Leverage your employees’ voice to quickly adapt to change and stay resilient in uncertain times.

Stay agile during times of change

#dddbd0

Don’t forget to include your line managers as they’re often the most impactful to employees’ day-to-day work experience.

Start by identifying the stakeholders critical to affecting change within different levels of your organization.

It can be overwhelming for leaders with access to a full array of quantitative and qualitative engagement results. To make it easier for them to learn from the results, provide them with a simple 3 to 5 step process to walk through the results.

Provide your leaders with a simple approach to interpret engagement results

Keep it as focused and simple as possible. Pick one or two focus areas to target your action planning.

Narrow your Focus Areas

Quick Wins help to kick-start the momentum and show your employees that you’re committed to following through on actions.

Start with the Quick Wins

Communication is an ongoing process that should be embedded into each step of the post-survey process – starting right after survey closes.

Use Communication to Engage Employees in the Journey from Results to Action

Let our team guide you from the pre-survey preparation to post-survey action planning.

Rolling out an employee engagement survey for the first time?

#fcfdff

Instead of “set it and leave it approach”. It’s important to choose a solution that is adaptable to your needs. As your company changes, adapt your employee pulse program to fit your organizational cadence.

Stay Agile and Adaptable. Tune it to the cadence of your organization.

See how we can help you pull the right levers at each stage of the employee feedback habit loop to implement a sustainable employee pulse program

Build an Effective Employee Pulse Program

#ffffff

Try the employee voice platform your people will love. Used Perked! to keep an open channel to listen to their feedback, ideas, and concerns before it becomes a problem.

Sign Up Free for the Remote Work Pulse

Listen to your Employees’ Needs in a Flexible Workplace Environment

When the diagnosis is uncertainty, the antidote is clarity. Establishing clear ‘communication hours’ can help employees know when they are expected to be immediately responsive and when it’s okay for them to work their preferred hours.
<ul>
<li>To help add clarity around response time, Merck, a global healthcare company created acronyms for their online communications. For example, after sending a DM workers will add “4HR” showing they expect a 4-hour response time, or “NNTR” indicating there is no need to respond.</li>
</ul>

When is On – When is Off

The growth mindset is as much about the journey as it is about the destination – “failure” is seen as part of this journey, an opportunity to renavigate and get better every step of the way.

Importance of the Journey and Failure

Learning goals are best used when an employee is starting at ground zero. You can create a balance with learning goals focused on the shorter-term and performance goals on the longer-term.

Use Learning Goals when you’re Starting at Ground Zero

Keep a pulse on your team’s engagement levels so that you can build a company where your employees want to work. Learn what you need to measure and how to measure it to best adapt it to your team’s needs.

Make Employee Engagement a Measurable Goal for your Team

If you’re not sure if stretch goals will work for you, try one out. Add one <a href="https://blog.perked.co/article/guide-to-high-performance-okrs-for-people-operations-and-hr">Aspirational OKR</a> to your goals and aim for 60-70% achievement of key results for this aspirational objective. Track your progress, evaluate your journey towards achieving this OKR and understand how it affects your team’s motivation.

Start with One

Build a solid foundation to grow your EX with a habit of listening, learning and actioning on employee feedback.


Listen to your Employees’ Feedback to Enhance your Employee Experience

Talk about factors that may have a higher likelihood of impacting their stress levels. For example, if they have kids who are being home-schooled during the pandemic, ask them how that is going.

Go beyond the “How are you feeling?”

Mental health issues are often difficult for people to talk about. Keep an eye out for the following signs of declining mental health:
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Mood swings</li>
<li class="li1">Withdrawal from social interactions with other employees</li>
<li class="li1">Decrease in productivity or quality of work</li>
<li>Increased absenteeism and/or tardiness</li>
<li>Changes in eating/drinking habits</li>
</ul>

Look out for signs of declining mental health

Provide a safe space for team members to share their perspectives on mental well-being in the workplace. See the trends and act on their feedback to show your employees that you care.

Check-in on your team’s mental well-being?

Make sure to bring on board the managers or leaders who “walk the floor” with their team. They will play a key role to help you spread the message and provide operational support during the rollout of your engagement survey.

Companies with employees working in a manufacturing or warehouse environment

It needs to come from the top. From a person who genuinely cares about and is responsible for company culture and employee engagement. Ideally, it would come from the CEO. Have him/her personally communicate the importance of this engagement survey, how high it is on on their priority list, and why it matters that everyone participates.

Consider WHO the message is coming from

Do you know what you need to measure? And how to action on the results? Learn how Perked!’s platform can help you build a stronger team and become a better leader.

Are you ready to start improving employee morale?

Ask your managers to participate in the engagement survey early on. That way they know what the process is like and would be better equipped to answer questions from their team.

Managers go first

Make HR contact details available and visible in case employees have any questions.

Make HR contact details visible

Understanding what psychological safety is like in your team is the first step to figuring out how and when to drive impactful actions to improve your team’s effectiveness.

Measure Psychological Safety in Your Team

#2f2f2f

Don’t just share the overall engagement results. Focus on the top one or two things that leadership will be prioritizing action on and explain why. This means that you need to analyze the results ahead of time (OR you could leverage <a href="https://www.perked.co?utm_source=blog">Perked!</a>‘s Leadership Digest to pull out the Top Actionables).

