HR Blog | Employee Retention & Turnover Management

The Four Phases of Workforce Recovery: What’s Next to Achieve Your New Normal

https://youtu.be/jqQvjCZ_fMg We know it’s not business as unusual, but most companies and their employees are getting back to business albeit in different ways. Many employees are at the point where they desire some normalcy and routine. Some employees are still going to work but with safety modifications or with a lot fewer people in the office. Others are working remotely for the first time. Some employees are being separated but are being told that employers will want and need them back in the future. Uncertainties remain but as time marches on there are some principles to keep in mind:

The decisions your company makes today will be felt far into the future.
Now, more than ever, employees need to feel heard.
HR professionals need to prepare employees and employers for the next phase of change.
Employers need to anticipate changes in their workforce as a result of this recent disruption.

We are sure it is disheartening for HR professionals to hear. You just made changes to weather the storm, and now we need you to get ready for the economy to come back online. We know recovery is coming. It is time to start exploring what your future workforce will look like. Many questions arise when considering what will be the “new normal.” Who among our employees can we count on to stay or come back? Do we have the correct skillsets to get back to being fully operational? Do we want to keep temporary employees that have joined? How many employees will want to remain remote workers? We believe employers need to think of their workforce needs and employee experience in four stages: Monitor, Prepare, Readiness, Recovery.

Monitor

Modified pulse and stay surveys for current employees and new remote workers will help create a dialogue with employees and ensure employees know that their employers are listening. Employers should consider the same for separated employees (temporary layoffs or furloughed).

Prepare

Modified, targeted pulses surveys can be administered with greater frequency (or less depending on the results) using the same or similar questions. Depending on the time, we can also administer more standard survey questions. Employers need to know which employees are “in” and which are “out.”

Readiness

It will be important to measure similar dimensions such as openness and company direction along with different points in time to monitor changes, variances, and movement of employee perceptions. At a practical level, we need to know if the employees with the skillsets we need intend to stay or come back to the organization.

Recovery

After your employees come back to work, there will be a new normal. Employers need to monitor workplace activity and identify risks associated with putting the workforce back together again. This video by Dr. Brad Shuck, Associate Professor Department of Educational Leadership, Evaluation and Organizational Development at the University of Louisville explains how employees will reintegrate back into the workforce when the crisis has passed us. To prepare companies for these phases, we have evolved our stay and pulse survey offering (known as StayRight) in conjunction with the University of Louisville for new and developing employee types resulting from the pandemic. It is important to note that during this challenging time for employees, these are not just surveys. They are touchpoints and perceived corporate communications. Our surveys are written with the language of reassurance and provide employees with an outlet to be and feel heard. To learn more about The Four Phases of Workforce Recovery and to see examples of how we may be able to help your company, please take a look at our new website page discussing these phases or reach out to us directly. We’re here to help and we recognize that many budgets and initiatives may be paused at the moment. Our newly modified solutions are budget-friendly for employers in great need. We can help you get up and running right away.

Using Pulse Surveys to Measure Employee Morale

We are currently seeing more employees working from home than ever before. As companies scramble to put procedures in place that will allow more employees to telecommute, the ability to measure morale and job satisfaction becomes a priority. When you aren’t seeing your team on a daily basis in the office, it’s more difficult to assess the morale of your staff. Because morale is essential for overall employee engagement and ultimately company productivity, it is more important than ever to use timely and psychometrically sound tools to determine both the morale and engagement of your staff. Annual surveys–while important–are evolving into a continuous dialogue with employees. During these uncertain times, these tools are more important than ever because they become a way to capture the employee voice and let employees know management wants to hear them. Specifically, these pulse surveys are key to keeping a handle on the temperament of your workforce.

