Author: Chandler Barr

Chandler Barr is the VP of Sales at Engagedly and is focused on driving a culture of progress over perfection in a no-fault environment where employees are secure and encouraged to think creatively to solve problems. Chandler is a seasoned leader that has scaled sales teams for SaaS startups and multibillion-dollar publicly traded tech companies, as well as, led Marines to accomplish the mission during hardships overseas.

Matrix Organizational Structure: Meaning, Types and Benefits

A matrix organization lies between a functional organizational structure and a project-based one; it involves the features of both types. Initially developed in the 1970s to address the complexities of large-scale projects, this structure has since become a popular framework in various industries, particularly in the technology, engineering, and healthcare sectors.

Unlike traditional hierarchical structures where employees report to a single manager, the matrix structure introduces multiple reporting lines, creating a networked environment where individuals collaborate across functional boundaries to achieve organizational goals.

The benefits of a matrix organization structure are manifold. Facilitating collaborations among departments helps spark new ideas and share knowledge. Moreover, it allows resource optimization as employees could be moved dynamically to tasks where they could apply their skills and expertise. Furthermore, the team structure facilitates a more wholesome approach to the organization’s goals because employees work together to achieve common objectives. Let’s learn more about matrix organicational structure in this blog post.

Also read: Which HR Roles are Most Likely to Be Replaced by AI?

What Is a Matrix Organizational Structure?

A matrix organization is a management method that integrates both functional and project-oriented approaches. The matrix structure involves dual reporting lines, where the staff members usually report to both a functional manager, who supervises their skills development in a specific department or discipline, and a project manager, who directs them to realize the project’s goals and deadlines. This twin reporting system provides for greater flexibility, intradepartmental collaboration, and swift management of ad hoc tasks.

In a matrix structure, the reporting relationships are formed in a grid or matrix-like pattern. Employees are simultaneously part of a function department (e.g., marketing, finance, engineering) and a project team. This mode makes it easy to identify the resources needed for each project to ensure compliance with project objectives. 84% of American workers are employed within organizations that utilize a “matrixed” work arrangement to varying degrees.

Also read: What Is a Chief People Officer? Role and Responsibilities

The matrix structure originated in the mid-20th century primarily because of escalating organizational complexity and the need to adapt to unpredictable market conditions. It was popular in the aerospace, defense, and construction industries, where projects often require different skill sets and multidisciplinary collaboration.

Also read: How to Get Started With a Career in HR: A Beginner’s Guide

Types of Matrix Structures

Let’s learn about the types of matrix organizational structures.

Weak Matrix

In a weak matrix structure, functional managers hold more power and authority over employees than project managers. Employees are primarily responsible to their functional managers, and they are temporarily assigned to projects while reporting to their functional department. This structure is suitable when projects are small or short-term and the functional departments need to maintain a high degree of control over resources.

Tech giant IBM employs a weak matrix structure, where functional managers have more authority over employees than project managers. Employees are primarily aligned with their functional departments (e.g., software development, hardware engineering, sales) and are assigned to projects as needed.

Balanced Matrix

In a balanced matrix structure, functional and project managers share equal power and authority over employees. Employees report to both their functional managers for functional guidance and their project managers for project-specific tasks and responsibilities. This structure is suitable when projects are equally important to the functional departments and a balance of power is necessary for effective coordination.

Procter & Gamble (P&G) uses a balanced matrix structure, where functional managers (e.g., marketing, research and development, operations) and project managers (for specific product lines or initiatives) share equal control over employees.

Also read: Insights for HR: How to Support HR Teams Through Downsizing Challenges

Strong Matrix

In a strong matrix structure, project managers hold more power and authority over employees than functional managers. Employees are primarily responsible to their project managers, and functional managers play a supporting role in providing specialized expertise and resources. This structure is suitable when projects are large, complex, long-term, and bring huge revenues for the organization.

Lockheed Martin, the defense contractor, utilizes a strong matrix structure, particularly for large-scale projects like developing new fighter jets or space systems. Project managers have significant authority over resources, while functional managers provide support and expertise.

