Categories
Employee Experience

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them

In today’s complex world of work, your organization is bound to encounter employee experience challenges. Finding ways to overcome them is crucial to your success.

When a company invests in their employee experience, they’re four times more profitable than a company that doesn’t.

From remote work to mental health awareness, and psychological safety to recognition at work, there are lots of things companies can and should do to resolve employee experience challenges.

And, in turn, boost retention and profits.

So let’s take a deeper dive into some employee experience challenges and how to solve them.

Remote working

Most employees want to work remotely or take a hybrid approach. Very few want to work form the office all day, every day. This can contribute to a healthy work-life balance, something that 72% of employees feel is important for career success.

Being able to work from home ensures employees don’t have to waste time on their daily commute. It gives them more hours with loved ones or just a chance to catch up on sleep. 

Remote work also allows more space for deep work without the distracting office environment. That includes needless interruptions from colleagues wanting to chat when someone is trying to focus.

Yet some managers are still afraid that employees won’t perform as well if they’re allowed to work from home some or all of the time. This issue lies with managers, not employees. It says that they don’t trust employees to do their jobs.

And if managers don’t trust employees to do their jobs, why did they hire them in the first place?

Managers need training to learn how to work on their trust issues. They also need to learn how to communicate with employees.

A more open, trusting workplace will accept that employees need to work in a way that suits them. That’s ultimately how businesses will get the most out of their employees.

Empowering team members with the flexibility to choose how they work is also a key way to overcome employee experience challenges.

Recognition

Have you ever achieved something that you’re really proud of, only for someone else to take all the credit for it?

Employees want to feel like they’re seen at work, and that their effort is appreciated. 

It doesn’t have to be through expensive presents or even a thank-you card. A Slack or Teams channel, or a dedicated krowd where people can give a shout-out to someone for their work can be enough for people to feel like they’re being recognized.

If you work somewhere people don’t feel comfortable recognizing someone’s successes, or praising people for their hard work, it’s time to take a look in the mirror and consider what your employee experience challenges really are. 

Why don’t you feel comfortable giving someone a virtual high-five? Do you only focus on criticizing others? If that’s the case, why?

And what can you do to change that, because it will inevitably just result in more employee experience challenges?

Mental health

Since we can’t see mental health issues, it’s really easy for them to get overlooked. 

It’s also easy for employees to hide how they feel—up to a point. They may try to mask their symptoms, but when they’re struggling mentally, it will inevitably impact their performance.

If employees don’t feel comfortable sharing their mental health difficulties, the fear of people finding out about them can eat at them almost as much as their mental health condition—making their condition worse and creating a downward spiral.

Work can be a trigger for mental health conditions, particularly in stressful roles or industries. Employees need someone they can talk to about this. That way they can express those emotions, rather than bottle them up and grow increasingly stressed and anxious.

Alongside training for management, it’s important to provide somewhere employees can discuss emotions openly, whether that’s in an employee group, on a listening platform, or talking to an external coach or mentor. It has to be somewhere that they feel safe to express their emotions without fear of reprisals.

If they don’t have access to such a space, you can expect to see the impact in the form of increased employee experience challenges.

Diversity and inclusion

I’ve had the rant about businesses that pay lip service to diversity and inclusion but don’t actually embody it before, so I’ll save you it this time.

The truth is, diversity initiatives work, even if they make people uncomfortable. Things like anonymous recruitment, or quotas, put some people off. But that could well be because these things challenge the status quo and try to change the power balance.

But hiring is only one part of the equation. People need to feel comfortable being themselves at work, too.

Inclusive company cultures can increase employee retention by 39%. That makes valuing inclusion no longer just a nice-to-have—it’s now imperative to business success.

Creating ERGs, where employes can discuss their personal experiences through the lens of shared demographics or backgrounds, can support DEI initiatives. They’re a way for people to feel seen and heard, as well as to build connections and therefore boost their feelings of belonging.

Allowing employees to talk about their own situations is also important.

For instance, too many disabled employees feel unable to talk about their conditions because people with disabilities are frequently discriminated against in the workplace. So it’s really no surprise how many people with disabilities are out of work. Even though we all have valid skills that can help businesses to grow.

Businesses need to find ways to adapt their hiring processes to make them more inclusive. They should also enable employees to talk about their unique employee experience challenges and find ways to resolve them.

Conclusion

A compelling employee experience is vital to business success. Unhappy employees are more likely to leave, and may well publish negative reviews online, too. Overcoming your employee experience challenges is key to current and future company success and to your employer brand.

You need to consider what employees really want and need from their roles. Then, hire people who embody the culture you want to create.

If you want a positive culture, you need to find out more about how new hires think. Or provide training opportunities to teach everyone what sort of culture you want to create. That way, everyone works from the same page to counter your employee experience challenges.

What do your employees need?

Find out what your employee experience challenges are and how you can overcome them with Workrowd.

Get a bird’s eye view of your whole employee experience, then drill down into each program, group, and event with real-time analytics. Our automated feedback surveys and always-on data collection help you get more information on what your employees want and need from their teammates, managers, and the business overall.

Plus, with the results analyzed automatically, you can save time and focus instead on making changes in response to your employee experience challenges. Get in touch to book your free demo today, or email us directly at hello@workrowd.com.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Company Culture

5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace

Almost every employee will experience workplace conflict at some point. It wastes 2.8 hours per week for US employees, a total of $359 billion in paid hours. Which gives organizations 359 billion reasons why conflict resolution in the workplace is important.

In addition to wasting huge amounts of time, conflict in the workplace can negatively impact employee experience and mental health. It leads to awkward atmospheres, people walking on eggshells, and the employees involved not wanting to come to work.

That inevitably impacts their performance, too. Studies suggest it leads to a 12% reduction in employee productivity.

However, ¾ of employees believe that their direct manager should manage workplace conflicts more effectively. So there’s a skills gap that could be filled through additional training and increased awareness of the impact conflict resolution in the workplace can have.

It’s vital that companies find ways to resolve conflicts, as unresolved workplace conflicts can lower a company’s success rate by 20-30%. That could make a huge difference to a company’s performance in both the short- and long-term.