What are Pulse Surveys

According to the HR Dictionary Blog, a pulse survey is a broad offering that generally allows a company to see the climate of its operation as a measurement of the performance of the organization. These surveys are a great way to quickly and easily determine how your employees are feeling at any given time. They are usually designed to be issued more frequently as a way of monitoring the “pulse” of the staff. These surveys are easily answered and don’t take much time at all to take. There are different types of pulse surveys including an engagement pulse, general pulse or action pulse. These offerings range from stand-alone offerings that act as quick “checkpoints” for employees to questions used to measure follow up initiatives identified in the annual engagement survey.

The Benefits of Pulse Surveys

The collection of data from pulse surveys should be as real-time as possible. Pulse surveys should be point-in-time so that changes or improvements can happen as needed. When your staff is not with you in the office, it’s more important than ever to measure how they feel about their work. Because management isn’t in the same building, the staff may be hesitant to reach out with concerns as quickly. The pulse survey will eliminate this barrier. Survey questions can easily be adjusted to fit the needs or priorities of a specific week.

Get New Ideas

Pulse surveys can be adapted to fit a variety of needs. If your staff is telecommuting, there are still lots of ways to get new ideas and suggestions. A pulse survey gives you an opportunity to obtain a collection of information at one time. Some feedback will be more helpful than others, but these surveys are designed to give your staff the opportunity to contribute their ideas and feel like valued members of the team, even when they are working in isolation.

Opening a Line of Communication

Sometimes people feel like when they complete a survey, it just goes out into the cloud and nothing ever happens. Using a pulse survey to determine the morale of your staff and to identify problems allows for the start of some great communication. The survey can then act as a catalyst to more meaningful discussion based upon survey responses. The staff will feel validated that their feelings were heard, and the communication will be based upon actual data instead of anecdotal observations.

Vary Your Questioning

Because pulse surveys will be used relatively often, it’s important that the staff aren’t getting worn out with the same questions. If the survey doesn’t change over time, employees will begin to overlook the process entirely or fail to see the value. Planning your survey questions is important, and they should include questions that are important to your staff. Employees will give honest feedback when they are being questioned on things relevant to their daily work.

Organizing Information

Organizing information can be done easily without taking much of your valuable time. HSD offers StayRight, a tool developed over 29 years that can be deployed at weekly, monthly or quarterly, or as needed intervals. Depending on need, we can often have clients up and running in less than a week. If you are interested in learning more about how HSD Metrics can assist you with pulse surveys to track employee morale, staff engagement and more during this telecommuting period, schedule a live demo with us today.

Transforming Your Leadership Style in Times of Crisis

This post was co-written by Dr. Brad Shuck, Associate Professor Department of Educational Leadership, Evaluation and Organizational Development at the University of Louisville. The latest research is very clear that even before COVID-19 changed the way we work and lead, community, collaboration, and connection were emerging currencies into today’s workforce. While many organizations focused on the tangibles — free coffee in the break room, flexible benefits, recognition strategies — employees who told us they felt connected to the organization emotionally were more likely to stay engaged, outpace their competition, and stay longer. But now, all that has changed. Or, has it. As global circumstances are shaping how we work and uncertainties loom, it seems that messages of connection, community, and collaboration have never been more important. Right now, there is a lot of confusion, uncertainty, and anxiety in the workforce, but it is normal and okay to feel this way. Many companies are offering tips and hacks on how to build a home office or adjust work schedules, but few people are talking about the feelings associated with this change and how to process these feelings. Routines will be critical in the next few weeks – establishing them and maintaining them. For many, we need routines; they provide some comfort in a world that is becoming more uncomfortable. But, as a leader, the best thing you can do for your employees is to remain present, communicate clearly, share support, offer encouragement, and show relentless compassion. It is not business as usual, and you should not lead that way. We can learn a lot about crisis leadership and applying those principles to our place of work – and our businesses. Three areas to focus on in the coming weeks: communication, clarity of vision and values, and maintaining community.