Benefits of a Matrix Organizational Structure

Increased flexibility and adaptability to changing market conditions: The matrix structure allows for dynamic allocation of resources and personnel, enabling organizations to respond to shifts in market demands or project priorities swiftly.
Improved project efficiency and faster decision-making: Dual reporting lines streamline decision-making, and projects benefit from the expertise of both functional and project managers. This leads to quicker resolutions and smoother project workflows.
Enhanced communication and collaboration across departments: Matrix structures promote cross-functional collaboration as team members from different departments work together on projects. This leads to better communication and a deeper understanding of organizational objectives.
Fosters innovation and knowledge sharing: By bringing together individuals with diverse skills and perspectives, matrix structures encourage innovation and creativity. The exchange of ideas across functional boundaries fosters a culture of continuous learning and improvement.
Better utilization of employee skills and expertise: Employees in a matrix structure have the opportunity to contribute their skills to various projects, maximizing their potential and ensuring that their expertise is utilized effectively across different areas of the organization.

Also read: Essential Skills Every HR Professional Should Master

Challenges of a Matrix Organizational Structure

Despite the many benefits a matrix organization brings, challenges are present in every organizational framework. To combat these challenges, organizations must first identify them. Let’s delve into each one:

Role Ambiguity and Confusion Due to Dual Reporting Lines

In a matrix structure, employees report to both functional managers (e.g., department heads) and project managers simultaneously. This can lead to confusion about roles, responsibilities, and priorities. Employees may find it challenging to understand to whom they should be primarily accountable, which can result in inefficiencies and conflicts.

Potential for Power Struggles Between Functional and Project Managers

Matrix structures can create power struggles between functional managers who focus on long-term departmental goals and project managers who prioritize short-term project objectives. Conflicting priorities and decision-making authority can lead to tension and competition for resources, potentially hindering project execution.

Increased Complexity in Communication and Decision-Making

With multiple reporting lines and stakeholders involved, communication channels become complex in a matrix structure. Decision-making processes may also become slow and cumbersome as various stakeholders need to be consulted or aligned, leading to delays in project execution and potentially impacting overall productivity.

Risk of Employee Burnout Due to Competing Priorities

Employees in a matrix structure often juggle multiple projects or tasks simultaneously, leading to increased workload and pressure. The constant balancing act between fulfilling functional responsibilities and meeting project requirements can contribute to employee burnout, negatively impacting morale, productivity, and retention rates.

To address these challenges, organizations implementing matrix structures should focus on establishing clear communication channels, defining roles and responsibilities, providing adequate training and support for employees, fostering collaboration and teamwork across departments and projects, and implementing effective conflict resolution mechanisms. Additionally, regular performance evaluations and feedback sessions can help managers and employees more effectively navigate the complexities of a matrix structure.

Also read: Top 7 Productivity Hacks Used by Successful HR Leaders

Summing Up

In conclusion, the matrix organization offers a dynamic framework that blends functional and project-based hierarchies, allowing for increased flexibility and collaboration within organizations. Its various types cater to different needs, whether they are strong or weak matrix setups. This structure’s benefits include enhanced communication, specialized skill utilization, and efficient resource allocation. By leveraging the strengths of functional and project-based approaches, businesses can more readily adapt to complex challenges and capitalize on opportunities in today’s fast-paced environment.

Frequently Asked Questions

What role does leadership play in a matrix organization?

Leadership’s role in a matrix organization involves facilitating collaboration, resolving conflicts, and providing clear direction and priorities. It ensures that both project and functional objectives are met.

Can a matrix structure work for all types of organizations?

While matrix structures can be effective in many situations, they may not be suitable for every organization. Small organizations with simple structures or those with highly specialized functions may find them too complex. Before implementing a matrix structure, it’s essential to assess the organization’s needs and capabilities.

How can an organization transition to a matrix structure successfully?

A successful transition to a matrix structure requires careful planning, clear communication, and support from leadership. Key steps may include defining roles and responsibilities, establishing communication channels, providing training on matrix working principles, and addressing any cultural or organizational barriers to collaboration.

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Managing a Multi-Generational Team: A Guide To Bridging Generational Gaps in the Workplace

A recent survey with 4,744 respondents revealed that 28 percent of employees in the United States believe working with employees of different ages is highly significant to them. In contrast, the percentage of employees who perceive workplace age diversity as insignificant is nine points higher.

These figures may indicate that those who believe in the importance of workplace age diversity value the benefits of dynamic experiences and versatile perspectives. Meanwhile, those who don’t may prefer uniformity and worry about potential conflicts due to generational differences.

Although employees have varied beliefs, the inevitable is here: workplaces are now multi-generational. If you have employees who think age diversity is unimportant, how do you bridge the gaps to help them welcome its opportunities?