How to resolve conflicts at work

It’s inevitable that employees will disagree about things at some point, especially as teams grow in size.

However, managers need to learn how to handle conflicts with respect, allowing everyone to feel heard.

Employees, meanwhile, need to know how to be respectful toward their colleagues. They need to learn to disagree amicably without getting rude or personal.

Here are some tips to improve conflict resolution in the workplace:

Clear communication

Communication is a key pillar of success in any team. Managers need to be able to talk to employees in a clear way, and one that makes them feel recognized.

Employees, meanwhile, need to say what they mean without being rude or disrespectful to colleagues.

Giving everyone communication training—whether they’re in a conflict or not—can help with this, as it teaches everyone how to communicate in the same way.

This isn’t the same as encouraging groupthink. Some people will read into a conversation more than others, which is one way that communication conflicts can occur. When employees understand each other’s ways of communicating, and find a middle ground, it can help to remove or reduce some of the reasons why conflicts occur in the first place.

Accordingly, clear communication can form the foundation of effective conflict resolution in the workplace.

Active listening

Active listening ensures everyone feels respected at work. 

Little things like not talking over each other, and repeating what someone has said, show that you understand. It also shows that you’re not spending more time thinking about how to reply than on listening to their point.

This is an undervalued skill, but it’s key to managing healthy relationships at work. It’s also, unsurprisingly, key to conflict resolution at work.

Even if someone’s suggestion isn’t the right fit, enabling them to be comfortable saying something will ensure they feel appreciated in the workplace and not invisible.

Compromise

Over a third of conflicts happen due to issues with style or strategy. This is inevitable when you’ve got different people from different backgrounds, with different ways of thinking, working together.

Managers need to come up with ways for employees to compromise on these different ways of doing things. However, they need to do so in a way where everyone still feels seen and heard. 

They also need to work out what the best course of action for the business is while maintaining psychological safety. It’s a fine line to tread, but one that’s vital to addressing conflict resolution in the workplace and keeping employees happy.

Targeted training

60% of employees haven’t received training on conflict resolution in the workplace. There’s a simple solution to this: more training.

Whether it’s coaching, mentoring, workshops, books, e-learning, or something else, the more training managers and employees receive on conflict resolution in the workplace, the easier it will be for them to react in a rational, not emotional, way to challenges that arise at work.

Training topics can include how to stop conflicts from escalating, how to ensure everyone feels heard, and how to keep debates respectful.

Respectful discussions

People will always have different opinions. In some cases, that can lead to more creative problem solving.

However, it can also cause more conflict if employees aren’t taught how to challenge each other in a respectful way.

When challenging ideas, discussions should feel like just that: discussions. Not attacks, or people shouting at each other. 

As soon as voices get raised, or emotions come into play instead of logic, it can lead to people feeling attacked, decisions being made based on what people want rather than what the business needs, and at worst, accusations of workplace bullying. No one wants any of that.

Respectful discussions only happen when people feel psychologically safe and have the right training. 

An element of this comes from managers leading by example. For instance, keeping their tones neutral and their emotions out of the conversation. 

This then has a ripple effect on employees, who follow that example. They can use the same techniques to talk to colleagues even if they disagree.

Positive conflict resolution in the workplace doesn’t just happen on its own. It generally needs to be taught, then reinforced by example.

Psychological safety

When employees feel psychologically safe, they’re not afraid to be wrong. That means they’re less likely to get defensive over their ideas or feel attacked when someone disagrees with them or questions their suggestion.

It’s also important that employees don’t feel like they’re going to be punished for making mistakes. The risk of this is that people are afraid to speak out when they see something going wrong. They may worry they’ll get blamed and be reprimanded for it.

The more secure employees feel, the more comfortable they’ll be in their roles. Then, they’ll be less likely to take out any fears they may have on their colleagues.

This reduction in fear can help foster healthier conflict resolution in the workplace.

Conclusion

Unresolved conflicts at work can impact your business’s long-term success. The key to conflict resolution in the workplace is more training for managers and employees so that they don’t take these discussions personally. Instead they’ll be respectful debates where everyone feels heard.

Get employee insights faster

Want to elevate conflict resolution in the workplace across your organization? Workrowd can help! With deeper visibility across your employee experience, including automated surveys and real-time analytics, you’ll always have your finger on the pulse of your people’s needs.

Empower your team to take action faster and nip conflicts in the bud. Get in touch today to book your free demo. Visit us online or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Learning & Development

5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up

By 2026, up to 1.4 million workers will need reskilling. For 70% of those people, it will be because their jobs have become obsolete.

Those are some pretty scary numbers, particularly for those of us who are wary about the rise of AI.

But alongside that comes opportunity. Learning new skills is good for our physical and mental health.

Reskilling also provides businesses with the opportunity to retain internal knowledge and maintain company culture. It enables them to keep employees whose jobs may become obsolete but who can be reskilled to work in other areas.

41% of employers plan to focus reskilling on high-performing employees, showing how much their attitudes and knowledge are valued despite the changing world of work.

However, just 30% of employees whose roles are most likely to become obsolete have had training in the last year. Businesses need to act sooner rather than later to stay ahead.

What’s more, 74% of employees are ready for reskilling or retraining, providing businesses with the perfect opportunity to avoid needing to rehire when the time comes.

What is reskilling?

Reskilling is the process of teaching an employee an entirely new skill set, unrelated to their current role. It’s in contrast to upskilling, where people learn skills related to their current role.

For example, reskilling would be a graphic designer learning to become a software developer.

Upskilling would be a software developer learning a new programming language. 

For millions of workers though, upskilling is no longer enough.

Skills now have an average half-life of less than five years. That half-life is even lower in some tech areas at just 2.5 years. 

Reskilling is going to play a pivotal role in the future of work as industries become more reliant on AI and new jobs are created as old ones become obsolete.

Reskilling ideas

So what can you do to reskill your employees? Let’s look at some things to consider:

Identify key skills

What skills do you need to retain?

Consider technical skills your organization can benefit from, but don’t forget soft skills. These are vital to helping leaders support employees during times of change. They take time to learn and implement, and therefore should be core to your reskilling program. 

