Category: Employee Experience

The complexity of today’s world of work can make it feel like as soon as you overcome one employee experience challenge, another one rears its head. Staying focused on employee engagement through it all is crucial for your attraction and retention efforts.

The cost of low employee engagement is $450-500 billion per year. On the flip side, good company culture quadruples revenue. This goes to show just how much the way employees feel about their jobs really matters.

When you find yourself with an employee experience challenge, it’s important to explore what’s going on and look at ways to fix it. Otherwise, you risk not just losing employees, but increasing disengagement among those who remain.

So let’s explore the questions you should ask when facing an employee experience challenge.

What do you think is wrong?

If you feel your company has an employee engagement problem, it’s time to be honest with yourself. Consider what’s happening.

Has there been a change of leadership that’s left people feeling uncertain?

Have there been layoffs that have made people fearful for their jobs? Or perhaps their workload has changed as a result of the cuts and they’re struggling?

Could it be that they feel their work isn’t valued, or that their manager takes credit for what they do? A little thank you goes a long way—37% of employees feel recognition is important. But how many of them actually get the recognition they want or deserve?

Or, could it be that your employees are bored? The main reason a third of people leave their roles is boredom. Boredom can come from work feeling too repetitive, not having enough to do, or a lack of satisfaction/purpose.

It’s important to provide employees with regular training and career advancement opportunities. That way they can learn new skills to benefit them in the workplace and prevent boredom or another employee experience challenge.

What do employees really think?

You can’t make changes until you know what employees really think.

While an open-door policy sounds nice, the truth is that most employees will never use it. Even if they have a concern. They may be afraid of negative consequences, or simply lack the confidence to advocate for themselves.

Many employees have worked in places where “open-door” policies didn’t actually create a safe space for raising issues. Or they believe that HR is only there to protect the business, not support employees.

If they’ve had those experiences or hold those beliefs, why would they speak up about an employee experience challenge?

If you really want to know what’s going on, you need to actively reach out to employees and ask them. And provide a safe place for them to respond.

How can you collect honest feedback?

It doesn’t matter how open your culture is; there will be some opinions employees will feel more comfortable sharing anonymously. This is especially true if they’re female, a person of color, or early in their career.

The potential backlash for underrepresented talent in the workplace is huge, no matter how many times managers or colleagues seek to reassure them. We’ve all been there or heard a horror story.

It’s therefore important to find a way to collect honest feedback. The best way is with an anonymized feedback survey.

When employees can share their opinions anonymously, they don’t have to worry as much about anything they say coming back to bite them unless they share something identifiable, such as the team they work in.

How can you fix things?

Now that you know what’s happening, it’s time to look at how to fix the problem.

Change doesn’t happen overnight, which means you can’t resolve an employee experience challenge overnight.

But what you can do is demonstrate to employees that you’re listening.

This could be through asking in a survey what you could do better, sharing the results of the survey, and/or listing actions that you plan to take based on the survey.

There’s no magic fix for anything. But the sooner you analyze your survey results and take action, the sooner you can get your employee experience challenge sorted and get back on track.

How can you prevent this from happening again?

It’s all very well and good finding out what’s wrong. But does knowing what’s wrong really matter if you don’t take steps to prevent it from happening again?

Going around in circles with your employee experience challenge will lead to frustration and disengagement among employees. This will inevitably lead to them leaving, which means you risk losing your top performers.

Setting up ERGs where employees can connect with their colleagues can help to combat loneliness and boost belonging.

While this may sound like a small or trivial thing, it really can make a huge difference to an employee’s mental health, and therefore their productivity.

If you’d like to get the most from your ERGs—and your employees—Workrowd can help. Streamline marketing, management, and measurement for your groups so that they can drive real business impact. Contact us to find out more.

Conclusion

An employee experience challenge can be difficult to identify and fix, but that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to solve.

It requires listening to your employees’ concerns and taking active steps to address them so that they know you’re listening and value both their feedback and the time they spend working for you.

Get the feedback you need to solve your employee experience challenge

Workrowd can help you keep a pulse on your employee experience with automated feedback surveys and real-time analytics. Meaning you can adapt to any employee experience challenge before it spirals. Plus, you’ll get more time to solve issues and prevent further problems.

If you want to find out more, visit us online to get in touch and book your free demo.

