The continuous listening guide

Building organisations with a soul

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15 mins read

What is Employee Experience?

The course of observation, behaviour & interactions your employees encounter during their tenure in the organization is called EX or Employee Experience.

It starts from the time you onboard a new hire— the perfect time to make a great first impression and really ‘connect’ with the employee. How do you identify if the onboarding EX has been great or not so great? By knowing the very objective of it and then analyzing your procedure.

Here’s an example-

Objective: Win the new joiner’s heart. Give a warm welcome and make them feel belonged.
Not so great EX: Overwhelm them with loads of documentation work
Great EX: Introducing them to the team, keeping their work desk ready. Have a team lunch, assign a ‘buddy’

As they start to settle, during their journey in the organization, employees’ work, management, workplace, well being and growth avenues – all these aspects play a pivotal role in shaping the experiences of the employees.

“Performance appraisal is a part of performance management and not its equivalent.”

It’s no hidden truth, businesses that outperform are the ones with the evolved employee experience management strategy.

Reduced attrition, improved performance, increased productivity & soaring revenues are some of the direct benefits they witness with the rig ht XM techniques.

What is Employee Listening?

Employee Listening is an integral approach towards gathering your employees’ feedback at the workplace during different touch points, to ascertain whether they are satisfied and aligned with organization mission and values or not.

Why do you need a continuous employee listening strategy?

The recent trends make listening even more apt and a buzz term for the organizations:

Organizations adapt disruptive strategies and continuously undergo changes to beat fierce competition and when we make employees part of these changes, the resistance towards adopting new norms and work rules tend to reduce.
HRs are the strategic business partners today, their key deliverables have expanded from sanity of HR operations to employee happiness, culture building, steering business growth with the given resources.
Employees have turned collaboratively-minded and expect their voices to be heard with rising social platforms and mediums to express oneself.

Quick Fact:
A survey by SHRM reveals that 89% of HR leaders agree that ongoing peer feedback and check-ins are key for successful outcomes

Top 3 loopholes most organization fall for when implementing an employee listening strategy:

A Listening strategy is curated to deliver strategic goals and align employees with Organizational mission and vision. When it’s launched in an unmethodical way, it often ends up in nothing but wasting employees’ working hours.
Strategies which are developed and implemented in isolation often result into clashing perspectives, half baked insights. Employee listening is about drawing out key insights so they can be effectively shared, analysed and responded to.
Ad Hoc, uncoordinated multiple feedback or surveys often cause feedback fatigue, especially when there are in puts gathered and no actions are taken post that.

How do you build an effective Employee Listening Strategy?

While curating the listening strategy, an organisation should first understand and find the key insights they require to optimize the overall employee experience journey.

Secondly, an ill conceived approach without foreseeing the desired outcome may fail to provide a complete picture of the employee’s perceptions, and may lead into just numbers without any actionable insights.

HROne recommends organizations a 3-step full circle strategy, cal led as the The Continuous Feedback Wheel:

01.Listen: Employees are the heart of the organization, when you implement a listening methodology, make sure you do it often and with a context to it. You can conduct structured Pulse Surveys at fixed intervals to get relevant and comparative insights.

02.Analyze: Once you have the ready data from the Pulse dashboards, delve into the key problem areas with in-depth surveys and collect specific feedback for actionable insights.

03.Act: Now that you know what the data means with availability of actionable insights, strategize with your teams, respond and act upon with aligned initiatives .

Knitting your Continuous Listening Strategy into Josh Bersin’s The Simply Irresistible Organizations model for Employee

What is it that truly matters to the employees of your organization and drives their happiness and success at work? What do they desire from you as an employer?

Josh Bersin in partnership with Deloitte shared 5 key drivers to simply making your organization irresistible for the employees.

Let’s learn how with HROne, you can implement an effective & continuous listening strategy in conjunction with each of these 5 pillars.

Meaningful Work	Supportive Management	Fantastic Enviroment	Growth Opportunity	Trust in Leadership
Autonomy	Clear goal setting	Fantastic human work enviroment	Facilated talent mobility	Mission & Purpose
Selection to Fit	Coaching and Feedback	Recognition rich culture	Career growth in many paths	Investment in people trust
Small Teams	Modern Performance Management	Open flexible work spaces	Self & formal Development	Transparency & Communication
Times For Slack	Leadership development	Inclusive, diverse culture	High impact learning culture	Inspiration

Pillar 1 : Meaningful work

What inspires your employees to come to work all motivated and jolly? Is it the money they are being paid?