Skills like communication, giving and receiving feedback in an empathetic way, providing a psychologically safe workplace, and setting positive examples will all help employees feel supported and valued as they learn new skills.

Leaders’ soft skills are also what influence your company culture far more than their technical skills, so it’s vital to ensure that you retain employees who have these abilities so that your business doesn’t suffer in more ways than one.

Set up a mentorship scheme

Mentoring is a really good way for employees to learn new skills from someone with existing knowledge. It can be more hands-on than returning to a classroom, providing networking and growth opportunities in a real-world setting.

Internally, you can connect employees via employee groups, mentoring platforms, or via HR.

Alternatively, you could connect employees with people from outside of your organization. This can be helpful if you want to support underrepresented employees but don’t have the internal tools to do so.

Providing culturally competent reskilling opportunities is important.

Bring in outside support

Outside, objective support can help you spot internal knowledge gaps and avoid groupthink.

An external trainer or coach can tailor advice to your business while bringing in their own expertise that may still be relevant.

External support could come in the form of a one-off session, or long-term support like coaching or a structured program. 

It could also mean working with an external consultant who can identify areas for reskilling within your organization. Then, they can help train your existing employees in those areas.

Collect employee feedback

Some people don’t adjust well to change. Listening to your employees is key to keeping them engaged in times of change or challenge.

You could do this through feedback surveys, employee listening platforms, focus groups, or open-door policies. Different collection methods will appeal to different people. More introverted employees are less likely to talk to someone even with an open-door policy in place, for example, but they might feel comfortable answering a survey.

The more options you provide, the more likely you are to tap into different types of employees and opinions. This will give you the most well-rounded feedback that you can then act upon.

Set up ERGs

Employee resource groups are powerful tools to connect employees. They don’t just have to be for social reasons, though: you can use them as reskilling tools, too.

They’re a way for employees to find mentors, discuss what’s happening at work, share learnings, link to resources, and connect with people focused on reskilling in the same areas. All this support contributes to a sense of belonging in the workplace, reducing the worry that can come from AI taking people’s jobs and offering a sense of security instead.

Conclusion

Reskilling employees is more important than ever. It will help you stay ahead of your competition, provide a psychologically safe workplace, and prepare your business for the ever-changing landscape that we now live in.

Offering training opportunities supports employees’ wellbeing too, with all the benefits to mental health and brain power that come from learning new skills.

Support your employees’ reskilling needs and goals

What do your employees really think about reskilling? What do they want to learn? How can they connect with others who share their learning goals?

With Workrowd’s all-in-one platform, you can easily connect employees with an array of reskilling opportunities. Plus, with our automated surveys feeding into real-time analytics, you can maximize the ROI of every one of your reskilling efforts.

Workrowd empowers you to spend less time collecting data and more time taking action based on what your employees need. Get in touch to book your demo. Visit us online or reach out directly at hello@workrowd.com.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Employee Experience

Cultivate a growth mindset to elevate your employee experience

In 2016, I had no idea what a growth mindset was.

Then, I read Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed and it changed my life.

I know, it sounds dramatic. But it’s true.

It changed my perspective on mistakes and learning and showed me a more engaging way to write nonfiction. I recommend that book to anyone who’ll listen, provided they’re not about to board a plane or have surgery.

Black Box Thinking is all about the difference between having a fixed vs. a growth mindset. It explores how a growth mindset can benefit industries—like the black boxes in airplanes. And how a fixed mindset can harm them, like the secrecy that can happen in the medical industry.

There’s really no downside to a growth mindset regardless of what industry you work in.

What is a growth mindset?

The concept of a growth mindset was coined by Dr Carol Dweck in her book, Mindset. (She’s also great if you want more book recommendations.)

In her book, she describes a growth mindset as follows:

“People believe that their most basic abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work—brains and talent are just the starting point. This view creates a love of learning and a resilience that is essential for great accomplishment.”

In a fixed mindset, people believe that their skills and intelligence are innate and cannot be expanded no matter how much they practice.

A growth mindset means you learn from mistakes and don’t beat yourself up about them or let them hold you back. Even if we’re not good at something now, that doesn’t mean we won’t be in the future.

Writing poetry is a good example of both. Almost everyone I know—including writers—usually tell me they can’t write poetry.

But they tend to compare their poetry to what they studied at school (if they’ve even tried to write poetry at all).

The poetry they teach in school is only one form of poetry, though.

A student with a growth mindset might be more inclined to try writing poetry, even if they know that their first attempt may not be very good. They know that with practice and studying different forms of poetry, they’ll improve and may find a new way to express themselves. 

The benefits of a growth mindset for your employee experience

So how can cultivating a growth mindset benefit your employee experience? Let’s see:

Trust between colleagues

Trust between colleagues is vital to mental health and high performance. If employees don’t feel trusted, it can quickly lead to disengagement, quiet quitting, and eventually, actual quitting.

However, there’s a huge difference between what managers think about trust, and how trusted employees feel.

PwC’s recent Trust Survey found that 93% of businesses executives believe that trust improves bottom lines and 86% say that they highly trust their employees.

Only 60% of employees feel highly trusted. Yikes.

Businesses need to be mindful of this disconnect and consider how to improve it. Or they risk losing employees due to disengagement.

A growth mindset makes employees 47% more likely to trust their colleagues. This trust can lead to greater innovation, which helps organizations stay ahead of the competition. 

It also improves your retention rates, meaning you save money and have more to spend on other priorities.

Psychological safety

Risk taking leads to innovation and the ability to stay competitive. When an organization has a culture that encourages a growth mindset, employees are 65% more likely to say their employer supports risk taking.

A growth mindset means that if an employee makes a mistake, their boss doesn’t berate them but turns it into a learning opportunity. Then, they support them in avoiding that mistake in the future. They understand that all learning and development comes with some risk, but that it can only happen if employees feel supported in taking risks at work.

Trusting bosses understand that no employee is perfect and the best way to support employees isn’t to have a culture of burying mistakes and acting like they never happened.

More innovation

Innovation requires trust, and trust requires safety. These are key tenets of an organization’s growth mindset.

