be as intuitive and even-keeled as possible. 

When you simplify, you’re able to ultimately work faster, and by default, deliver a better product to your customer once you know who your customer is.  

To Build a Great Product, You Must First Learn What Problem Needs Solving 

Customer insight is typically at the center of any product roadmap. Employee insight should, therefore, be at the center of the experience roadmap. 

Understanding what employees are trying to accomplish and the obstacles they face in doing so peels back the layers for a new way of doing things. 

In the recently published book, Jobs to Be Done by Stephen Wunker, Jessica Wattman, and David Farber, the authors argue for a new approach to growing a product. 

The customer is always right. Especially when it comes to innovation. Whether they know it or not, customers have the answers for where the next big breakthrough will be. The problem is that customers are notoriously bad at imagining the product that solves their problems and conceptualizing how they would interact with true breakthrough solutions. As Henry Ford reputedly put it, ‘If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.’ The trick is figuring out how to unlock the right information that can get you to the winning solution without relying solely on asking people what they want. This critical step is where many innovation efforts fail.  

My approach echoes this with a twist. Traditional instruments like satisfaction and engagement surveys are great ways to gather data, but when used as the end-all-be-all, are ineffective.  

Related: What is Data-Driven Decision-Making in HR? 

Lacking from these tried and true survey insights is intel about the intangible and unquantifiable side of what motivates and satisfies employees such as: 

• Morals, Ethics, Beliefs
• Motivations
• Aspirations 
• Character traits employees apply when determining if a company is a good place for them to work, such as honesty, accountability, and integrity  
• Understanding their goals and reasons for working at the company

Listening, for these critical elements, are needed to complete the whole employee picture. 

By stepping back to start with the basics and listening to employees — including how they perceive the current or potential iterations on the current experience — allows us in HR to become laser-focused on the areas that will provide the most strategic impact needed to long-term growth.  

The data-backed insights provide you the compass needed to take action and understand where to prioritize your efforts. After all, that is the whole point of administering HR-style surveys in the first place. 

Yet, the magic happens when the hard and fast data is combined with the nuances of your employee population. 

What that gives you when you start thinking about employee experience as your product and employees as your customers, is speed and precision to diagnose problems, pain points, and gaps.   

If you can’t be precise and agile, you can’t create an elegantly simple yet highly sophisticated experience or have the ability to turn around actions quickly or report on successes and outcomes to then do it all over again. 

At the end of the day, crafting a rich and sought after employee experience is not rocket science. It requires HR leaders to take full ownership of it, and iterate and improve on it constantly based on data and employee intel — and remembering, perhaps most importantly, that we’re all humans trying to help other humans. 

When push comes to shove, ask yourself one question: would this experience be enjoyable for me if I were on the receiving end? If your answer is anything other than a definitive yes, revaluate. When it comes to your product, never settle for good enough. 

Jeffrey Belanger is the Head of Leader Enablement &  HR Business Partnership at Pandora. His passion is helping companies drive transformation and global scale initiatives while creating effective, inclusive, and engaged organizations and company cultures. Connect with him on LinkedIn. 

The post 3 Steps To Creating a Winning Employee Experience appeared first on Alchemer.

Effective workplaces are comprised of employees who are challenged by their job and offered various learning opportunities, according to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) Effective Workplace Index. 

Yet, employee engagement has been as much of a priority as it has been a top challenge for HR leaders. And the challenge is only compounded further with rising managerial pressures to accomplish more at a faster rate, teams not working collaboratively, and a lack of advancement opportunities. Studies conducted by Gallup, LinkedIn, and SHRM echo these conclusions. 

Social learning, or the learning that is done by observing and imitating others, may be one solution to combat the employee engagement problem when applied to a strategic and ongoing employee learning and development initiative. 

First, let’s understand why engaged employees are a vital part of an effective workplace.

Why employee engagement matters.   

“Serving as a reciprocal relationship between the employee and the employer, engagement has the aptitude to elevate performance and strengthen the link among these relationships,” a 2017 SHRM employee job satisfaction and engagement report found.  

In LinkedIn’s 2018 Workplace Learning Report, a top trend in helping improve employee engagement is having direct managers spearhead employee learning opportunities.

Over 50 percent of the 2,200 employees surveyed told the social network they would improve their skills and spend more time learning if their direct manager guided them. 

A now somewhat outdated study by LinkedIn on why and how people change jobs still offers a compelling statistic: 45 percent of employees in 2015 changed jobs because they were concerned about the lack of opportunities for advancement. 

Employee disengagement is costly.   

Unproductive employees cost an average of $3,400 for every $10,000 of their salary, according to research conducted by Gallup. 