Do you ever feel like there just aren’t enough hours in the day? HR process automation could be your ticket to getting more done with less stress.

The most time-consuming tasks are often the most repetitive ones that don’t require a ton of thought. 73% of HR’s day gets taken up by these types of tasks. This obviously leaves less time to have meaningful interactions with team members or to innovate on providing a better employee experience.

Half of the work done in today’s age can be automated, yet only 37% commonly is.

HR process automation can help you improve employee engagement, save money, and get more done in less time.

In fact, companies that embraced HR process automation saved 90% of the time they spent on admin tasks.

Let’s explore some areas where HR process automation could save you time:

Drafting/reviewing job descriptions for biases

I want to caveat this point with something before I dive in: it’s really risky to get AI to write something then not have a human editor look at it. Or to publish a job description without checking it for biases using an AI tool.

Firstly, because we’re not aware of our own unconscious biases; that’s why they’re unconscious.

Secondly, because AI is prone to mistakes and has its own biases.

Job descriptions are a vital part of the hiring process. In fact, they can make or break it. Leveraging HR process automation by using a role description generator, or AI for analysis, can help you spot gaps and biases that creep in.

AI can offer suggestions to reduce it and attract the best talent for your organization.

Analyzing resumes

Analyzing resumes is time-consuming. The right HR process automation tool can analyze them once they come in and compare them against your job descriptions.

However, these tools can sometimes look past neurodivergent candidates or those who fall just outside of the criteria you set but may still be great hires. 

They can also mimic the biases of the people who create them or set them up. So, it’s important to keep an eye on how the tool is designed and occasionally check through what’s been submitted for a diamond in the rough.

If a candidate receives a rejection too fast this can also come across as impersonal and make them not want to work for your organization. So keep that in mind when configuring how the tool responds.

A friend of mine once applied for a role one evening and had a rejection in his inbox by 6am the following morning. It was pretty clear this was automated, and it made him not want to work for the organization. Even if the perfect role for him had come up later, he wouldn’t reapply to work for that employer. 

Candidates want the personal touch and to not feel like just another number in the application process. So there needs to be balance when it comes to HR process automation.

Interview and meeting scheduling

Interview scheduling takes far too much time. It becomes even more complicated if you’re organizing panel interviews or group interviews.

Using an interview scheduling tool as part of your HR process automation, either on its own or as part of your recruitment tool, can save hours each week.

It also helps you provide a better candidate experience, making those going through the interview process more likely to want to work with you.

Bonus points: the right tool could help you organize meetings with colleagues, too. This could save time and effort scheduling important meetings with multiple people from different teams.

So then collaboration between colleagues and teams becomes easier, more efficient, and more effective as well.

Payroll and benefits

Automated payroll systems can calculate salaries, taxes, and other deductions alongside any compliance or regulation changes or challenges.

It can also help you organize and calculate benefits.

As well as saving time, this type of HR process automation can reduce the errors that come from a more manual process. And make certain that everything happens on time.

These then help you provide a better, more consistent employee experience that ensures everyone gets paid the right amount on the right date. That way, they don’t have to worry if they’ll have enough money in their account when their bills come due.

HR support

Ever feel like you’re repeating yourself, answering the same questions over and over?

An AI chatbot can be a great option for HR process automation. It can save you time by answering common HR questions. 

It can also help you provide a better onboarding experience by answering new hire questions. By helping with any queries new employees may feel embarrassed to ask, it makes them more likely to feel supported. It also helps them get up to speed with how things work in your organization more quickly.

Employee learning and development

Learning management tools can help your employees grow their skills on their own time. This means they’re more likely to retain the information as they’re learning when they’re in the best frame of mind to do so.

HR process automation can assist with delivering trainings to the right people, recommending courses to employees, and suggesting employees to managers who might be ready to progress in their careers.

AI tools can also offer a quick way for employees to get answers to their problems, saving them time perusing search engines and social media.

Conclusion 

HR process automation and AI tools are useful to help overworked HR teams get more done.

However, you can’t AI-generate the personal interactions you have with candidates or employees.

In a world that feels dominated by AI, we need to find real ways to communicate with each other and embrace our humanity.

Create connections in your organization

Employee groups, programs, and events are a great way to connect people within your organization. Colleagues can bond over what’s happening at work, things they enjoy, and their personal lives.