Less than half (49%) of employees feel their organization fosters innovation. In the current climate, as AI increasingly impacts our lives, having less than half of businesses support innovation is a little concerning. If a company isn’t innovating, at this point, it’s basically going backward.

Greater sense of ownership

Ownership helps employees feel like they belong in the workplace, which can mean they want to stay and are less likely to seek out new roles.

They can become loyal advocates for your organization and will work harder because they care about why they’re there.

In fact, when companies have a growth mindset, employees are 34% more likely to feel a strong sense of commitment and ownership at work. This demonstrates the power of encouraging learning and development at every level within your organization.

Conclusion

When a company has a growth mindset culture, it has a positive impact on everyone within the organization. It leads to greater innovation, which helps the business stay ahead of its competition and earn more money.

It also creates a better environment for employees, enabling them to feel more confident, creative, and psychologically safe.

Develop your employees’ growth mindsets 

So how do you help employees develop a growth mindset?

Workrowd can help you empower your team members with employee groups, programs, and events that expand their mindsets. With our intuitive one-stop shop, you can streamline employee processes, automate admin tasks, and track your progress with real-time analytics.

Get in touch today to book your free demo. Visit us online or email us directly at hello@workrowd.com.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Employee Experience

Employee survey questions to drive real results in 2024

If you’re not careful about designing your employee survey questions, you won’t get the results you want.

A quarter of managers see employee surveys as a “checkbox” exercise. Over a fifth don’t even review survey results, and more than half review results but don’t take action.

Is it any wonder then that employees see feedback surveys as a waste of time?

But if you act on the results of a survey, it can make a huge difference to everything from employee engagement to retention to productivity.

So let’s take a deeper dive into employee survey questions and why surveys matter.

Why employee surveys matter

Feedback is an important part of growth for us as people.

It’s also important for any business to grow and succeed in both the short- and long-term.

If your business has a productivity problem, how can you identify the cause if you don’t ask the people working within your business every day?

Employees need to feel like they have a voice inside of your organization, otherwise you risk them becoming disengaged.

Every employee wants to feel like their employer cares about them. Asking for their opinions and feelings on a situation with thoughtful employee survey questions is a surefire way to make them feel valued.

Should you ask questions anonymously?

It doesn’t matter what your company culture is. People are more likely to be honest if they feel safe and secure.

When criticizing their employer, people are naturally going to feel nervous.

But no employer is perfect; there are always going to be issues employees want to raise but may not feel comfortable doing so with their name or face attached.

Anonymity provides protection from fear of punishment or penalization if they say something negative.

It also shows employees you really do value their feedback because it’s not about being able to check off who’s done the survey. It’s about collecting valuable information to help your business improve.

In addition, there’s always the possibility that people will respond to employee survey questions differently if their name, gender, race, religion, sexuality, disability status, or other protected characteristic is attached.

This unconscious bias happens in almost every business, so offering anonymity helps avoid this while still giving you the information you need.

Types of employee survey questions

To get the most useful results, it helps to ask both closed- and open-ended employee survey questions. That way, you get a balance of qualitative and quantitative data.

You can then compare the quantitative information in charts and graphs to show both internal and external stakeholders.

The quotes you collect from open-ended employee survey questions, meanwhile, provide you with vital information on what your employees would like to see change.

Closed questions

Closed employee survey questions don’t provide much depth, but they can give you breadth.

They don’t have to be yes/no, but the information provided should be quantifiable in some way, whether that’s numerically, on a scale, or something else.

Here are some examples of closed questions you could ask in your employee feedback survey:

  • Do you feel able to speak up if there’s a problem?
  • Are you happy in your job?
  • How long have you worked for the company?
  • Do you feel valued at work?
  • Do you receive company updates in a timely fashion?
  • Do you find your work meaningful?
  • Are your responsibilities clearly defined?
  • Do you feel management is transparent?
  • Do you feel your thoughts and opinions are taken seriously?
  • Do you see opportunities for personal and professional advancement?
  • Do you feel supported at work?
  • What training and support options would you like to see (e.g. coaching, mentoring, etc.)?
  • Are you happy with your benefits and pay?
  • Do you feel connected to the company’s mission?
  • Are you aware of the company’s purpose and does it resonate with you?
  • Do you get along with your colleagues?
  • Are you comfortable sharing your thoughts and opinions?
  • Do you feel you can be yourself at work?
  • Do you feel respected?

Open questions

Open employee survey questions are where you get your juicy information from. This is where you can find out what your employees really think and what they want from you.

It’s these types of questions where anonymous reporting can be beneficial. Employees will feel more able to share examples or information that they may not feel comfortable sharing with their name attached out of fear of reprisals.

Here are some examples of open employee survey questions you could ask in your employee feedback survey:

  • What’s your favorite thing about working here?
  • What’s your least favorite thing?
  • How do you feel about your team?
  • What could we do differently/better?
  • How can we support you in your role?
  • If you were CEO, what would you do differently?
  • How do you describe the company when talking to friends or family?
  • How would you describe the relationship between you and your manager?
  • How would you describe your work environment?
  • What does an ideal work environment look like to you?

Conclusion

The only way that employees will believe that surveys are more than checkbox exercises is when businesses start implementing real change based on the feedback provided in response to employee survey questions.

That starts, of course, with managers and HR actually reading the results.

While this can be a slow process, there are tools out there that can streamline it so that you spend less time analyzing and more time implementing. 

Asking employees what they really think helps improve your retention rates by giving you the chance to address problems before they take over. This gives you important opportunities to support your employees and make changes that improve your company culture, employee engagement, and job satisfaction.

As a result, employees will provide a better quality of customer service and are more likely to recommend your business to their network when you’re hiring.

If you’d like to automate the process of sending and analyzing your employee surveys, get in touch to book your free Workrowd demo. Visit us online or reach out directly at hello@workrowd.com.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Employee Engagement

5 ways to get more value out of employee communities

Communities are powerful. Whether they’re in school, in a city or town, or they’re employee communities, they can make a big impact.

Not only do they provide social opportunities, but they can also benefit our physical and mental health, helping us fight off everything from depression to chronic pain.

There’s no reason a work-related community can’t have just as big of an impact as social circles in our personal lives. In fact, work is often a place where people form long-term friendships.