Focus on sharing top 1 or 2 actionables

<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Invite and celebrate moments where employees’ work and personal lives collide. Organize “Meet and Greet” or “Take your Kids or Pet to Zoom day” so your employees can introduce their kids/pets to the rest of team. This makes it less embarrassing and stressful the next time your personal life crosses into your work life.</li>
<li class="li1">Start team meetings by asking, “How are you and your family doing?” or “What’s on your mind?”. Steve MacIntyre, VP of People at Silver Hills Bakery, shares it as a simple and easy way to infuse team meetings with a sense of humanity and empathy.</li>
</ul>

Focusing on the Whole Person

<ul class="ul1">
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Keep a continuous pulse on your teams’ emotions and energy levels. In <a href="https://www.perked.co">Perked!</a>’s employee pulse we include this question to measure vigor: “When I get up in the morning, I am excited to work at CompanyX.”</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Create a new “Day One” and give team members new roles to stretch their abilities. If you can’t give team members new roles, keep them stretching their limits by learning new skills and knowledge. At G&amp;F Financial Group, team members adopted a divide and conquer approach to absorb new learning and share it back with the team.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;">Aim beyond business as usual. Go beyond the survival-first instinct and spend time thinking and planning how the company can help solve bigger problems. This is called “reorientation”. Start by changing your questions from “How can we handle the crisis?” to “How can we move out of the crisis?”</li>
</ul>

Pushing through the “Regression” Phase

<ul class="ul1">
<li style="font-weight: 400;">As per <a href="https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html">Maslow’s hierarchy of needs</a>, after focusing on basic physiological and safety needs in the fast few months of the crisis, it is time to move up the hierarchy and refocus on higher-order needs around self-esteem and self-actualization.</li>
</ul>

Listening to the Voices Within

During these unprecedented times, we made Perked!’s Remote Work Pulses free for teams and organizations to use. These pulses are designed with remote work in mind and adapted to help you get through Covid-19 stronger.

Remote Work Pulses during Covid-19

<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Open + Honest: There is open and honest two-way communication at CompanyX.</li>
<li class="li1">Accessibility:&nbsp; The information I need to do my job effectively is readily available.</li>
<li class="li1">Covid-19: I am receiving regular and helpful communications from CompanyX regarding Covid-19.</li>
</ul>

Communication Questions

<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Coworker Support: I can count on my co-workers to help out when needed.</li>
<li class="li1">Manager Support: I can count on my manager for support when needed.</li>
<li class="li1">Covid-19: I know where to raise concerns or questions I have in relation to Covid-19.</li>
</ul>

Social Support Questions

<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Confidence: I have confidence in the leadership at CompanyX.</li>
<li class="li1">Covid-19: The leadership at CompanyX is keeping us informed about our company’s response to Covid-19.</li>
<li class="li1">Covid-19: I believe the leaders at CompanyX are making effective decisions regarding Covid-19.</li>
</ul>

Leadership Questions

<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Stress Level: In the past week, how stressed were you?</li>
<li class="li1">Ability to Handle: In the past week, how often have you felt confident about your ability to handle work-related issues?</li>
<li class="li1">Control: In the past week, how often have you felt that you were able to control the important things at work?</li>
<li class="li1">Covid-19: I know what I need to do to stay safe and healthy during the Covid-19 pandemic.</li>
</ul>

Stress Questions

<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Trust: Members of my team are able to bring up problems and tough issues.</li>
<li class="li1">Cohesion: I feel a sense of belonging at CompanyX.</li>
<li class="li1">Covid-19: We are staying connected as a team during Covid-19.</li>
</ul>

Teamwork &amp; Collaboration Questions

At <a href="https://firstround.com/review/How-Fast-Growing-Startups-Can-Fix-Internal-Communication-Before-It-Breaks/" rel="nofollow">URX</a>, the team gathers every Friday for a meeting designed as a safe space where people are explicitly asked to call out what isn’t working and how things can be done differently. It has helped them tackle hot button issues from vacation policies to equity packages.

Contrarian Office Hours

It’s the key to resilient, agile, innovation-driven teams, especially during volatile times. Learn how you can keep a pulse on psychological safety.

Know how Psychologically Safe your Team Feels

John Doerr, who introduced OKRs to Google’s leadership, talks about using two types of OKRs: Committed and Aspirational.
<ul class="ul1">
<li class="li1">Committed: Require 100% achievement of Key Results every period.</li>
<li class="li1">Aspirational (moonshots): These are objectives where you may not always have a clear idea how to achieve them. Aim for 60-70% achievement of key results for aspirational objectives. </li>
</ul>

Use two types of OKRs: Committed vs. Aspirational.

To avoid using vague language that leaves employees confused about what needs to be done, keep S.M.A.R.T. in mind when structuring your Key Results: Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely.

Think S.M.A.R.T. Key Results

Know, based on real-time insights, how you’re doing in relation to your OKRs. Listen-Learn-Act and do it right with Perked!.