The first thing many people look to is steady communication that is transparent, authentic, and unwavering. Communication needs to be predictably consistent, fact-based and prioritized. Otherwise, the message can be lost.
You cannot lead with a detailed(?) plan. It won’t work right now. Lead with grace and compassion, love with a kind word, and then inspire to the plan through a clarity of vision and values. If you lead with a plan first, no one will hear a plan. They will hear more things to process. When you lead with vision and values, you cut through the clutter and speak a language that minds in crisis can internalize.
Maintaining a sense of community is perhaps, one of the more difficult challenges right now; as a leader, you can reach out and check on individual team members, building online communities where employees can check-in, as well as prioritized and bulleted communication that keeps teams informed but not overwhelmed. Community building is intentional and, more than ever, our words impact? immensely to how our employees are feeling.

Right now, engagement is not a goal; connection through community is. As employees orient themselves to this new era of work, communication, connection, and collaboration will be the currencies we operate under. The ability we develop to do these things will in many ways define our outcomes over the next few weeks and months. In light of these circumstances, we would like to offer you an opportunity to gauge how your employees are coping with this pandemic. In conjunction with Dr. Brad Shuck of the University of Louisville, we developed a short pulse survey to gain insight into the levels of uncertainty that your employees are facing and allow them the chance to be and feel heard. Our goal is to gather as much data as possible to identify patterns within industries that will help our partners better manage their workforce during this uncertain time. We will analyze this data and publish the results so that you can determine and gracefully address the current status of your employees’ mindsets and communicate effectively. If you have a moment, please take and share this survey.

Employee Journey Mapping: How to Boost Engagement and Retention Rates

According to Gallup, employee engagement in the U.S. has ticked up a bit and now stands at 34%. The bad news, of course, is that if about one-third of workers are engaged, two-thirds aren’t. What’s worse, a troubling 13% are “actively disengaged.” That phrase, selected by workers themselves, is subject to interpretation—but at the very least, it means that more than 1 of every 10 American employees isn’t happy with his or her job and probably looking for new opportunities. Why is that important? It’s important because employees who leave your business cost you money. According to Forbes, the cost to replace an entry-level employee is 50% of that employee’s annual salary. For mid-level employees, that number jumps to 125%, and for executives, it’s about 200%. Think about that: to replace a manager who makes $50,000 a year, your company will need to spend (on average) $62,500. If you have 100 employees and 10 of them leave, the cost will be a staggering $625,000. There are probably as many reasons employees move on to new positions as there are employees who leave. That said, the top reasons include things like disengagement, ineffective managers, lack of challenge, feeling overworked and the perceived lack of career advancement opportunities. That, of course, begs an important question: what can businesses do to minimize employee attrition by enhancing the experience of their employees?

What Is Employee Journey Mapping?

Every experience an employee has with the business for which he or she works contributes to that worker’s level of engagement, satisfaction and company loyalty. “Journey mapping” is a process that helps ensure each of those experiences, played out over time, is as positive as possible. This would include everything from offering robust training and other developmental opportunities to interactions with managers, human resources and coworkers. As My Customer rightly notes, employee journey mapping both improves employee experience over the short term and provides employers with valuable insights that promote stronger experiences in the future:

“Employee journey mapping is a discipline that can help ensure your employees have positive experiences with your organization from their first impression onwards. Much like customer journey mapping, employee journey mapping requires you to visually plot out the end-to-end experience your employees have in the early stages of their tenure with your business, helping to identify areas for improvement, and brings awareness to the good and the bad parts of the experience.”

The Employee Journey Mapping Process in 3 Steps

To begin, every business is different, with different employees and different human resource challenges. That said, the lion’s share of businesses will benefit from an approach which includes the following three steps:

1. Analyze Employee Data

Using quantitative data—like the data you cull from employee exit, new hire and stay interviews—will help you uncover key reasons employees leave, as well as high turnover moments and events. You might discover, for example, that your onboarding process is ineffective, or that employees anticipate promotions within a designated time frame from their date of hire. If your data and analysis are robust and sound, this step will enable you to form reasonable hypotheses about boondoggles in your employees’ experience.