Employee communities can help you nurture these relationships and can benefit your business, too.

What are employee communities?

Employee communities empower employees to connect with colleagues, regardless of company size.

For distributed or large companies, this can make a huge difference, resulting in a 39% increase in job satisfaction. No wonder 90% of Fortune 500s now have employee communities.

In the last five years, there’s been a 29% increase in employee engagement through employee communities. What’s more, they can enable a 14% increase in retention rates.

So if engagement and retention are areas you want to improve in your business, it might be time to look into how you can get more from employee communities.

How to get more out of employee communities

Let’s explore how you can maximize the results you get from employee communities.

Welcome new members

Have you ever walked into a room full of strangers only to have every pair of eyes turn to look at you…but nobody comes over to say hi?

Or worse, no one acknowledges that you’re even there?

For employee communities to be a success, every member should be made to feel like they’re welcome, regardless of how long they’ve been there.

If things start to get cliquey, it’s immediately off-putting and could harm your retention and engagement rather than boosting it.

Welcomes don’t have to be anything major, just a simple hello is enough. Something to acknowledge their presence and encourage other members of the group to welcome them, too.

Using the right tools to organize your employee communities can even highlight who’s new to a group. That way, fellow members know who could use a welcome. A little hello can go a long way.

Get leaders involved

Leaders set the tone for an organization. If they see employee communities as something they can set and forget, they’re unlikely to ever take off with employees.

If leaders are actively involved, regularly promote them, and make your employee communities seem important, employees will be more likely to want to use them, too.

But first, leaders have to explain the benefits. Otherwise, people will wonder what the point of it all is.

This could come in the form of a company-wide email, a LinkedIn post, an internal social media post, a poster in the office, or all of the above.

The more you do to get the word out—and regularly remind people employee communities exist—the better.

Have a shared purpose

One of the strongest ways to build connection is by sharing a purpose. It puts us all on even footing regardless of other criteria.

Having a strong purpose can also benefit our mental health as it gives us something to keep us focused.

Whether that shared purpose is improved diversity in the workplace, mentoring those earlier on in their careers, contributing to the environment, or something else, a shared purpose connects employees like nothing else. It gives them a reason to check in, stay on track, and take part in activities.

This common purpose then helps everyone organize activities and agree on goals.

It makes it clear to new hires who the group is for and therefore automatically qualifies people before they join.

Depending on employee communities’ success and engagement levels, they could also work to improve your employer brand.

It shows the outside world what matters to your employees and that the business contributes to something beyond just profit. Which further helps you attract more people with the same mission.

Collect feedback

Collecting feedback is important for every part of a business. It’s the only way to learn and grow. Employee communities are no exception.

Group leaders and HR should regularly check in with employees. It’s important to see what they want or need from the group, and what could be improved on.

Or even what employee communities they want to see, how people are managing them, and if you need a better tool to organize them.

You could collect the answers anonymously, which helps make employees feel more comfortable being honest. This is especially true if they’re from a background that’s underrepresented within the workforce.

Anonymity can also change how others respond to the feedback, making it a useful tool for driving change in the workplace.

Conclusion 

Employee communities enable colleagues who have similar interests or purposes to connect around a shared cause or topic. This helps reduce loneliness, which negatively impacts productivity, performance, mental health, and physical health. It could be the difference between a workplace of engaged employees who want to work or disengaged employees who are quiet quitting.

When organized in the right way, communities give your employees a greater sense of connection to their workplace and their colleagues. They help them stay focused while also feeling like they’re contributing to a larger purpose.

Use Workrowd to manage your employee communities

Workrowd can help you manage your employee communities so they’re easier to organize and employees want to join them.

You can put all the documents you need in one place, send automated feedback surveys, and create a greater sense of belonging in your business. Not to mention, you’ll gain access to analytics dashboards that ensure you always know how your communities are advancing your business.

If you’d like to connect your employees with easy to manage employee communities, get in touch today to discuss how we can support you and book your free demo.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Learning & Development

5 leadership activities for employees to build skills at any level

It’s no secret that strong leadership skills can benefit people of all levels. So it follows that offering leadership activities for employees can boost both your employee experience and your bottom line.

When I was in high school, my teachers nominated me for an extracurricular activity called “Learning to Lead.”

It was exactly what it sounded like: a program where we learned to lead.

In one of the first sessions, they emphasized that there are different kinds of leaders. Some people lead a team, others lead by example. It was why some people seemed/felt like odd choices for the program.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to witness the different kinds of leaders in society. There are those who run businesses or teams, who are great at people management.

Those who consciously choose to be influential within society, a culture, an industry, or a business. They choose to become trendsetters and thought leaders within their circle through sharing their knowledge on social media, internal comms, or elsewhere.

Then there are those who lead by example, but not necessarily consciously. They show their colleagues the way to do things perhaps without ever saying it. They set the tone, atmosphere, and attitude for everything that’s going on around them.

To be successful, businesses need multiple kinds of leaders. And they need to support and encourage different kinds of leadership.

Unfortunately, 69% of millennials feel they haven’t had enough leadership development, and only 5% of businesses have implemented leadership development programs at every level.

So what sorts of leadership activities for employees can you implement to grow your team’s skills?

Employee groups

Employee groups are an effective way for team members to share their knowledge and meet like-minded people.

They allow employees with similar backgrounds to share their experiences and learnings, meaning their colleagues can (hopefully) avoid the same mistakes and pitfalls.

They also provide employees with some moral support when things get challenging. Plus, they can be a great venue for offering leadership activities for employees.

Of course, for employee groups to work, they first need to be effective. And unfortunately, many of them could be run better.

That’s where we come in.

Workrowd helps you manage your employee groups so that you, and your employees, can get the most from them. We make it easier than ever for your employees to network, so they can share their knowledge and develop their skills. Including through a slate of leadership activities for employees.

Get in touch today to book your free demo.

Coaching

Coaching is a powerful tool that enables employees to discuss their situations, goals, and challenges with someone unbiased.

Working with an external coach comes with the benefit that they’re detached from the company and situation, meaning they can offer objective feedback to a problem.