Understanding the Current Generations of the Workforce

Different generations grew up in different time frames, cultures, and environments, influencing their attitudes and characteristics. Understanding these characteristics is essential in helping mitigate your multi-generational team’s challenges.

Traditionalists and Baby Boomers

Traditionalists, called The Silent Generation, are in their seventies to nineties. Most have retired, but some still work as partners, board members, or advisors. Being the oldest of the workforce, they value tradition and hard work.

In their late fifties to seventies, active Baby Boomers are self-assured and goal-oriented while working.

Both generations struggle with digital technologies due to old age, but Boomers can adapt when needed. However, contemporary workplace practices often view them as resistant or slow to adapt.

Generation X

Gen Xers are currently in their forties and early fifties. They were the first generation to grow up with personal computers. They are characterized as adaptable, independent, and resourceful. Although more tech-savvy than their predecessors, they are less dependent on technology, unlike Millennials and Gen Z.

The most common stereotype for Gen Xers is their cynicism, making them prefer solo working rather than in teams. Moreover, they value work-life balance.

Millennials

Millennials, or Generation Y, are in their late twenties to early forties. They were the first generation to live with the Internet—they either grew up with it or were born into it. While they carry their predecessors’ values, they are more tech-savvy and independent.

Since Millennials were born before and after the advent of the Internet, they are considered the most adaptable generation. They’re more likely to pursue new opportunities to advance their careers.

However, people often perceive this generation as frequently changing jobs, self-absorbed, or entitled.

Generation Z

Gen Zers are in their early teens to mid-twenties, making them the workforce’s youngest generation. They are called digital natives, making them the most tech-savvy generation—they were exposed to digital technologies and social media for nearly half their lives.

Gen Zers are considered the most inclusive, open-minded, and diverse generation. Besides improving themselves, they find socially actionable ways to unlearn and correct the previous generations’ mistakes.

The most common stereotypes among Gen Zers include:

Easily distracted
Highly dependent on technology
Have a lack of interpersonal skills due to tech dependence

Common Challenges of Managing a Multi-Generational Team

The most common challenges of multi-generational teams include:

Different Priorities: You may find it challenging to satisfy the needs of each age group. For example, Millennials focus on career advancement, while Boomers prioritize job security
Communication Style: Older generations prefer face-to-face interactions, while younger employees may prefer digital messaging
Stereotypes: Older employees may perceive younger colleagues as inexperienced, while younger employees may mock older colleagues for lacking technological skills

How To Bridge Generational Gaps in Your Team

Here’s how to bridge the gaps in your multi-generational team to mitigate and prevent workplace issues:

Talk to your team to understand their unique experiences

Successful multi-generational teams understand, respect, and accept each other. Fostering this culture involves talking to your team to understand their unique experiences.

These discussions help you understand your team’s motivations, work styles, and priorities. This way, you can establish policies that meet everyone’s needs. At the same time, you should include everyone to create fruitful conversations that cultivate respect and appreciation of each other’s differences.

Promote the beauty of age diversity

Age discrimination, or ageism, is the unfavorable treatment of a colleague based on age. Although everyone can experience it, older adults are often the targets of this prejudice.

As such, combat workplace ageism by including age in your definitions of diversity. This inclusion helps promote the beauty of age diversity, focusing on intersectionality instead of single topics like gender or race.

Intersectionality helps your employees acknowledge the connection between social categorizations of discrimination. For instance, a colleague may experience discrimination because of age, race, and gender. It helps the team recognize that prejudice isn’t limited to one social category.

Foster psychological safety

Psychological safety refers to your team’s comfort in taking risks, asking questions, acknowledging mistakes, and expressing concerns and ideas. When members lack a sense of psychological safety, they fear the negative consequences of speaking up.

To foster psychological safety, promote open and honest communication by ensuring everyone is comfortable speaking up, whether face-to-face or digitally. Here’s how to do it:

Encourage direct reports to communicate their preferred interactions
Show your commitment to meeting the team’s preferences halfway so they can do the same for their colleagues
Help your team understand that they shouldn’t expect their colleagues to understand their work styles
If you have feedback loops for customer management, create a similar system for employees to encourage feedback and workplace environment assessments

Encourage your team to set boundaries

Contemporary professional settings now tackle topics that were once considered taboo. Younger generations are more comfortable discussing issues like race, gender, and inclusivity, helping eradicate stigma in the workplace.