2. Talk to Your Employees

Once you have a better sense of the reasons employees leave, you should schedule meetings with key employee segments to refine your understanding. Focus particularly on employees at the two ends of the engagement spectrum—for example, both those who leave within the first year and those whom you designate high performers. You should also work with managers who can expand the insights you gain from these conversations.

3. Implement Your Plan

Armed with the insights gained from these quantitative and qualitative analyses, you can structure effective solutions and enhance existing operational processes to address the problems you’ve identified. For example, if one of your managers has poor leadership skills as discovered through employee surveys, you can provide the training he or she needs to improve performance. If the problem with your onboarding process is not adequately communicating job expectations, you can create more detailed, nuanced guidelines to ensure employees fully understand their duties and responsibilities. Action plans do not necessarily need to include new project plans with new platforms. Oftentimes, the most effective follow-ups develop from integrating data findings (or results) into a company’s current way of life. Crafting an effective employee journey mapping strategy is among the best ways to boost employee engagement and satisfaction, and to reduce potentially costly attrition—but it’s not the only one. To maximize the engagement of your workers (not to mention productivity and profitability), you need to design and implement a comprehensive employee engagement strategy grounded in accurate data and robust analysis. That’s where we can help. Our products generate a recurring flow of employee data that your company can rapidly respond to. To learn more about the ways our new hire, stay, and exit interview platforms can help your business improve employee engagement, experience and retention, contact us today.

Building an Innovative Corporate Culture

According to McKinsey, 80% of executives agree that innovation is a top priority for their companies. Another analysis shows that innovative companies grow faster and are more profitable than those who do not have an innovative corporate culture. About 50% of the S&P 500 are forecasted to be replaced in the next ten years. These are staggering statistics, but what do they really mean? Let’s explain by example.

Blockbuster Inc.

Blockbuster owned the video rental market in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Friday nights were blockbuster night as people flocked to the stores to rent movies for the weekend. What Blockbuster failed to realize was people wanted convenience. When its primary competitor Netflix, Inc., started mailing DVDs, saving people a trip to the store, Blockbuster was ill-prepared. Blockbuster’s lack of innovative thinking was clear when it missed the opportunity to purchase Netflix not once, but multiple times for a 49% share of the company. The company never envisioned a world of streaming videos. When Blockbuster finally launched its own streaming service, it was two years too late. Blockbuster’s corporate culture was not one of innovation. They weren’t looking years out and imagining what technology could deliver or the convenience of delivering DVDs to the customer’s home. If they had, Netflix might have never developed into what we know it to be today.

Netflix

When you think of innovative companies, you think of Apple, Disney, or Google. Netflix may not immediately come to mind, but this mail-order video distribution company is also an Oscar-winning production company. That progression demonstrates exactly what an innovative culture can do. So how has Netflix managed to create and maintain an innovative corporate culture for 21 years?

People Before Process

Netflix knows that innovation comes from people. They offer a generous compensation package, including unlimited holidays and competitive salaries. They also know that their corporate culture isn’t for everyone. That’s why they are very straightforward about how the company works during the recruiting process. Not everyone is suited for Netflix.

Give Employees Autonomy

Netflix desires employees who have good judgment. It is at the top of their list of values because their employees enjoy a great deal of autonomy. Without autonomy, employees feel constricted, which can limit creativity. Employees work on teams at Netflix. It is team autonomy that creates a sense of ownership for ideas that turn into products.

Reward Communication

Employees are encouraged to share ideas. Whether it is a new product, service, or internal process, employees need to know that their ideas are taken seriously. Find ways to bring ideas together and share them with the company. Employees who are new to a workplace are often more inclined to exit a company if they don’t perceive it as innovative. Netflix also encourages candid feedback. Teams need to work through situations as they arise in an honest manner. If they don’t, it can drastically affect productivity. Netflix’s policy states: No one should say anything about an employee that they wouldn’t say to their face. Holding people accountable to that policy creates a more trusting environment.