Coaches can also help leaders design a path toward their goals and hold them accountable to navigating it. They can even recommend some leadership activities for employees based on what they hear from team members.

Mentoring

Mentors can set examples for employees, particularly for those from underrepresented backgrounds. They show the employee that someone else from that background has done it before, and so they can, too.

They’ll inevitably have shared experiences that are different from those who don’t come from that background.

For example, an employee with an invisible illness will experience a workplace differently from someone who doesn’t have an invisible illness. This affects how they approach the workday in ways that their colleagues may not understand unless they’ve been there.

An employee with a shared experience can offer moral support and guidance, making obstacles feel less insurmountable and boosting the employee’s confidence. Supporting mentoring pairs with programming is also a great way to offer leadership activities for employees.

Reading 

Never underestimate the power of a good book, whether it’s a physical book, audiobook, or e-book.

There are lots of great books out there on leadership. Some are classics that people still talk about years after publication. That would only be the case if they had something interesting/useful to say and leaders continued to learn from them.

Some examples include:

  • Radical Candor – Kim Scott
  • Start With Why – Simon Sinek
  • Leadership Mindset 2.0 – R. Michael Anderson

Reading allows employees to learn at their own pace, take notes, and share their findings with their colleagues.

Books on psychology are also useful when it comes to management, as they teach leaders how to empathize with people from different backgrounds and understand the alternative ways that people can think.

This is something that’s key for someone to be a great leader, whatever their role. They can’t lead effectively if they can’t empathize with the people around them.

You could even create a leadership-focused book club where people can share their favorite reads and key takeaways! It’s a great, low-effort way to offer leadership activities for employees.

Training

Training workshops enable employees to disconnect from everyday duties and focus on learning new skills and strategies. 

While these can be intense so aren’t suitable for everyone, the focused atmosphere and diverse participants (and hopefully diverse speakers if you host a longer event or do them regularly) allow employees to shake up their thinking patterns, learn new skills, and understand more about themselves and other people.

Training should be a core focus of your leadership activities for employees.

Team-building activities

I know, these can be cringeworthy. But hear me out before you judge.

When working with other people, employees naturally fall into roles and hierarchies, often without intending to.

Team building activities allow you to find who your natural leaders are. So then you don’t just get the folks who put themselves forward, you get the ones who naturally take charge and set examples, which aren’t always the same people.

These sorts of leadership activities for employees are also a way for people to hone their skills in a more practical environment. As opposed to the other options on this list which are more theoretical.

Alternatively, you could allocate roles to people, choosing who’s in charge, so that different employees get to try different roles. You can then find your natural leaders who may not volunteer to be in charge, but suit the position all the same.

Conclusion

Whatever someone’s current or future role is, the right leadership activities for employees can help them grow their technical and personal skills so that they can be more effective leaders.

Regardless of how long someone has been a leader for, there’s always something new to learn. That could be a new tool to try, a new psychological theory to get employees working better together, or a new activity that hones their skills.

The more leadership activities for employees you offer, the more future leaders you can support and the more diverse your leaders will be.

Ready to elevate your leadership activities for employees and boost participation organization-wide? You need Workrowd’s comprehensive tool suite.

With centralized access to all your leadership activities for employees, personalized dashboards, automated analytics, and more, you can cultivate leaders at every level.

Ready to learn more? Visit us online or reach out to us directly at hello@workrowd.com.

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Categories
Employee Engagement

4 ways to leverage personalization for more engaged employees

It’s no secret that having engaged employees can make a big difference for your company culture and your bottom line.

For every disengaged employee, it costs businesses an additional 1/3 of their paycheck. Unfortunately, 85% of employees are disengaged at work, meaning that businesses are paying a lot more than they should be for their workforce and getting a lower ROI per employee.

How do you fix that?

One way is by leveraging personalization in your employee experience. This can help you tap into employees’ internal motivations, improving engagement and productivity.

Let’s look at some ways you can use personalization to help you on the path to more engaged employees:

Use several communication methods

During the pandemic, only half of businesses offered personalized internal communication options. Which means that a lot of the internal messaging happening would’ve come via word-of-mouth or may not have reached people at all.

We all digest information in different ways, and internal communications are no different.

Most businesses have their preferred ways of communicating. Technology makes it easier than ever to combine options to suit both organizations and employees.

For instance, meeting tools now have auto-transcripts. These closed captions aren’t perfect—and are far better with some accents than others, as my English accent knows all too well—but they make it easier for employees with auditory processing issues, or who are hard of hearing, to understand what’s happening and not feel left out.

Tools like these can also create agendas or notes at the end of meetings, meaning everyone can see what the key topics and takeaways are.

Video tools, meanwhile, now have auto-transcripts or allow time-poor employees to increase the speed to get through them faster.

There are so many options now that you don’t need to stick to one form of communication and risk leaving employees out. You want everyone to feel in the loop when you’re aiming for more engaged employees.

Support different ways of learning

77% of L&D professionals believe learning is imperative to employee engagement.

But everyone learns in different ways.

Some people might favor an intensive, all-day workshop, while others may prefer something that’s self-paced.

One of the fascinating things about being human is how differently we all learn.

But just like with school, businesses can prioritize one type of learning over others, meaning that some get to excel while others fall behind purely because their brain works in a different way from what’s treated as “normal.”

When you offer employees different ways to learn skills or process information, it shows you see them as individuals. That you’re not going to hold their short attention spans, desire to tackle one task at a time, or fact that they learn in a different way from their colleagues, against them.

It also means any training you offer comes with a higher ROI because employees will stay, and therefore use, more of what they’ve learned. So your business benefits so much more.

Regardless of how an employee learns, they—and your business—still get all the benefits that come from learning. The only difference is that there are several paths they can take to learning that new skill. And you get more out of them, and more engaged employees, as a result.

Provide multiple career development options

Just like everyone learns differently, not every employee will take the same path to promotion, either. Some people might want to be managers in the future, while others would rather be your subject matter experts instead. That doesn’t make those employees who don’t want to manage people less beneficial to your business.

Some employees may feel that their only path to a promotion or a pay raise is to go into a people management role when it isn’t the right fit for them.

This can cause stress and disengagement among your managers and employees, with poor management being one of the main reasons employees leave their roles.