True, People love money; but they yearn for creating something more meaningful at work and it’s the very nature of the job, the team they work with, the resources and time they are provided to craft purposeful outcomes – that impact their happiness.

Quick Fact:
As per Harvard Business Review.Employees who find work highly meaningful are 69% less likely to plan on quitting their jobs within the next 6 months, and have job tenures that are 7.4 months longer on average than employees who find work lacking in meaning .

How do you implement an effective feedback strategy to gauge if your employees have ‘meaningful work’?

01.Listen: Schedule recurring pulse surveys at regular intervals to gather these feedback:

Are your employees enjoying Autonomy at work?
Are their skills in accordance with the work they do?
Do your employees enjoy the power of decision making?
Does their work often result in burnouts?

02.Analyze: After you collate the feedback from the employees:

Find the areas which require deeper retrospection with Pulse dashboards. HROne Pulse dashboard gives you an insight of the pulse score and rating given by employees,
Compare against your benchmark scores, which questions have received the lowest score.
Conduct an in-depth survey, choose objective style questions for quick response.

03.Act: Walk through the Survey dashboard insights, and base your strategy on the in-depth insights you have received from the survey.

For instance, if 55% of your respondents answered, they are not satisfied with the nature of the work assigned to them, share the feedback with the reporting management.

Assign the managers initiative of redesigning the roles and responsibilities of their team around the work that is more inline with their current skills and experience.

Pillar 2. Supportive Management

No doubt, Organizations have moved towards a flatter structure but even small teams require managers to allow systematic and chaos less work delivery.

Managing People vs Managing Projects are often treated as separate roles, however a team leader ends up catering to both at the same time.

The impact of bad management is compounding, stretching from work to home for an employee. The success of a project and team is entirely reliant upon how strong your manager is and how much effort your organization puts in grooming the leadership.

Shocking Fact:
According to a research from Gallup, 50% of employees leave their companies because of their boss.

How can organizations utilize continuous listening to ensure effective leadership for their employees?

01.Listen: Gather anonymous feedback from your teams with the quick pulse questions:

Do you feel your managers prioritize the work for you well?
Does your team lead appreciate you for the initiatives done on time?
How often do you feel your manager criticizes you for smaller nitty gritty mistakes at work?
On a scale ofl-70 how approachable is your manager?

02.Analyze: The pulse dashboard will allow you to reflect upon the weaker areas of the management where the scores are considerably low in contrast to your expectations.

Evaluate the individual scores against the performance scores obscured in the last appraisal ratings in HROne
Figure out if the manager lacks people skills or job skills with the next level survey
Align your findings with the other departments insights to find your common loopholes or areas of improvement.

03.Act: Assign your HRs the initiative of :

Redefining your Reward and Recognition strategy, making it more continuous and stitched into daily work to inculcate a culture of appreciation .

HROne Rewards & Badges engine is designed in a way where peers, team members, managers can appreciate each other’s work by publishing badges on the company wall and sharing redeemable reward points.

Launching targeted training sessions to equip and upskill your managers once every month/ on a continuous basis but avoiding fatigue

Pillar 3: Fantastic + Safe Environment

The meaning of the workplace has disrupted completely since the onset of the recent COVID79 pandemic.

With the hybrid work mode on, Employees personal lives have intermingled with their professional lives, this calls for an even more humane & empathy filled approach when designing their professional environment

Safe yet creative spaces, flexible work hours, diversity, inclusion, scope for ‘me time & space’ at the workplace, engaging activities/planned distractions for belonging, effective communication – all these are the quintessential ingredients for a collaborative & ‘lsMine’ workspace.

Shocking Fact:
In a study by Deloitte, 69% of millennials show loyalty to a diverse and flexible work culture.

How can organizations employ continuous listening to build a positive work environment?

01.Listen: Strategize and shoot your Pulse surveys to tap into employees’ likeliness for their workplace and work policies:

Do you find work overwhelming and spread across your personal hours?
How distracting do you find your workspace?
Does work from home increase your productivity?
How satisfied are you with the amenities provided at the workplace?
Are you happy with our canteen service and food quality?
On a scale of 1-10 how inclusive do you feel your workplace is?
Do you feel safe returning to work and resuming work from the office?
Do you find it easy to collaborate with the different team members?
Do you feel motivated with our current reward & benefits program?
Do you see any discriminations of any kind (ethnicity, ages, religion) at the workplace?