Workrowd can help you manage your employee initiatives so that you and your team get the most out of them. You can measure how well they’re performing, organize files and resources, and keep everything readily available in one central place.

Want to find out more? Visit us online and get in touch to book your free demo.

A positive digital employee experience is more important than ever. It can act as a differentiator between you and your competitors, and as a way to retain employees. Especially as more and more companies insist employees return to the office with vague reasons like it improving collaboration.

The truth is that most employees prefer a hybrid model. This is more accessible for people with caregiving responsibilities or chronic health issues. It also helps fight off the loneliness that can come from working at home all day, every day.

To ensure that employees are successful, no matter where or when they work, you need to provide a positive digital employee experience. So let’s look at the benefits of providing a positive digital employee experience, and how to do just that.

Benefits of providing a positive digital employee experience

Here are some of the benefits of a positive digital employee experience:

Increased productivity

It’s only when we have the right tools that we can do our jobs to the best of our abilities. Lacking the right tools can lead to frustration, disengagement, and a reduction in productivity.

Higher employee retention

If employees don’t feel like they can do their jobs in the way that they want or need, they’re not going to stick around. Providing them with the right tools is key.

It’s worth noting that some people will prefer slightly different tools. Consider if it’s worth making these changes to retain talent.

For instance, in marketing, there are countless SEO-related tools. Many do similar things but most marketers have their preferences. Is it possible to change tools so that the employee feels more comfortable using the tool rather than lose them because they get frustrated?

Improved talent attraction

When candidates see that you have a positive digital employee experience, it makes them more likely to want to work for you.

No one wants to work with companies that still use fax machines and pagers. Yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if a company like that still existed somewhere. (I worked for one that still used fax machines 10 years ago. Up until that point I’d never seen one.)

Using old-fashioned equipment suggests you’re still in the dark ages in other ways, too. For instance, the way you treat employees or your expectations of them, and maybe even your pay equity.

A positive digital employee experience is more accessible, helping you to attract a wider range of talent. This includes people who have a disability, are neurodiverse, have caregiving responsibilities, or prefer working from home.

Better/smoother communication

There’s nothing worse than trying to contact someone and finding out that you can’t. Or when a message won’t send, or there’s some other issue.

The right communication tools will enable you to provide a positive digital employee experience for everyone. There are so many options now that there’s something suitable for every way of working and budget.

How to provide a positive digital employee experience

So, what do you need to support a positive digital employee experience?

Communication tools

For a digital workforce to be effective, they need effective communication tools. Slack, Teams, and an email provider like Google or Outlook keep employees connected. That way, they can contact each other even if they work at different times or in different time zones.

Video tools are also helpful, particularly for demos that may require screen recordings. Or when someone is sharing information and finds it easier to explain when speaking rather than writing.

Many of these tools now integrate so that you don’t need to switch between apps to share videos or sync calendar appointments.

CRM

A CRM can be a useful tool for more than just sales teams. Marketers and more can benefit from a CRM that they can use on their phone, laptop, or tablet. 

A CRM keeps all the information they need in one place, making it easier to find and sync between colleagues.

Calendar/scheduling tool

A calendar/scheduling tool, such as Google Calendar and/or Calendly, ensures that your employees can connect with each other at the right time. 

Employees are in control of when they’re available, and it’s a seamless experience for their colleagues to schedule a meeting with them. This reduces the carbon footprint of sending emails to organize meetings. Plus, it makes it a quicker, less stressful process for everyone, leading to a more positive digital employee experience.

Hardware

The right device(s) ensures that an employee can work from anywhere. And I use the word “right” because sometimes, a laptop is slow or not fit for purpose, which can cause hurdles when an employee tries to do their job.

For instance, a software developer requires a powerful computer to complete their work. If they don’t have the right sort of laptop, it can slow them down, lead to frustrations, and be a reason that they quit.

ERGs

ERGs are the perfect way to keep employees connected. They help them form bonds with colleagues who have similar interests or backgrounds, as well as making it easier for them to network and problem solve.

Utilizing an all-in-one platform like Workrowd can help you take your ERGs to the next level, keeping everything in one place and maximizing participation and engagement.

Surveys

It’s impossible to get everything right, which is why collecting feedback is so important.

Sometimes, employees don’t feel comfortable raising issues in person. But, they do feel comfortable answering an anonymous survey.