Use Engagement Pulses to track the progress of your OKRs

Create a safe and anonymous space for employees to voice their feedback. Ask the right questions to drive actionable insights.

Power People First Decisions

#000000

91% of HR Leaders agree that ongoing feedback is important to company success. Start your 30-day Free Trial.

Fast, Actionable Feedback

Dr. Carol Dweck, a renowned Stanford psychology professor, found that growth mindset companies are 47% likelier to build trust and a strong sense of ownership and commitment. Recognition is a key part of growing a growth mindset company. How? Recognize for effort, progress and perseverance vs. ability.
<ul>
<li><a href="https://blog.perked.co/article/is-your-company-profiting-from-a-growth-mindset">Want to learn more about how you can profit from being a growth mindset company?</a></li>
</ul>

Recognize for effort, progress and perseverance vs. ability

Create a culture of feedback with Perked! and use our proven framework to supercharge your high-performance company culture.

Grow an Awesome Company Culture

Make it a habit to summarize, write down and share key points from meetings via a common channel (Slack, Google Docs, etc.). If possible, record the meetings so that those who cannot attend can still review them.

Write, Record, Share

Use pulse surveys to ask insightful questions and get real-time, actionable feedback to make better people decisions.

Listen to Your Employees Feedback

Create an environment of feedback with Perked! and use our proven framework to supercharge your high-performance company culture.

For questions 1 to 3, use a rating scale ranging from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree to gather quantitative insights and to make it easier to discover trends. However, don’t forget to seek clarification by asking “Why” to get further qualitative feedback.

Don’t Forget to Ask “Why”

For questions 4 and 5, offer some common choices to trigger their thinking. Always include an “Other” choice for them to enter their reason if none of the choices fit. This makes it easier for them to answer, and for you to analyze and identify common themes.

Offer some choices

Improve Employee Retention with an Intelligent Exit Survey

#282828

This establishes a personal connection and shows that a real person is responding to the issues.

Sign your name

How? Observe the language used by the reviewer and try to mirror their description of the issue.

Avoid using the word “this”

Start your response with a simple “Thank you for…”

Say “Thank you”

How? Find out about the issues and concerns your employees are experiencing and act on them before they feel the need to write a negative glassdoor review.

Get Ahead of Negative Glassdoor Reviews

Take a look at the “Pros” section in the Glassdoor review. What has the reviewer described as a great reason to work at your company?

Look to the “Pros” section

Align your response and actions with how you live out your Company’s Core Values. Showcase how you walk the talk.

Behavioural Science

Fuel and Friction,

explained

Guide to Post Employee Survey Action Planning

Want your Employee Pulse Program to be Successful? Start with Habits

3 Flexible Work Stressors and How you Can Handle Them

How to Set Meaningful Goals with a Growth Mindset

Employee Experience: What it is and 3 Reasons it is Crucial in the Modern Workplace

5 Ways Managers Can Support Their Team’s Mental Health

9 Strategies to Boost Employee Engagement Survey Participation

3 Lessons Learned – World’s Biggest Pilot in Remote Work

Remote Work Pulse – 5 Key Factors to Measure and How

9 Habits to Grow Psychological Safety in your Team

Psychological Safety: Key to Building Fearless and Agile Teams

Guide to High-Performance OKRs for People Operations and HR

#PeopleFirst Interview I Penny Farinha

Top 5 Most Inspiring TED Talks of 2018

Jason Fleming | #PeopleFirst Interview

The S.M.A.R.T. Approach to Employee Recognition

3 Proven Strategies to Grow a Happy and Productive Remote Team

79 Powerful Examples of Company Values

Tia Fomenoff | #PeopleFirst Interview

Ask these 7 Exit Survey Questions to Grow Your Business

Angela Champ | #PeopleFirst Interview

The Ultimate Series B Guide to People Operations Strategy

Is Your Company Profiting from a Growth Mindset?

5 Signs You’re a Pro at Responding to Negative Glassdoor Reviews

Fika to Cultivate Mindful Moments, According to Science

Two Minute Power Booster

#AmazingCultureWin: Bottomless Community Days

#AmazingCultureWin: Trevor Linden + A Cup + Crowdsourcing

Evolving Future of Work #6: Rise of Distributed Companies, 10 Ways to Become A Better Conversationalist, Hired and Fired by Algorithms

Evolving Future of Work #5: Running the Workplace Like a Conference, It’s Not HR’s Job to be Strategic, Critical Skills for When Computers Take Over the World

Evolving Future of Work #4: Top Ten Skills in Year 2020, Stop the Super-Chicken Mentality, Death of the 9-to-5 Job

Evolving Future of Work #3: Soft Skills are the New Hard Skills, Creative Juices Flow in Coworking Spaces, and Humanoid Robots At Your Service

Evolving Future of Work #2: Neurofeedback Training, Millennials’ Tour-of-Duty, and Noise in Officeless Offices

Evolving Future of Work #1: Smart Pills, Inoperable Surgeries, and the Golden Productivity Ratio

Transforming Mental Health: If Not You – Who? If Not Now – When?

Baseball Cards and Nuns’ Diaries: The Secret to a Longer, Happier Life