And on average 17.2 percent of an organization’s workforce is disengaged, Gallup research suggests. 

Say then, for example, your organization has 1,000 employees and 17.2 percent of them are disengaged. The median salary at your organization is $50,000 per year. 

The 172 disengaged employees are costing the organization $8.6 million a year. 

Employee engagement is linked to revenue growth. 

When employee engagement increases by five points, revenue growth sees a three-point bump the following year, a study of more than five million employee responses from more than 60 countries found. 

The same study, led by Aon Hewitt, examined trends in global employee engagement last year, concluded a drop in employee engagement has a damaging domino effect: 

• Employee performance decays and absenteeism increases
• Business experiences greater turnover 
• Customer satisfaction declines  
• Financial performance suffers 

Employee engagement is a key metric in determining the connection between HR and the bottom-line.

With the push on organizations to become data-driven, the HR function has struggled behind other business units like sales, marketing, and customer success to use data points to show their contribution to the bottom-line. 

“For most of my career thus far, pulling data was a manual and disparate process,” says Jeffrey Belanger, Lead HR Business Partner and Head of Organizational Performance at Pandora. “Sure, we could pull data on recruiting and hiring. We could calculate retention and churn. The few metrics we were able to get, didn’t help the business in the long-term. It was immediate and reactionary.” 

Employee engagement feedback, collected regularly and consistently through surveys, is an efficient and affordable way to keep up to date on the state of employee engagement and happiness. When these insights are put to use, employee engagement feedback can help better the overall business. 

The metric derived from the employee engagement feedback is a clear-cut, data-supported way that displays HR’s business contributions and helps determine priorities and discover gaps. 

Having a consistent pulse on employee engagement is one step in the right direction. The ways in which organizations respond to low engagement rates, however, determines the value of these insights — which is an often overlooked or deprioritized next step. 

Knowing whether employees are either engaged or not is only helpful if something is done to retain engagement or improve it.   

Related: What Are People Analytics? 

Without engaged employees, productivity and retention are in jeopardy. 

Similar to engagement, employee retention is a consistently tough challenge for HR leaders year over year. And unfortunately, retention is directly related to engagement — so if engagement is low, retention, too, will become comprised.  

It’s long been proven that when employees are unsatisfied and unfulfilled with their work, they are more likely to leave, potentially bringing other unsatisfied colleagues with them.  

During their time at the organization, while they’re feeling disengaged, these employees are more prone to slacking off and doing the bare minimum; a highly unhealthy behavior for a team dynamic. 

Employee disengagement is contagious. 

“When employees don’t care about their work and don’t feel connected to the company in some way or another, the entire team is going to suffer,” says Catherine Jessen of The Muse.  

Especially in small teams, when one or two team members are not engaged, the vibe they give off can be toxic to other team members. If left to their own devices, disengaged employees are more likely to influence the behavior and attitudes of engaged employees — infiltrating disengagement further. 

Related: How to Measure & Improve Company Culture 

What is Social Learning?

Social learning is cognitive learning theory that suggests people learn from each other by watching them, imitating them, and modeling them.   

“Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and later on occasions, this coded information serves as a guide for action.” – Albert Bandura 

The theory was first introduced by psychologist Albert Bandura in the 1960s after conducting a behavioral experiment to see how young children aged between 3-6-years-old learn through observation and imitation.  

What came to be known as the “Bobo doll experiments” Bandura created three experimental conditions using a toy doll as his independent variable. 

Role models (adults) were broken into three segments. Three groups of 24 children each were then shown individual experimental conditions between the adult role model and the toy doll:

• The role model behaved aggressively toward the doll.
• The role model behaved non-aggressively toward the doll. 
• No role model or doll was used in the final segment to set a control group.  

The children were observed as they were given aggressive toys (i.e. mallet, pegboard, dart gun) and non-aggressive toys (tea set, crayons, plastic toy figurines). 

The results confirmed Bandura’s hypothesis: the children exposed to aggressive behavior by the role model, imitated the behavior they observed. 

The findings then concluded that children learn social behaviors such as aggression by watching others first, namely a role model such as a parent or older sibling, behave aggressively. 

How to Use Social Learning in an Employee Engagement Strategy 

While employee engagement has been a constant challenge, perhaps a change in how it is approached could be a variable to toy around with. 

Integrating different engagement tactics, such as social learning, may not only help improve engagement but may help shape the company’s holistic employee experience.  

And for many organizations, the experience offered to employees is as much of a priority this year as employee engagement is. 

Employee experience, when framed as a company differentiator, can be a great way to attract top talent as well as a way to sustain a high level of employee satisfaction and engagement. 