Feedback can help you benchmark what’s going on in your company based on the internal results that you get. It can then lead to you providing a more positive digital employee experience.

Want to send more efficient, effective feedback surveys? Workrowd can help! Our platform sends automated surveys and analyzes the data automatically so that you’ve got more time to implement change. Get in touch to book your free demo.

Conclusion

A positive digital employee experience can make your employer brand stand out. It’s key for attracting top talent and retaining them. 

It requires investing in the right tools so that employees can perform at their best. It also requires trusting employees to do their best work.

If you’d like help providing a more positive digital employee experience, get in touch today to book your free Workrowd demo. Our all-in-one employee experience platform ensures everyone has seamless access to the best your organization has to offer. Visit us online or email us directly at hello@workrowd.com to schedule some time to chat.

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.

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.

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.

Does your employee value proposition matter?

Well, how would you like to see:

• 20% more applicants for your open roles
• 29% higher new hire commitment
• 69% lower employee turnover?

With a well-crafted employee value proposition, your business could experience all these benefits and more.

It’s a valuable part of your recruitment and retention toolkits, helping attract the right people and encouraging them to stay.

What is an employee value proposition?

Your employee value proposition is what makes you attractive as an employer to current and prospective employees.

What value you do offer them if they choose to give you their time and energy? What’s unique about your business?

Money is a part of it, of course. But what about the company culture? Training opportunities? Healthcare? Community?

It’s about so much more than ping pong tables and fancy coffee makers. Those things can’t plaster over a company culture that diminishes employees’ self-confidence or where managers take credit for their ideas. And we all know that happens far too often.

What’s the difference between employee value proposition and employer brand?

Your employee value proposition explains to team members what they can expect from you as an employer.

On the other hand, your employer brand is your external reputation.

So your employer brand is the wrapping around your employee value proposition, if you will. It’s what people see, while your employee value proposition is what employees experience.

Which means, if you’re not careful, there can be a disconnect between the two.

That’s why understanding what matters to your employees, tapping into that, and communicating it consistently both internally and externally, is so important.

How to design your employee value proposition

So, how do you design your employee value proposition to drive success for your team and your business? Let’s take a look:

Ask employees what they want

The only way you’ll find out what employees really want is to ask them. What matters to them? What’s the least important?

Maybe they want more flexible working options, better training opportunities, or closer links between departments.

Regularly sending employee feedback surveys can help you collect this data so that you stay on top of employees’ wants and needs.

And with Workrowd’s help, you can even automate the survey sending and analysis so you can just focus on the results.

Not only will surveys go out without you having to lift a finger, but employee feedback will be automatically processed and visualized in your easy-to-read dashboards.

Which makes it easier and quicker than ever to digest the results and drive impact through your business’s employee value proposition.

Provide development opportunities

People want to learn. It’s the main reason employees leave their roles.

And with the rise of AI, offering your employees upskilling and reskilling opportunities provides them with the peace of mind that even if their job does become obsolete, they don’t become obsolete.

It also shows that you value them as an employee.

So, what development opportunities can you offer?

Is it changing roles, if they’re better suited to a different department—or want a change of pace?

Is it further training, such as to expand their technical knowledge? 

A way to explore a peripheral skill, such as a software engineer studying copywriting?

There are endless ways to support employees’ growth, and by association, their mental and physical health when development is part of your employee value proposition.

Create community

Connection is a huge part of what makes us human. As we get older, it can be harder to find it. Work is often one of the places where we can make new friends as adults. As a result, it can play a key role in our mental health.

Enabling employees to feel like they belong in the workplace, that they’re appreciated, and can be their authentic selves makes a huge difference in how employees feel about their working lives.

The workplace goes from being somewhere they go to pay the bills to somewhere they want to spend their time.

Provided they can actually be authentic, not “authentic.” Too often, businesses claim to want a diverse workforce, but when underrepresented talent joins, they find they’re not as supported as they could be. So then how can they be their authentic selves?

Authenticity has been an overused term in HR and marketing for years, but its true value seems to have been drowned out.

One way to avoid this issue and foster a real sense of community and belonging in your workplace is with employee groups.

These employee-led initiatives enable team members to meet like-minded employees, and offer everything from networking opportunities, to learning and development initiatives, to new friendships.

If you want to get more from your employee groups, book your free Workrowd demo today. Setting these communities up to thrive can do wonders for your employee value proposition.