Encourage Risk-Taking

Innovation comes from failure. That’s why it is vital to create a culture that encourages risk-taking. Telling employees that it is OK to take risks is fine as long as you demonstrate your willingness to accept failure. Use a failed attempt as a means to share information and knowledge that was learned by taking the risk.

Reward Innovation

Celebrate innovative successes. In a culture of inclusiveness and team focus, rewards are more like celebrations. It doesn’t mean innovation isn’t recognized. Whether rewarding individuals or teams, it is crucial that people know their efforts are appreciated.

Blockbuster or Netflix?

Most companies are working to establish a positive culture; many are working towards an innovative one. But without data, it is hard to know if your efforts are making a change. Why not survey new hires throughout the first year to see if the onboarding process sets the right tone? Collect data from employees to determine what you’re doing well and where there’s room for improvement. Through our survey data analysis over the last 28 years, we found that a full 21% or almost one-quarter of all respondents report that one of the top three improvement priorities for their company is an enhancement in innovation. Talk to us about how to gain actionable insights that improve employee engagement and retention while moving your company towards becoming the next Netflix.

The Analytics of Human Resources

Analytics has always had a place in operations such as marketing and sales, but its use in human resources is not as common. And it might not seem like there is a connection at all. How can you use data to understand people? Or to measure performance? Isn’t HR an inherently qualitative department, more about understanding people rather than using data and numbers? That’s usually the common idea around why data is not used in this capacity– it just doesn’t seem like there’s a place for it. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. Qualitative and quantitative data aren’t mutually exclusive. The combination of the two is what creates a truly optimized Human Resources function with a genuine understanding of what the department is able to accomplish. Moreover, it’s a fundamental component of attracting, developing, and retaining talent within your company. Here are some of the key components:

Demographic data

Understanding the makeup of different demographics is key in building out improved diversity and inclusion programs. The likelihood is, you’ll have this data in a lot of different forms, but are you really able to see it all in a comprehensive way, or to see it contextualized with feedback and other department info? Demographic data can help you better understand department functions alongside other vital operational and performance data to construct a truly holistic view of departments and their functions.

Pay

Retention is a term used a lot when it comes to HR, but do you really strategize for it? Pay tends to be one of the contentious issues, and having operational data on hand can make negotiations, promotions, and hiring a more optimized process. By seeing data against other key performance points, compensation becomes easier to design. Plus, seeing this data against other data such as job duties, role responsibility, and overall satisfaction can help identify how to better structure compensation and bonuses in a more streamlined way.

Engagement

Engagement can be one of the harder components to define and track, but it can give so much insight into how departments are functioning from an operational and performance standpoint. Measuring employee engagement will likely depend on your own internal structure and culture, but it is incredibly important to have a balance between qualitative and quantitative data for this benchmark. Quantitative data can help in understanding trends and sentiment initially, while qualitative can be deployed to get more specific and contextualized feedback in order to design enhanced engagement programs.

Performance

Performance is another metric that tends to be considered as more qualitative, but there is room for data here as well. Having some form of quantitative data allows for easier benchmarking and better discussions between managers and employees. While the actual evaluation session may be more of a discussion, the data allows for a general idea of whether employees are able to develop and sustain change to improve. And again, identifying trends can be extremely helpful in further developing the performance review process and creating a sustained improvement for meaningful feedback and discussion.

Applicant Tracking

Ultimately, these different metrics are not just for use internally, but also for crafting strategies for recruitment and hiring. Having these clear analytics on-hand allows for more transparent discussions during interviews so that candidates feel comfortable throughout and can make decisions faster based on actual performance and engagement metrics. Moreover, applicant tracking allows you to see how current recruitment and hiring is going – how many candidates go through the process, what is the dropoff rate like, and where does that tend to happen? Identifying gaps like these can help optimize processes and ensure that talented candidates don’t slip through the cracks. This is just a small window into what people analytics can accomplish and the insights that can be generated. To learn more about how data can help fuel a more advanced HR operation and what your business can accomplish by implementing an analytics-based approach in your organization, please contact us.

The HSD Metrics Blog