So what can you do instead?

The more options you give your team members, the more supported they’ll feel. And the more likely you’ll be to have engaged employees.

Some options include:

  • Changing departments, like going from marketing to sales
  • Moving to working on commission or increasing commission rates
  • Taking on a people management role
  • Becoming a knowledge leader, like a principal engineer

These are all different paths to career development, taking a more personal approach than the typical assumption that the only way to grow in a career is to stop honing technical skills and move into honing people skills.

Some people just aren’t cut out for traditional management, or don’t want to do it. That doesn’t mean they’re not great employees. Or that they’re not engaged employess. Embracing different types of workers and career growth will help with employee engagement, internal knowledge, and retention.

Don’t assume all benefits appeal to everyone

Different benefits appeal to different employees. A child-free person isn’t going to find subsidized childcare appealing, for example, but for a parent—especially in a country where childcare is expensive—this could be a key selling point.

Likewise, a healthcare plan is less appealing in a country that has free or subsidized healthcare.

For a long time, businesses have taken a one-size-fits-all approach to benefits. This treats every employee the same, rather than considering individuals’ life experiences and needs.

Rather than making assumptions or following trends, why not ask your employees what benefits they want?

You can send your employees a survey to find out what benefits appeal to them. This shows them that their opinions matter to you, and that you’re listening. If you want more engaged employees, listening to them, and acting on what they say, is key.

Conclusion

With the rise of technology and AI, there are fewer excuses than ever not to offer your employees more personalized experiences.

Technology can help you repurpose information in multiple ways, collect employee sentiment, and analyze the results.

If you want to personalize your employee experience in pursuit of more engaged employees, Workrowd has the tools you need.

From personalizable dashboards so every team member can quickly access the information that’s most important to them, to automated feedback surveys so you always know how to improve, it’s all just a click away.

Ready to see how we can help you create more engaged employees without the stress? Visit us online today, or send us a note directly at hello@workrowd.com.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Employee Retention

How to increase employee retention on a budget in 2024

Roughly 4 million Americans quit their jobs every month, with almost a third quitting within the first six months. So it should come as no surprise that many organizations are looking for solutions around how to increase employee retention.

Globally, more than half of organizations find retaining their most valuable employee groups hard. Replacing highly trained employees can cost over 200% of the person’s annual salary.

Improving employee retention can reduce these huge costs. Plus, it helps retain internal knowledge that can take new hires months to learn, risking slowing down productivity and output. Of course, this learning curve is inevitable when you hire new employees.

What isn’t inevitable is losing a third of new hires within six months.

So, let’s look at some ideas for how to increase employee retention and save yourself thousands per team member.

Offer remote/flexible working

Remote and flexible working options are a must-have for many employees. This is true despite the mass return to office push that’s been happening since last year. 

Plus, this office-based work obsession doesn’t consider how exclusionary such a policy is. 

You can’t have a diverse business without offering remote work. 

Remote work supports employees with disabilities, working parents, and those from less privileged backgrounds. It also saves employees money on their daily commutes. For many employees, these things are make-or-break.

Eliminating remote work means you risk losing 2/3 of your workforce. 64% of employees would consider leaving if their employer took their ability to work remotely away.

Is it really worth forcing employees back into the office when you factor in the cost of re-hiring that much of your workforce? Especially when that will likely also include a significant portion of your recruitment team?

It’s a lot of work and a lot of stress when remote work is good for employees.

If you really want people back in the office, why not try a hybrid work model ? That way, you and your employees get the best of both worlds, and you can worry less about how to increase employee retention.

Provide more opportunities for development

Employees want to grow. It helps them future-proof their careers, keeps their roles fresh, makes them more productive, and gives them a mood boost.

Employees want to grow so badly that 86% would change jobs if another company offered them more professional development opportunities. A big red flag when thinking about how to increase employee retention.

There are lots of ways to offer training and advancement for team members. They don’t have to be super expensive. Options include:

  • Books (or even a book club)
  • Webinars
  • Mentoring
  • Coaching
  • Online courses
  • ERGs (more on those below)

Pay employees what they deserve

The cost of everything is in flux right now. Generally, employee pay hasn’t kept up with the cost of anything, leaving people with less disposable income than they had 15 years ago.

Paying employees what they deserve ensures they’re financially comfortable, helping reduce their stress levels and improving their performance at work.

Pay is one of the top reasons employees look for new roles right now. And over half of employees feel confident they could find a better-paying position. 

So, if you’re not paying employees what they’re worth, you risk losing your top performers to competitors. Fair pay is a key element of how to increase employee retention.

Monitor burnout levels—and do something to prevent it

Burnout is harmful to your business and your employees (and to you). It comes with long- and short-term consequences for everyone.

Unfortunately, 59% of US employees experience at least moderate levels of burnout. It’s on businesses to change this and protect their employees from its detrimental effects. Especially if they’re looking for ideas for how to increase employee retention.

So, what are you doing to protect your employees?

You could:

  • Offer coaching to help them identify the signs and deal with workplace stress
  • Look at employees’ workloads to ensure they’re not doing the jobs of several people
  • Encourage employees not to check in, or do work, outside of working hours
  • Implement workplace wellness initiatives, like gym memberships or office yoga

Keep employees engaged

Employee engagement has never been more important. 

Employees who are highly engaged are 40% less likely to look for a job than those who are actively disengaged. That doesn’t even consider the difference engagement vs disengagement can make on productivity and morale. Nor its effects on how to increase employee retention.

Collect managerial feedback

Managers make a huge difference on the atmosphere in an office and across a team. So much so that half of employees have left their jobs for a change in management. That says a lot about the effectiveness of some managers. And about how to increase employee retention.

However, with so many managers not getting any feedback when they’re promoted, it should come as no surprise. 

Providing managers with training or coaching to help them in their roles—regardless of how long they’ve been a manager—ensures that they can support their employees in the best way possible, continue their own professional development, and stay informed on the latest industry and managerial trends and techniques.

The only way for people to grow is through feedback. Employee surveys are a great way to find out how employees feel about management, what’s working, and what could be improved.

With Workrowd’s help, you can send and analyze employee surveys automatically. Contact us today to find out more.