Give employees meaning and purpose at work

Never underestimate the power of working toward shared goals. The University of Toronto found that employees will accept lower salaries if they find what they do meaningful.

When we do something that’s tied to our values, we work harder because we feel like we’re making a difference. We’re doing something that’s important to us.

This collective meaning can also be a driver of customer sales.

For example, Rare Beauty’s goal isn’t just to sell beauty products. It also aims to raise $100 million for the Rare Impact Fund, which supports global access to mental health services and education.

This differentiates it from the hundreds of other celebrity-owned beauty brands out there.

It’s also a core pillar of their employee value proposition. As an employer, it helps them attract candidates who are interested in both beauty and mental health.

Conclusion

Your employee value proposition is unique to your business. It can drive recruitment and retention in either a positive or negative direction.

Listening to employees and making them feel like they’re a part of something is key to ensuring the effect is positive. 

By following these tips, you can build a world-class employee value proposition and make employees happy to work for you—meaning they’ll be their most productive selves and you’ll get the most out of them in the short- and long-term.

Ready to elevate your employee value proposition to get the results you want for your business? Workrowd’s tools can set you up for success.

With a one-stop shop for marketing, managing, and measuring all your employee programs, groups, and events, you can maximize your ROI. Employees get everything they need in one place, and you get automated analytics tracking the impact of your efforts across the organization.

Want to learn more? Visit us online or send us a note at hello@workrowd.com to discuss ways we could partner to optimize your employee value proposition.

Where does employee happiness rank on your organization’s list of priorities? If it’s not near the top, it may be time to rethink your approach.

Having a job you hate is worse for your mental health than being unemployed, found Gallup’s State of the Global Workplace report, 2023. It can impact employees’ home lives, and even their relationships.

Enjoying work makes such a big difference that over a third of employees would give up $5,000 per year in salary in exchange for feeling happier at work.

With so many employees feeling unsatisfied, improving employee satisfaction could help you retain your top talent and even save money.

So let’s take a deeper dive into employee happiness and why it matters.

Why does employee happiness matter?

Increased productivity

When employees are happy at work, they’re 12% more productive. That 12% can add up quickly to you staying at the front of the pack and being able to grow faster as a company.

More sales

How does a 37% increase in sales sound? Well, that’s the difference happy salespeople can make to your business.

It can also help you outperform your competition by up to a fifth.

Greater employee satisfaction 

Engaged employees are less stressed, according to Gallup.

Employee happiness and satisfaction can impact the reviews you get on sites like Glassdoor, what employees say about you to their network, and your employer brand. This then has a ripple effect on the types of candidates and customers you attract.

Fewer sick days

Businesses lose $1 trillion per year in productivity because of employee mental health challenges. And a third of employees say that work negatively impacts their physical health, too.

On the flip side, happy employees take 10 times fewer sick days.

When we don’t want to be somewhere, it has a dramatic impact on our moods. Mental health conditions like depression and anxiety get worse. 

And there’s a follow-on effect to physical health, including the exacerbation of chronic conditions like back pain. It can even reduce the effectiveness of our immune systems, making us more likely to get sick.

Improved retention

Hiring and training new employees gets expensive fast. It reduces how much time and money you have to spend elsewhere. And the more senior the employee gets, the more expensive and time-consuming it is to replace them.

On the other hand, if you boost employee happiness, people are less likely to leave, saving you money on hiring and training that you can spend elsewhere.

Ways to improve employee happiness

Boost your benefits package

Just 42% of employees feel happy with their employer’s benefits and rewards package. This shows a huge disconnect between what employees want and what businesses are providing.

Is it time to send a survey asking your team what you could do better?

Gather feedback

Poor management has a huge impact on customers, profits, and employee happiness. 

Managers have a significant impact on the atmosphere at work. Do they create somewhere employees feel supported and valued?

Or do they take credit for employees’ ideas and make them dread starting the workday?

It’s important that employees can share with HR how they feel about their manager and colleagues. It’s only through their ability to do so that things can change for the better.

Encourage workplace friendships

When employees have close workplace friendships, it boosts their job satisfaction by 50%. Spending time with people we enjoy has huge benefits for our mental health, so this should come as no surprise.

If you want to encourage your employees to connect, why not set up ERGs? Or find a better way to manage them and get more from them? Book your free Workrowd demo today to discover how we can help you do just that.