Rich employee experiences evoke employees to feel:  

• Challenged
• Valued
• Appreciated 
• Growth-minded 

And when employees have these opportunities granted to them in the workplace, SHRM research suggests they will be more productive, motivated, and engaged. 

The social learning aspect of an engagement strategy can be integrated as it makes sense to your particular business and the experience you’re seeking to shape. 

However, the foundational elements of social learning behaviors developed via observation should steer the strategy’s direction. 

Here are four ideas on how to leverage social learning to improve employee engagement:

1. Social learning workshops. Set up regular workshops specific to different skill areas that invite employees from different departments or business functions to come together and learn something new from each other — marketing learns from engineering, for example.
   
   Department A demonstrates an aspect of their role. Department B observes.  Department B is then asked to demonstrate or test what they’ve just observed from Department A to determine their comprehension.
   
   Set an average number of social learning workshops an employee should participate in quarterly or annually and include it in their annual performance review so they are incentivized to attend, and they learn new skills and build relationships with more colleagues. Bonus points for the employees who demonstrate how they’ve incorporated the skills shown in these workshops into their regular work. 
   
   
2. Position managers as role models. Social learning was founded on the belief that behavior is imitated from a role model. Managers should be consistent with the behavior they’re looking to promote to their employees. When these behaviors are evident to the employee, they should be praised or recognized in some way.  
   
   
3. Set a managerial behavior standard. To avoid unsavory behaviors from managers being promoted and imitated by employees and clearly define what a model behavior is, HR should standardize organizationally acceptable behavior with leadership. These standards should then be communicated at managerial meetings so expectations are set. Deviation from the agreed on behaviors should be accounted for as well. 
   
   
4. Ongoing employee training. Training is a great way to integrate social learning elements throughout the employee experience from new employee training to ongoing training sessions. Social learning encourages training leaders to use role-playing and demonstration, which enliven training and increases its effectiveness, while clearly outlining what is expected from employees. It’s a more interactive way to train employees versus handing them a handbook on day one or asking them to watch an outdated and canned video alone at their workstation. 
   
   

The changing workforce challenges traditional strategic frameworks.  

Effective workplaces share seven main traits or components, according to SHRM’s Effective Workplace Index: 

• Job Challenge and Learning Opportunities 
• Supervisor Support for Job Success
• Autonomy 
• Culture of Respect, Trust, and Belonging 
• Work-Life Fit 
• Satisfaction with Wages, Benefits, and Opportunities to Advance 
• Co-worker Support for Job Success 

Thanks to the work of SHRM and others that conduct original HR research, it’s clear the time is now for businesses to get creative and leverage new ways of fostering a lasting and mutually beneficial relationship with its employees. 

In short, employees aren’t just seeking employment for a competitive salary or health benefits these days. The incoming workforce has not only changed the way businesses communicate, leverage social media, and define where and when to work, but what it means to be a desirable employer. 

For companies who are proactive, forward-thinking, and experience-driven, giving tactics like social learning a try is what success is going to require more and more. 

Put simply, to be an effective workplace today calls for companies of all sizes across industries to think outside the box about ways to break the transactional connection between employee and employer. Social learning is one example of how to apply different tactics in new contexts. 

The post 4 Ways Social Learning Can Improve Employee Engagement appeared first on Alchemer.

Company culture refers to the values and behaviors that contribute to the social and psychological environment of an organization. It’s also commonly referred to as corporate culture, or organizational culture.

If you’ve ever worked at a company with a toxic culture, then you know how draining it can be. A dark force begins to consume the office, energy and morale is low, and complaining and gossiping are commonplace.

A toxic culture causes lasting damage to organizations, and is a common catalyst for turnover of top talent. Once a company develops the reputation of having an unhealthy company culture, it can be incredibly difficult to recruit quality employees.

There’s no getting around the fact that we spend a lot of time at work. So, it’s understandable that people want to spend their time in a healthy, comfortable, and dare we say… joy-filled environment. 

But maintaining a positive, efficient, and collaborative company culture can be challenging, and it requires continuous effort. If the appropriate resources and efforts are not dedicated to establishing and sustaining a healthy organizational culture, then businesses will fall victim to low morale and sub-optimal production.

An unhealthy company culture will have a direct negative impact on an organization’s bottom line. Therefore, it’s imperative that organizations prioritize the measuring and improvement of culture on a regular basis.

How to Recognize a Toxic Company Culture

Toxic company cultures have become so common in today’s business landscape that conversations surrounding work are often soul sucking pits of despair. 

Too many people dread going to work on Mondays, live for the weekend, or simply try to spend as little time at the office as possible.

But why is that? And does this have to be the case? 

How can companies begin to prioritize company culture moving forward?

The first step is being able to recognize a toxic culture.