However, disagreements about such topics with older employees are inevitable. Still, you must help them understand why the organization values discussing these social issues.

To minimize miscommunication:

Encourage everyone to set boundaries
Don’t force everyone to accept perspectives, as learning takes time
Let your team prepare for sensitive discussions by informing them to prevent unnecessary arguments

Debunk the negative stereotypes

As the executive or team leader, be the first to debunk negative generational stereotypes. Educate yourself about each generation’s realities and experiences and discuss your learnings with the team.

Debunking stereotypes helps employees understand they can only know their colleagues through interactions, not hasty generational beliefs. This way, they won’t make age-based assumptions that can fuel workplace issues.

Group employees with complementary skills in projects

Team management thrives on collective effort. While the staff learns from the team leaders and vice versa, you learn from them, too. Leverage this mutual mentorship by grouping employees with complementary skills in projects.

Suppose you’re running a marketing campaign. You should combine older employees who are experts in copywriting and market research with younger employees skilled in data analysis and graphic design.

This combination helps bridge generational gaps because they bring diverse perspectives and ideas, ensuring the campaign is high-quality and meets the current trends.

Don’t play favorites

Some team leaders and executives tend to favor older employees due to experience. However, this favoritism can bring more harm than good, making younger employees feel they are boastful when speaking up.

As such, avoid favoritism by ensuring everyone is heard in meetings. Give your younger members the space to be outspoken, ask questions, give feedback, and respectfully showcase their skills.

Moreover, remind your older employees that less experience doesn’t mean they should dismiss their younger colleagues’ insights. At the same time, encourage your younger staff to learn from their older colleagues’ seasoned perspectives.

Facilitate diversity and inclusion training programs

Another way to bridge multi-generational gaps is by facilitating diversity and inclusion training programs. For example, conduct a workshop about diversity barriers. Invite expert guest speakers who will discuss ageism or the contemporary workplace.

Diversity and inclusion training programs show that you understand your team’s multi-generational challenges and are actively developing ways to address the gaps. These programs help make your team feel heard and show you value creating a safe workplace for everyone.

Organize team-building activities

Lastly, organize team-building activities to nurture mutual understanding among employees.

Team-building activities often require communication and collaboration, encouraging your team to leverage and appreciate each other’s strengths in casual settings. By working towards a common goal, your staff can find common ground and learn from each other.

This shared experience helps enhance teamwork and fosters an environment where everyone is valued and heard.

Listen to Your Employees Attentively

Multi-generational team management isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. However, it can be as simple as attentive listening. After all, most employees prefer management that listens and is open to feedback. The more you listen, the more you can bridge generational gaps by making everyone feel heard and included.

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Engagedly’s Team Pulse: Get Real-Time Updates

Fostering a thriving organizational culture and retaining top talent hinges on deep employee engagement. An engaged and content workforce consistently yields positive outcomes. Therefore, regular assessments of employee satisfaction are crucial. Mere observation of employees’ work is often insufficient; hence, it becomes imperative for managers to establish enduring connections by actively engaging with their teams. Tools like Team Pulse, designed for effective listening, prove invaluable in such scenarios.

Team Pulse enables strategic planning for team growth by delving into the sentiments of the workforce regarding various organizational facets. It facilitates tracking their perceptions of duties, work schedules, flexibility, management, and career progression. Utilizing Team Pulse empowers managers to identify potential productivity obstacles and issues promptly, allowing for swift corrective actions.

What is Team Pulse?

Team Pulse stands as a vital listening tool for managers, offering real-time responses from teams to swiftly identify and address any obstacles hindering progress. This unique tool combines regular employee check-ins with a real-time employee engagement pulse.

Utilizing a set of thought-provoking questions, Team Pulse empowers managers and leaders to delve into their employees’ engagement levels effectively. Through a recurring set of questions at predefined intervals, valuable insights are gathered, enabling the identification and resolution of issues promptly.

Benefits of Using Team Pulse

Team Pulse updates provide vital employee insights, enabling firms to act swiftly and make informed decisions. This fosters an enhancement in the employer-employee relationship, cultivating a culture of trust and honesty. The responses gathered through pulse surveys identify employees’ sentiments and pulse, empowering management and leadership to make more informed and effective decisions. The key features of Team Pulse include:

Detailed Real-Time Insights

Team Pulse on the Engagedly mobile app can help you deploy weekly pulse surveys that will help you understand your employees’ thoughts and feelings. The Team Pulse survey is deployed on a regular frequency and enables employees to voice their views, opinions, and thoughts. The questions can be anything regarding their roles, communication, relationships, or work environment. As a result, you, as a manager, can learn how your coworkers feel about their work, enabling you to improve gray areas and faulty initiatives. By doing so, you can gain detailed and precise insights.