Build a diverse company

Diverse businesses perform better and have greater employee happiness.

We all want to work somewhere we belong and feel psychologically safe. This is more likely to happen in a company that’s diverse, because it has a broader range of ideas and shows a willingness to listen to all of them. Meaning employees feel less isolated.

Support remote work

There’s been a mass return to the office over the last year or so. And it’s like we didn’t learn anything from the pandemic.

If you truly want to be an inclusive business, you need to support remote—or at the very least, hybrid—work.

There are some people who could be great at a role but are unable to fulfill it because they can’t afford to travel, are a primary caregiver, or have a disability.

One of the reasons I left a full-time, office-based role was because the hour-long commute, on top of being in a bright, noisy office environment, made my chronic pain and fatigue worse. The more I forced myself to conform to the norm, the more the doctor signed me off sick because I was in so much pain. And no amount of sleep, diet, or exercise could fix me when the problem was job-related.

Did that mean I couldn’t do the job? No. It just meant it wasn’t the right work environment for me.

Provide job security

In unpredictable times, offering employees job security means they have one less thing on their minds.

Being unsure whether you have a job next week creates a huge amount of stress for an employee and will reduce their productivity. They may also wonder why they should bother putting effort in at all if they may be let go soon.

One of my friends told me the other day that she knew of someone who had told his employees they didn’t have a job as of Monday. On Saturday afternoon, at closing time. They didn’t open on Sundays.

This level of unpredictability is unfair to employees and doesn’t allow them any time to plan.

Where possible, be open about the organization’s financial stability. It’s another important factor in employee happiness.

Sharing information shows you’re committed to transparency and want to foster an open work environment.

Offer opportunities for employees to use their skills

Every employee has a different set of skills that can benefit your business. For example, you may have someone in finance who’s a great speaker. Why not make the most of that ability?

Perhaps they could speak at industry events, or share what it’s like to work for your business in a video.

They get to stretch their abilities, improving employee happiness, and you get the boost to your employer brand.

How to monitor employee happiness

So how do you measure employee happiness? Simple: ask your team!

Using Workrowd, you can send automated surveys to check in with your employees and see how they’re doing.

You can ask what they like or dislike about their role, and what you could do better as a business to support them.

You can also connect employees via more organized employee groups.

Does this sound like something that would be useful at your organization? Get in touch today to book your free demo at hello@workrowd.com.

For organizations looking to elevate their employee experience in 2024, incorporating more offboarding best practices can be a game-changer.

More than 2/3 of businesses have a formal onboarding process.

But only 29% have a formal offboarding process.

That’s despite the potential risk of security breaches, loss of knowledge, and damage to employer brand that not having a formal process can lead to.

76% of IT leaders strongly agree that not utilizing offboarding best practices presents a significant security threat.

And when you consider how hyper-connected we are at work, and how many of us now take work devices home with us or use work logins on personal devices, it makes you wonder how much of a security threat not having an offboarding process could really be.

So how can you mitigate that security threat? And ensure the offboarding process is as seamless as possible for employees, managers, and HR?

Take a look at these offboarding best practices to set you up for success.

Transfer knowledge

When an employee leaves, you risk their years of experience working in the industry, and getting to know the business, leaving with them. Especially if they work in a small department. 

Some of the information that can leave with them includes:

• How to use a particular software
• Important contacts
• Industry knowledge
• Company knowledge (for instance, how to maintain legacy products or other company history)

It’s important that when an employee leaves—for any reason—you have a way for them to transfer their knowledge to their replacement or other people within the team. This is where offboarding best practices come into play. You don’t want to end up losing knowledge that could benefit you in the future.

Some of the ways you can transfer knowledge, and protect it going forward, include:

• Writing guides
• Delivering (and recording) workshops or webinars
• Handover calls
• Video tutorials
• Checklists

If any of the information is likely to change, be sure to schedule in review dates so it’s always kept up to date, and no one person is responsible for it in the future.

Revoke access to accounts

Failing to revoke employees’ access to software and hardware creates a huge security risk and puts you in danger of future leaks or hacks. It’s any company’s worst nightmare.

So, make a list of every tool the departing employee has access to (or better yet, maintain a list so that you don’t have to create one when they leave) and notify your IT department so that their access is revoked.

Reclaim or wipe equipment

If you’ve given employees a laptop, tablet, phone, or other device, make sure they send it back or wipe it remotely.