02.Analyze: The Pulse dashboards will give you a reasonable understanding of how employee centric and futuristic your workplace is and if it truly contributes toward employee happiness.

Delve deeper in either of the below areas, if they turn out to be low scorers with more specific surveys that evaluates:

Workspace design, infrastructure, amenities & safety procedures
Shift policies, flexi-hour working policies
Communication & collaboration technology
Physical and Virtual engagement events
Reward program
Workplace inclusivity and diversity

03.Act: Once the primal causes of employee disengagement and dissatisfaction are statistically available, align the initiatives to rectify and reevaluate.

For instance, if your employees have highlighted inclusivity as a major area of concern and that their feedback is not heard or welcome as it should be, assign your managers an initiative to create a monthly open forum for employees and lead the forum for a quarte

Reevaluate after every open forum meeting, how successful the initiative had been. Share the feedback with the managers to improvise.

Shoot pulse after a quarter to see improvements in the inclusivity scores.

Pillar 4: Growth Opportunities

‘If it doesn’t challenge you, it is not meant for you.”

Millennials are the largest segment of the workforce in the world and the key driver that motivates them to stick at a job for a good period is the growth avenues and career advancement

Jobs that utilize the expertise of an employee, keep him/her on the edge with the exposure to the right projects, and constantly help the employee go one step further in the professional journey, see higher retention rates.

A one-third of our adult life is spent at the workplace and human desires for development at work is what brings them the most happiness.

Shocking Fact:
According to a Gallup survey, up to 87 % of Millennials consider development in a job important.

How can organizations employ continuous listening to build growth opportunities for employees?

01.Listen: Strategize your pulse listening to determine employee satisfaction level with the current career development and growth opportunities

Do you feel yourself well trained for the job responsibilities assigned to you?
On a scale of 1-10 how challenging do you feel your current assignments are?
Does your manager provide you with ample materials to study and self train?
Do you find our monthly training programs useful to execute your work responsibilities?
If given a chance, how likely would you like to take on projects in a different team?
How helpful is your team when it comes to problem solving?

02.Analyze: The Pulse Survey findings will lead you up towards focus areas that should be included in the next Employee Learning Programs to aid them with the career progression.

Before formulating your strategy, research exhaustively in the low scoring focus areas and conduct thorough Surveys on:

Usability of existing training material/modules
Current Informal and formal training programs
Current on the job coaching initiatives by Managers
Existing Talent Mobilization program
Current team building exercises

03.Act: Once you gather crucial insights with the Survey Dashboards, build and assign initiatives of substantial value that can show your employees that you are invested in their growth and development

You can launch the below learning and development initiatives to help your employees succeed:

Challenge-Me Assignments – Allow your teams to select their own next assignment to make work more exciting
Weekly Information Sessions – Managers can take on this initiative to address the knowledge gap of their current team members and coach them with weekly sessions for better performance.
Lateral Talent Movement – Assign your HRs the initiative to strategize and come up with lateral talent movement programs which have good visibility, openness to facilitate employees career progression in different fields/ projects or teams

Pillar 5: Trust in Leadership

“ A leader is one, who knows the way, shows the way and goes the way.” – John C.Maxwell

The last and most crucial pillar of the Irresistible Organization is leadership.

The onus of building relationships with the employees and making them feel they belong lies on the shoulders of the Top Management. The leaders of an organization reinstate the higher meaning at work for employees by communicating and -communicating their vision in both the good and fragile times thereby building long lasting trust.

The enthusiasm, compassion, approachability, care, courage and competence sums up the key qualities of a true leader of today’s organizations.

Shocking Fact:
Only 14% of CEOs have the leadership talent they need to grow their businesses revealed in a study by Forbes.

How can organizations elevate employees’ trust in their leaders?

01.Listen: Learn about the current perception of employees about their leadership with anonymous pulse surveys. Reassure them with the anonymity of their identity

Do you feel inspired by the actions of the company’s top leaders
How approachable do you feel the top management is?
Does your current work give a sense of higher purpose, do you find it related to the company’s vision?
Do you trust the decision making process of the top management?
Do you feel that top management is transparent with you towards the company’s progress?

02.Analyze: Once you gather the autonomous scores from Pulse dashboards, get to the bottom of your low scoring pulses with the detailed Surveys. Make sure the anonymity of the employees is maintained and not revealed so they can open up and share their actual perception without hesitations.

Set up surveys that evaluate whether the current Leader-Employee forums are open and transparent, if employees are abreast with current goals, missions and visions of the company, if they are encouraged by leaders to share their concerns in the current hierarchy structure or not.