Connect employees

While employees want the opportunity to work remotely, there’s a fine line. If employees experience low human connection at work, they’re 39% more likely to quit.

So what’s the solution?

Asking employees what working situation works for them. 

For many, it’s likely to be hybrid work. This allows for the connection that comes with face-to-face contact and the flexibility that comes from working remotely.

Setting up employee groups also helps people connect with each other and ward off loneliness. They can network with other employees who have similar interests but may not be on the same team. These communities can be a key tool when considering how to increase employee retention.

Workrowd can help you manage your employee groups to get the most out of them. Contact us today to book your free demo.

Conclusion

Employee retention is more important than ever. The keys are to make your employees feel supported and like they belong in the workplace.

How to increase employee retention needs to start with providing training opportunities and listening to what people need from HR and managers.

The more you listen, the more you’ll get from your employees.

If you’re ready to step up your game around how to increase employee retention, Workrowd has the tools you need. WIth employee group management tools, automated feedback surveys, and real-time analytics dashboards, you always know where to focus your efforts.

Ready to learn more? Email us at hello@workrowd.com, or drop by our site for more info.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up
Categories
Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging

Why cultural competence is essential for today’s global workforce

The most culturally diverse companies perform 36% better than the least diverse companies, according to McKinsey research. But diverse teams can only reach their peak if cultural competence is a priority.

Cultural diversity at work leads to teams making better decisions 87% of the time. That’s a huge difference in a company’s decision-making abilities. Plus, it has the potential for ripple effects throughout the business and into the outside world.

Culturally diverse companies also have better collaboration, innovation, and operations. All things that are key to getting ahead of your competitors, whatever industry you’re in.

So let’s take a deeper look at cultural competence: what it is, what the benefits are, and how you can improve cultural competence in your business.

What is cultural competence?

Cultural competence refers to a person or business’s ability to understand different cultures and their needs.

Key elements include empathy and understanding for people of different backgrounds and experiences.

Why does cultural competence matter for the global workforce?

Here are just some of the benefits of cultural competence for businesses:

Recruitment 

Diversity is more important than ever to jobseekers. 76% now see it as important when picking an employer. 32% wouldn’t apply at all to a company that lacks diversity.

A lack of diversity within a business can make employees worry that they won’t be heard. 

The less diverse a company is, the more likely it is to fall into the trap of groupthink. This makes it harder for employees to speak up, even if companies put diversity statements on their job applications. (Which, let’s face it, many just do because it’s a legal requirement in some countries).

If your organization lacks cultural competence, you won’t be able to attract the underrepresented talent your business needs to thrive.

Employee satisfaction

When employees are satisfied with their employer’s DEI efforts, they’re happier at work. 

And when they’re happier at work, they can perform better and earn more money for your business.

Higher employee satisfaction, of course, also improves your retention rates. If employees are happy, why would they want to leave?

Despite this, 57% of employees feel their organizations could do more to increase diversity and cultural competence.

Innovation

One of the best ways to solve a challenging problem is to see it from a new point of view. 

New hires offer a great way to get a fresh perspective on your business. But don’t underestimate the power of diversity within your existing team, either.

The way someone from the UK approaches a problem will be different from how someone from the US approaches the same challenge.

Every aspect of someone’s background can impact how they solve a particular problem. And that’s a good thing.

The more diverse perspectives you have, the more they can combine to make your business more innovative and forward-thinking, helping to future proof it in the age of AI.

How to improve cultural competence in your business

So, what can you do to improve cultural competence in the workplace?

Training 

Training is one of the best ways to introduce new initiatives and educate employees. It can help them develop new ways of working and looking at the world. Which can go a long way towards helping them develop cultural competence.

It could be through a formal workshop, or it could come from things like written content, books, webinars, or podcasts.

The more options you offer for training, the more learning styles you can appeal to. This helps both with retention and attraction and shows that you really are committed to your DEI efforts.

Employee listening

The results of employee feedback surveys can be difficult to swallow. But they’re a vital way for you to spot problems before they become gaping chasms that seem monumental to fix.

Sending automated feedback surveys asking employees what they feel you could be doing better allows for an open dialogue about how your business operates and how you can create a strong company culture with high cultural competence.

If you’d like help sending your feedback surveys, why not get in touch? We can help you automate your employee feedback surveys and analyze the results so that you can collect more data and have more time to take action that supports your employees.

Get feedback

Employee listening is a crucial part of your feedback strategy. But so is managers actively asking for and collecting it from their employees. It’s important to not get complacent with things like diversity initiatives, as that’s when bias can creep back in.

If you really want to create a business with strong cultural competence, be sure to train your managers and employees on how to give and receive feedback. 

Too often, there’s an assumption that people know how to do this. Giving feedback is all about clearly communicating positives and negatives. It’s not as easy to do effectively as it sounds.

Embody it

Understanding what cultural competence means is one thing. For it to truly happen in the workplace though, everyone within the business needs to live it. 

This starts with managers setting an example, being aware of the differences between employees, and supporting their varying needs.

It’s also about taking action when employees provide feedback. You can’t just nod along and say you know there’s a problem but it’s too challenging to fix. This puts employees at risk of becoming disengaged because they feel like their problems don’t matter.

Conclusion

Cultural competence impacts every area of your business, from profits to recruitment and retention. It leads to better decision-making in almost every situation. And, it helps you attract better quality candidates who can further support your initiatives.

To make it work, you need to listen to employees and act on what they want and need from you. 

You also need to ensure that all managers are trained in cultural competence—and don’t take it for granted. 

Employees will be able to see when managers don’t have cultural competence, and when they’re not open to feedback. Ensuring everyone within a business knows how to give and receive feedback puts everyone on even footing. It helps create a workplace where everyone feels included, regardless of their background.

Ready to boost cultural competence in your organization? Workrowd has the tools you need. From automated feedback surveys to ERG management tools to real-time analytics dashboards, everything you need is just a click away.

Want to learn more? Visit us online or reach out directly at hello@workrowd.com.

4 employee experience challenges and how to solve them
5 tips for more effective conflict resolution in the workplace
5 innovative reskilling ideas to help your team level up