Wiping devices remotely ensures that if you don’t want it back—for instance, if it’s old—no confidential documents are kept on a device that doesn’t belong to an employee. 

That way, they can keep the device for personal use without the risk of anyone finding confidential data or files.

Make sure any useful information is backed up elsewhere before you wipe it, though. Otherwise, this is one of the offboarding best practices that could come back to bite you.

Stop automatic paychecks

Let your finance department know the employee’s last working day. They can then work out if the employee gets any extra money from PTO they didn’t take, bonuses, etc. And, of course, organize their final paycheck.

Contact—and reassure—clients

Make sure any clients who work with the departing employee directly know that that person is leaving and who their new point of contact will be. 

This will help ensure a smooth transition and reduce the anxiety clients may feel about the upcoming changes. 

Reassure them that the new person can still cater to their needs, particularly as they may not have the same level of knowledge about the client as their departing contact.

If they don’t feel reassured or supported, they may take their business elsewhere at the end of the contract. Certainly, this is one of the offboarding best practices you can’t afford to skip.

Conduct an exit survey

Exit surveys can give you crucial insights into why an employee left and how you can improve. 

Whether you send an automated survey, have employees chat to their manager, or get them to sit down with HR, it’s important that they share their experiences.

This helps them feel listened to and can improve your employer brand, as they’ll feel more positively about the organization. As a result, they’ll also be more likely to praise you to their networks.

If they left for negative reasons, you can put steps in place to fix things. That way, future employees in that role don’t leave due to the same issue.

Preventing avoidable turnover can be a key benefit of implementing offboarding best practices.

Let the team know

When you need to tell employees depends on how closely they work with the person who’s leaving.

Immediate team members should know once the person has handed in their notice to help ease the transition period and facilitate knowledge-sharing.

The rest of the company can be told via an email on one of the employee’s final days.

Hire their replacement

Take the learnings from the exit interview, update the job description, and start hiring their replacement.

If you have enough notice, you could even start hiring before they leave, using the exiting employee’s knowledge to help with the hiring process. 

After all, they’ve been successful in the role. They know what the right candidate needs to succeed. If anyone can identify it in a potential new hire, it’s them.

Keep in touch

Do you plan to stay in contact with your departing employee?

How can you do so in a way that improves your employer brand and leaves them feeling positively about their time at your company?

For larger businesses, an alumni network can be a huge benefit.

Yet only 15% of companies have a formal alumni network. Compare that with the 67% where employees organized their own, informal alumni group instead. That’s a huge missed opportunity.

Could you set up an alumni network as part of your effort to incorporate more offboarding best practices?

It’s always worth staying in touch with former employees. They may be able to recommend someone to work for your business who’d be a great fit.

They may even return themselves, with more knowledge and experience, later in their career.

Conclusion

Offboarding is a crucial, if often neglected, part of the employee journey. Handle it right and it can boost your employer brand and improve internal security measures.

Staying in touch with former employees could even help you find your next great hire. The only question is: which of these offboarding best practices will you start with?

If you want an easy way to keep current employees engaged, manage alumni, and more all in one place, Workrowd has what you’re looking for. Our suite of tools offers a user-friendly way to keep everyone connected, while giving you real-time analytics to ensure you always know what’s working.

Ready to learn more? Visit us online or send us an email at hello@workrowd.com.

If you think all the hype around AI is overblown, you might want to think again; AI for HR can be a game-changer.

When used correctly, AI can automate tedious tasks. It can give hiring managers more time to focus on building relationships and providing a better candidate experience.

In fact, 85% of employers using automations or AI say it saves time or improves efficiency. Unsurprisingly, 82% of HR teams want to incorporate more AI tools into their talent management processes between now and 2025.

So anyone who isn’t using AI for HR risks being left behind.

But when AI for HR is used incorrectly, or without human support, candidates and employees can both end up feeling let down. And it can negatively impact your employer brand and employee productivity.

Read on to find out about 7 great ways to use AI for HR. Plus, 4 cases where you should never use AI for HR.

Ways you should use AI for HR

Let’s start with the positives. How should (or could) you use AI for HR?

Checking job descriptions for biases

If you already have a job description, AI can scan it for ways to make the language more inclusive.

If you don’t have a job description yet, it can write one for you based on the criteria you provide.