03.Act: With the structured insights at hand about how your employees feel about Top Management, share the findings of the study, along with the new initiatives.

For instance, if the employees felt that they haven’t been able to share their feedback directly with the top management, set up fortnight or monthly CEO meets where employees can voice their concerns and ideas with faith and openly.

To make it a success, the CEO would require to add warmth, compassion and receptiveness with informal communication.

The Next Step…

The continuous listening guide to irresistible organisations is a complete guide to making your company irresistible through activation of employee listening at par. You can achieve results by either implementing these with the collective effort of your teams or by choosing to save time and get help through a veteran tech vendor. The clear three step framework in each of the 5 pillars – Listen, Analyse, Act would act as a prototype to measure your success in these 5 quintessential elements crucial to get a hindsight of your actions, identify what lights up your people, what makes them frown and what you are missing on.

With time, it will help you foresee the future and improve it. Moreover, it also presents you as an organisation with a stronger culture by helping you become more inclusive and diverse and an organisation that puts every employee at the center of everything- because each of them matters EQUALLY!

As you plan to choose this road, remember to make the shift from within. Ingrain in management the importance of employee listening and putting people first. Till the time, people at the core of the system won’t move forward from the outdated thoughts like- “Employees must be told what needs to be done and not asked, “ making this work would be difficult.

We Are Listening…

Begin with a small workshop, conversation, or the best- listening to your employees thoughts on this.

Stay determined, keep implementing the pillars to improve your EX and when you face any hiccup, remember us.

We are one email and call away to transform your organization’s Employee engagement endeavors into a Full Circle Employee

The continuous listening guide

What is Employee Experience?

What is Employee Listening?

Why do you need a continuous employee listening strategy?

Quick Fact:

Top 3 loopholes most organization fall for when implementing an employee listening strategy:

How do you build an effective Employee Listening Strategy?

Knitting your Continuous Listening Strategy into Josh Bersin’s The Simply Irresistible Organizations model for Employee

Pillar 1 : Meaningful work

Quick Fact:

How do you implement an effective feedback strategy to gauge if your employees have ‘meaningful work’?

01.Listen: Schedule recurring pulse surveys at regular intervals to gather these feedback:

02.Analyze: After you collate the feedback from the employees:

03.Act: Walk through the Survey dashboard insights, and base your strategy on the in-depth insights you have received from the survey.

Pillar 2. Supportive Management

Shocking Fact:

How can organizations utilize continuous listening to ensure effective leadership for their employees?

01.Listen: Gather anonymous feedback from your teams with the quick pulse questions:

02.Analyze: The pulse dashboard will allow you to reflect upon the weaker areas of the management where the scores are considerably low in contrast to your expectations.

03.Act: Assign your HRs the initiative of :

Pillar 3: Fantastic + Safe Environment

Shocking Fact:

How can organizations employ continuous listening to build a positive work environment?

01.Listen: Strategize and shoot your Pulse surveys to tap into employees’ likeliness for their workplace and work policies:

02.Analyze: The Pulse dashboards will give you a reasonable understanding of how employee centric and futuristic your workplace is and if it truly contributes toward employee happiness.

03.Act: Once the primal causes of employee disengagement and dissatisfaction are statistically available, align the initiatives to rectify and reevaluate.

Pillar 4: Growth Opportunities

Shocking Fact:

How can organizations employ continuous listening to build growth opportunities for employees?

01.Listen: Strategize your pulse listening to determine employee satisfaction level with the current career development and growth opportunities

02.Analyze: The Pulse Survey findings will lead you up towards focus areas that should be included in the next Employee Learning Programs to aid them with the career progression.

03.Act: Once you gather crucial insights with the Survey Dashboards, build and assign initiatives of substantial value that can show your employees that you are invested in their growth and development

Pillar 5: Trust in Leadership

Shocking Fact:

How can organizations elevate employees’ trust in their leaders?

01.Listen: Learn about the current perception of employees about their leadership with anonymous pulse surveys. Reassure them with the anonymity of their identity

02.Analyze: Once you gather the autonomous scores from Pulse dashboards, get to the bottom of your low scoring pulses with the detailed Surveys. Make sure the anonymity of the employees is maintained and not revealed so they can open up and share their actual perception without hesitations.

03.Act: With the structured insights at hand about how your employees feel about Top Management, share the findings of the study, along with the new initiatives.

The Next Step…

We Are Listening…

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