It’s good to know what your employees really value…..
It would have been easy for many businesses to choose not to carry out an employee engagement survey over the last year. Things have been tough for everyone and many might have assumed that employees wouldn’t have too many good things to say about their employers. We are always believers that its better to know what people are thinking, rather than ‘bury your head in the sand’, even if you do worry you might not like what others have to say. And fortunately, some of our forward thinking clients thought the same way.
A number of clients, especially those who have measured their employee engagement in the past, were keen to ‘take the temperature’ in their workplaces right now. To assess how things had changed during the pandemic, we used as a basis, our well tested e3 Survey, which checks in on 6 key areas:
- Involved – Whether everyone feels involved and recognised
- Team – If everyone feels part of an effective, motivated team
- Valued – Is everyone is happy and well treated at work?
- Learning – Does everyone have opportunities to learn and develop?
- Contribute – Whether everyone is held accountable and expectations are clear
- Leaders – Does everyone have a leader who is credible and inspires them?
Clients like Simpson Associates (A fast growing data analytics business in York) and Intercontinental Brands (which includes Spirit of Harrogate and Slingsby Gin) were both delighted to see that their overall scores had actually risen during the pandemic, as opposed to what they might have expected. In addition, we have made modifications to the questions normally asked in order to understand how employees have felt their employer handled their workplace during the pandemic.
Interestingly, the care and support provided by employers such as these during this challenging time, has made a huge contribution to the loyalty and engagement of employees at this moment in time. Setting up safe working practices, provision of plentiful PPE and flexible working to enable support of those shielding and the home schooling of children have all been massively valued. Individual care and compassion shown by Line Managers has also been appreciated more than ever before. Senior Leaders providing clear, honest communication messages and a vision for the future – whether live or on video, were also factors respondents told us they valued immensely.
Knowing what their teams value most about the workplace and being able to add some statistics to evidence these claims has been so useful to these organisations in selling themselves as progressive employers to potential new recruits in highly competitive market places.
Perhaps one area that showed a few concerns was about Learning – it’s been harder for many organisations to work out how to keep the learning of their teams going, especially to translate programmes that might have extended over several days into something more manageable. Only today, reports from speakers at the CIPD’s Festival of Work have said ‘’organisations need ‘bitesize learning’ following the pandemic in order to keep people engaged and make learning organic.’ Feedback from the way Azure have managed to turn what were previously multi day programmes into a blended learning experience run over several weeks or even months has reassured us that such learning can be just as effective and in some cases, we would argue more so.
If you are interested in assessing the engagement levels of your employees in a really easy manner, without it costing the earth, we would love to have a chat with you.
We’d like to share our upcoming programme schedule for 2021. Click here to take a look!
June 2021