Make sure to pass it through a human editor before publication, though. (For reasons we’ll discuss below in the don’t section.)

Sourcing candidates

It’s not always easy to attract the right candidates. One way to leverage AI for HR is to search the internet far faster than any human, and ensure your job gets in front of the right people.

Using AI for HR can enable you to scrape job boards for candidates and their resumes. It can also submit job descriptions to more sites in a shorter span of time, potentially helping you find the right person for the job much faster.

Filtering resumes

Filtering resumes is one of the most time-consuming parts of the hiring process. 

AI can search resumes for keywords that suggest someone would be a good fit for a role. It can then submit the results to a human recruiter for review or automatically invite that candidate to interview.

Making video calls more accessible

While video calls are a ubiquitous part of modern life, they’re not great for everyone.

They often obscure social cues and introduce far too many distractions, particularly for neurodivergent employees or candidates. 

The evolution of AI for HR means more and more innovations are available to improve accessibility.

For example, auto-captions can now appear in real time on apps like Zoom. These captions aren’t perfect, but they enable attendees who are hard of hearing to participate without having to wait for the minutes to be published.

Some tools now also allow attendees who arrive late to get an AI-generated summary of what they missed. AI can even assemble and deliver an overview of the key points discussed at the end of a meeting.

And software can remove distracting background noises such as someone munching on their lunch or a dog barking. These tools are getting more and more effective, improving the quality of audio for calls and recordings.

Managing employee records

Maintaining records can be tedious. It’s easy to forget to do something. This is where AI for HR can come in handy.

AI can update information in multiple places without the need for manual input. This not only eliminates the risk of manual errors, but saves huge amounts of time.

AI can also notify you if information needs updating or double-checking, and it can delete information when someone leaves.

And it can help you keep things like training manuals and contracts up to date with regular notifications or document scanning.

Organizing payroll and benefits

No one wants to get paid late. And, with a cost-of-living crisis affecting many people, some employees genuinely can’t afford for their paycheck to be even a couple of hours late. It could mean they get hit with late fees that further impact their finances.

Using AI for HR can solve this, paying employees and contractors automatically at the end of each period. 

If a contractor bills for different amounts each month, AI can scan the invoices to work out how much to pay them and process that payment without a human needing to touch it.

Generating ideas

Think of AI for HR as your handy assistant to help you with idea generation.

What it comes out with won’t be perfect, but you can use it as a jumping-off point. It can even help you think up new ways to do something, like an off-site for the sales team to try. 

Plus, it can be useful for repetitive tasks like drafting or editing candidate emails.

Ways you shouldn’t use AI for HR

So, what about the times when you shouldn’t use AI for HR?

Firing employees

Letting an employee go isn’t fun, but firing them without the human touch? It’s cold and will leave the former employee with a bad taste in their mouth. This might then lead them to publish a negative review about you online.

Building relationships

One of the potential benefits of AI is that it can give you back time to focus on the more human elements of your job, like relationship building. 

Stronger relationships build brand loyalty and more engaged employees.

But this isn’t something you can give to ChatGPT to do for you. It comes from genuinely listening to what other people have to say and responding accordingly.

Editing for individuality

With training, AI can emulate your voice. Ultimately though, it will never be able to fully recreate something that sounds like you.

So be sure to edit anything it writes to make it sound original and not something written in Generic Internet Voice.

Checking facts

AI is prone to fabrications, meaning it likes to make things up.

And not in a fun, creative, storytelling way. (It’s kind of bad at that.)

When AI gives you any stats or studies, probe it until it gives you the original source. Or see what you can find when you do some (non-AI) digging yourself.

This ensures any information you share with employees or the outside world links to the original source. It will improve how trustworthy people feel your company brand is.

Conclusion

Regardless of how we feel about AI, it isn’t going anywhere. It can’t replace the nuance that comes from the human experience, but that’s where HR teams can shine. 

Showing empathy and humanity will improve the candidate experience, and thereby your employer brand. 

It’ll also improve the employee experience, making your people feel listened to and appreciated, rather than like just another cog in the machine.

If you’re ready to make the most of both AI for HR and the human side of things, the right tools can help. Workrowd automates tedious aspects of employee experience management, to ensure you and your team can drive greater impact in less time.

Want to see how it works? Visit us online to learn more, or email us directly at hello@workrowd.com.