Below are five diagnostic symptoms of an unhealthy organizational culture, according to Choose People.

Five Symptoms of a Toxic Company Culture

1. There’s no smiling, joking, or chit-chat. This can be tough to self-diagnose, but someone with fresh eyes and ears stepping into your office will be able to tell immediately that instead of a vibrant energy, there’s a stifling, oppressive, tension-filled atmosphere.

2. Employees are too concerned about titles, job descriptions, and levels of hierarchy. Status, visibility, perks, and power are more important to employees than fulfilling the overall company mission.

3. Fear rules the roost. When employees are afraid of getting in trouble, they keep their heads down until they find another opportunity. Unfortunately, those who don’t leave are the ones who are accustomed to leading a fear-filled existence in the workplace. Fear is the quickest way to squelch innovation, loyalty, and joy.

4. There’s a wall between leadership and frontline staff. When these two groups barely interact – your culture is in serious trouble. If when they do interact, it’s simply leadership telling the employee what to do, that employee will become uninspired and morale will decrease.

5. A forum to speak candidly and constructively doesn’t exist. It’s far too common for employees to be frustrated and to not have a safe place to speak openly about their concerns.


The Impact of Employee Engagement & Employee Satisfaction on Company Culture

Employee engagement and employee satisfaction are both terms that are commonly discussed around while addressing company culture.

While both of these terms are relevant to, and have an impact on organizational culture, it’s important to understand the differences between the two.

Employee Engagement vs. Employee Satisfaction

Employee engagement occurs when an employee is committed to helping their company achieve all of its goals. Employees that are engaged are motivated to show up to work every day and do everything within their power to help their companies succeed.

Employee satisfaction is the state of an employee enjoying their job. It’s important to note here that an employee can be satisfied, but not necessarily engaged. Picture the employee who shows up to work early and leaves late without contributing much to the end goal of the company. That employee can be satisfied, but they certainly are not engaged.

Maintaining both employee engagement and employee satisfaction is essential for businesses aiming to have a healthy company culture. 

These businesses need to benchmark and consistently measure both employee satisfaction and engagement in order to best reach their goals. 

To achieve this, it’s imperative to implement a systematic strategy for tracking and improving company culture. 

How to Improve Company Culture

In order to improve company culture, organizations must first perform data-driven culture audits. These audits will serve as a baseline, and the feedback received from them will inform leadership of the best ways to improve culture.

Two powerful tools that can be leveraged while auditing company culture are Employee Engagement & Workplace Happiness surveys and 360 reviews.

Employee Engagement & Workplace Happiness Surveys

An efficient Employee Engagement & Workplace Happiness survey can reveal the truth about how employees really feel about their work environment. 

By receiving detailed, personalized, yet anonymous feedback from employees, leadership is able to obtain the foundation of data necessary to make improvements to their company culture.

Alchemer offers a ready-to-use Employee Engagement & Workplace Happiness survey template that allows organizations to receive the honest feedback from employees that allows them to optimize company culture.

Check out our Employee Engagement & Workplace Happiness survey template here to start building a happier company culture today.

360 Reviews 

360 reviews are a professional feedback tool designed to help anyone from a CEO to a store clerk develop and hone their professional skills, so that engagement rises across the organization. 

While most organizations provide employees with standardized annual or semi-annual reviews, these reviews often only consider the feedback of the employees’ supervisors. 

By only garnering feedback from an employee’s manager alone, perspective on performance is limited. 

These single-perspective reviews rarely provide feedback that leads to professional development of the employee. This is because these reviews usually only address the level of success or failure in performing the current job duties of the employee, and not much more.

360 reviews differ from performance reviews in this manner, as their primary goal is to help people develop business and interpersonal skills. This then leads to enhanced employee engagement, which in turn boosts satisfaction, and ultimately the health of the overall company culture.

360 reviews focus on three key pieces of feedback:

1. Identifying a starting point for the development of new skills. 

2. Measuring progress as the subject works on skills over time.

3. Identifying the personal blind spots of behavior and the impact that everyone has but never notices.


While a standard performance review focuses on the success of the job an employee is doing, a 360 Review is about the employee themselves. THAT’s why they have such an impact on engagement, and the general health of the company culture.

Conclusion

The health of company culture should be prioritized by leadership across industries, size of the organization, and any other variables.

Employee engagement and employee satisfaction are both factors in overall cultural health, and therefore they must be taken under consideration. By boosting employee engagement on a case by case basis, the health of the company culture will be enhanced as well.

Distributing Employee Engagement & Workplace Happiness surveys allows businesses to receive authentic feedback in regard to how employees feel about the company culture.

Finally, 360 reviews are a great way to invest in employees so that engagement rises accordingly.

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