Also, you can effectively target your responses by determining the degree to which issues are “organization-specific” or “team-specific.” This real-time perception results in higher organizational performance and increased ROI.

Also read: Engagedly + Meta: Elevating Rewards and Recognition

Helps Identify Problems

Team Pulse provides real-time engagement data, usable insights, and early warning signs of disengagement. Team Pulse assists managers in making informed decisions by proactively identifying issues, encouraging regular conversations, and offering insights into team sentiments.

Team Pulse also empowers employees by giving them a forum to express their issues, communicate with supervisors, and feel appreciated and heard. It encourages participation, fulfillment, and positive transformation.

Provides Honest Feedback

With Team Pulse, employees can give open or anonymous feedback and express their feelings without fear of repercussions. The system establishes a culture of positive organizational feedback by ensuring managers listen to and act on feedback accordingly. Therefore, Team Pulse is the ideal place to offer secure, honest, and confidential feedback, whether you’re an employee or a supervisor.

Lowers Employee Burnout

In contemporary work environments, burnout is a prevalent issue impacting both employees and employers alike. Team Pulse serves as a valuable tool in gauging employees’ sentiments and emotions through thought-provoking, nudge-based questions. This approach enables you to identify when someone is facing challenges, offering the opportunity to provide the necessary support for them to regain their footing. By fostering an environment where employees can freely express themselves without fear of consequences or criticism, Team Pulse plays a pivotal role in mitigating employee burnout.

Also read: Engagedly’s Social Flow of Work | Streamline Communication

Team Pulse is Now Accessible in the Mobile App!

Team Pulse, available on the mobile app, facilitates seamless interaction, sharing, and evaluation of sentiments, providing a comprehensive overview of the organizational pulse for managers, admins, and employees. All the essential tools you need are conveniently at your fingertips, eliminating the restriction of updates to laptops or PCs.

Take Control, Anywhere, Anytime

Team Pulse empowers your employees to effortlessly share work updates directly from their smartphones. Managers and administrators can seamlessly read comments and review Team Pulse responses directly through the app. Harness the convenience of your smartphone to stay connected and engaged in the moment effortlessly. With Team Pulse on the mobile app, access real-time reports through dashboards with just a simple click.

Drive Success Effortlessly

In the modern workplace, organizations and managers rely on listening tools to capture valuable perspectives and feedback from employees. These tools help identify crucial concerns, support relevant projects, and facilitate informed decision-making. With a simple tap on your mobile app, you can offer timely feedback, lead your team towards success, and stay connected in real-time. Recognize and address issues as they arise, fostering a proactive approach. Encourage employees to contribute with enthusiasm by sharing honest comments, collaborating with peers and management, and actively engaging in the collective success of the organization.

Also read: Engagedly’s GrowthHub – IDP Module: Achieve Employee Growth

Your Voice, Your Impact

Team Pulse improves the likelihood of obtaining trustworthy and valuable insights. Team Pulse surveys are easily accessible to employees via the mobile app, allowing them to respond and express their ideas conveniently with just one click, anytime and anywhere.

Boost Engagement to Activate Success

As a team leader, a deeper understanding of the dynamics and perceptions shaping your team’s success can expedite your effectiveness. Evaluate key performance variables that influence your team’s achievements. Utilize Team Pulse on the Engagedly mobile app to enhance engagement and facilitate your team in achieving greater success.

Managers can develop initiatives to address common concerns and problems by comprehending employees’ sentiments on various aspects. This practice contributes to a positive work environment, as employees appreciate an organization that values their feedback and takes constructive actions to address their concerns.

Also read: Engagedly Launches Growth Hub to Empower Career Development with Marissa AI

Engagedly Team Pulse Features

Engagedly’s Team Pulse stands out for its adaptability and agility across various dimensions. This dynamic tool facilitates continuous real-time employee engagement, fostering regular and seamless interactions among team members and enabling early detection of problems, issues, and challenges. Team Pulse goes beyond that by offering the capability to measure the impact of your engagement initiatives in real-time, incorporating survey questions such as eNPS for a comprehensive assessment of engagement levels. The question behavior effect feature further unlocks actionable insights to enhance and sustain engagement levels.

Key features of Team Pulse on the Engagedly mobile app include:

Admin Capabilities: Admins can create questions, add them to the organization’s question bank, and pin inquiries.
Anonymous Feedback: Managers can effortlessly gather anonymous feedback using Team Pulse, ensuring a quick and easy process.
Inquiry Management: The tool efficiently manages inquiries from employees directed to Team Pulse.
Response History Access: Users can easily pull up the response history for a comprehensive view.
Detailed Dashboard: The platform provides a detailed dashboard with insights, offering a centralized view of engagement metrics.
Extensive Reports: Engagedly’s Team Pulse offers extensive reports that delve into sentiments and engagement levels, providing a thorough understanding of actionable improvements.

Engagedly Team Pulse Tool for All

Team Pulse wields a potent, transformative influence on businesses. Leveraging proven frameworks, it systematically identifies and encourages behavioral changes across all facets of an organization. With Engagedly’s Team Pulse, your company gains the ability to capture feedback from employees at every career stage, spanning from onboarding to offboarding. This tool offers direct insights from your workforce, enabling prompt action and informed decision-making to propel the expansion of your business.

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Unlock the Power of Productivity with Salesforce + Engagedly

“People with goals succeed because they know where they are going.”

These insightful words from renowned author and speaker Earl Nightingale underscore the profound significance of goal-setting and management in fostering both individual and organizational growth. Goal setting serves as a cornerstone for employees’ career development and job satisfaction, directing their focus towards clear objectives and delineating the path to achieving them, ultimately benefiting the organization.

Numerous analyses support the positive impact of goal-setting on employee productivity. Furthermore, extensive research highlights the substantial influence of goal-setting and management on employee satisfaction and performance.

The evidence is compelling: motivated employees striving toward specific goals become more productive contributors to the organization’s success. The art of effective goal-setting not only inspires and encourages but also propels personnel toward greater accomplishments, thereby driving overall organizational performance.

Boost Productivity with Salesforce + Engagedly Goals 2.0

The process of goal-setting needs thoughtful analysis. Employees are always keen to know how their contribution adds value to organizational objectives and personal growth. Hence, setting up the right employee goals enables managers to define this connection between employees and the organization clearly.

However, even when goals are set and developed, challenges often arise due to a lack of proper communication and an inability to adapt to changing circumstances. This is precisely where a robust goal-setting tool becomes essential.

To address these challenges effectively, leverage the power of Salesforce and Engagedly. This dynamic combination allows you to concurrently run multiple goal allocation processes. Furthermore, you can access a highly configurable workflow that can be tailored to meet the evolving needs of your company. By integrating these powerful tools, you enhance the overall flow of the goal-setting process, ensuring alignment with organizational goals and fostering individual growth.

Engagedly with Salesforce: Fuel Business Performance with Efficient Goal-Setting

The integration of Engagedly with Salesforce enables users to seamlessly link their Salesforce reports to Engagedly’s Goals 2.0. This method saves time and eliminates the risk of errors associated with manual goal updating.

Integration of Salesforce and Engagedly can help businesses set goals to boost their team’s performance. It allows team members and managers to stay on top of any updates or changes in the Salesforce report, as it will automatically reflect on Goals 2.0. By integrating Salesforce reports into Engagedly’s Goals 2.0, managers can dive deep into the productivity of every employee. This synergy between data and action sets a new efficiency standard, boosting individual and organizational performance.

With features like timelines, calendars, and progress views, team members can easily track the status of tasks and projects, promoting transparent communication. Additionally, the platform enables goal management by allowing users to set objectives and Key Results (OKRs) at both team and individual levels.

Engagedly Goals 2.0 + Salesforce Integration: Key Features and Benefits

Effective Goal Alignment

Everyone in an organization must be on the same page to effectively align goals across teams and departments. Constant communication between the managers and the employees is key to succeeding in this area. Engagedly with Salesforce facilitates efficient goal tracking and reporting capabilities. It enables businesses to measure their team’s progress in real time and adjust strategies as needed, ensuring goals are consistently met.

The integration of Salesforce and Engagedly allows managers to align goals through the following three steps:

Set OKRs and monitor progress in real-time
Give feedback on goals
Gamification of accomplished goals with rewards and recognition programs
Seamless Integration

Enagedly’s Goals and Salesforce integration allow effortless management of goals on a single platform. Businesses can easily link Salesforce reports to Engagedly’s Goals 2.0. Any updates or changes in the Salesforce report will directly reflect on Goals 2.0.

Deep Insights into the Team’s Productivity

Businesses can better understand employees’ productivity data by integrating Salesforce reports into Engagedly’s Goals 2.0. The integrated platform allows businesses to collect big data, derive valuable insights, and put it to work for the organization. The advanced data analytics capabilities of the platform help businesses make informed decisions about employee goal orientation, significant roadblocks in attaining individual goals, specific training programs to offer to employees, etc.

Increased Employee Engagement

Businesses integrating Engagedly with Salesforce boost employee engagement by offering employees a tailored experience. The robust platform helps businesses build a 360-degree view of employees to track their goals, progress, milestones, etc. This information helps businesses create relevant career advancement programs for each employee to ensure maximum engagement.

Streamlined Communication

Within every business, diverse departments like IT, sales, operations, and customer support operate independently. By leveraging Salesforce and Engagedly’s Goals 2.0, businesses can seamlessly enhance communication and collaboration, effectively bridging the gap between these various departments. Moreover, the integration of real-time analytics empowers businesses to monitor the progress of cross-functional teams, enabling the identification of areas for improvement and ultimately boosting the overall productivity and efficiency of these teams.

Intuitive UI for a Seamless User Experience

Goals 2.0 showcases one of the most interactive and intuitive interfaces, incorporating detailed graphics and visuals that provide a quick and insightful analysis of data. Whether on laptops or mobile phones, the platform ensures ease of use, allowing users to effortlessly navigate through core information and functions.

The simplicity of the user interface in Goals 2.0 makes the creation and viewing of various goals a straightforward process. By actively monitoring and tracking progress, both individuals and teams can enhance their productivity levels.

All the Major Metrics in One Place

Salesforce + Engagedly presents an extensive dashboard consolidating crucial metrics into one convenient location. The Goals 2.0 dashboard ensures swift access to project data, facilitating effective management and organization of project objectives and activities. Project managers gain the flexibility to customize processes, aligning them precisely with project goals.

Furthermore, the integration of Salesforce with Engagedly centralizes employee data, enhancing decision-making efficiency for businesses.

Additionally, the milestone propagation feature in Goals 2.0 simplifies goal management complexities across diverse business units, departments, team members, and individuals. This holistic perspective fosters clarity and purpose, elevating organizational efforts.

Accurate Forecasting

As a leading performance management and employee engagement solution provider, Engagedly realizes the importance of driving greater long-term revenue and sustainable growth. Hence, integrating Salesforce with Engagedly Goals 2.0 offers an ideal solution to facilitate comprehensive and scalable forecasting powered by automation and predictive AI. The integrated platform allows businesses to drive goals, track real-time progress, and develop flexible forecasts for an agile business environment.

Conclusion

By seamlessly integrating Engagedly with Salesforce, businesses can streamline their goal management processes, automate tasks, and consolidate crucial data, gaining access to real-time information. This integration facilitates swift intervention by alerting relevant team members to any delays or issues hindering the accomplishment of individual goals.

Through the power of automation and insightful analysis, businesses can effortlessly oversee and optimize all facets of performance management. The synergy of Salesforce and Engagedly ensures that businesses prioritize high-quality work, fostering sustainable growth and enabling the achievement of their objectives.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Salesforce integration enhance the efficiency of a goal management process?

Through the integration of Goals 2.0 with Salesforce, businesses can establish a seamless system for defining objectives, monitoring performance, and enhancing communication between managers and employees. This integration empowers managers to deliver consistent feedback to employees while gaining access to analytics specifically tailored to meet the organization’s performance management requirements.

How does a goal management tool improve business productivity?

Leveraging the synergy between Salesforce and Engagedly Goals 2.0 can significantly streamline labor-intensive business operations, enabling employees to channel their efforts towards revenue generation. This dynamic collaboration empowers businesses by providing comprehensive insights into individual employee performance. It identifies areas requiring attention and strategically determines training initiatives that can enhance staff capabilities, ultimately contributing to overall business success.

What are some other tools to improve the productivity of an organization?

Automation tools, like Engagedly’s MarissaAI, leverage contextual AI to boost communication and leadership. Marissa facilitates constructive feedback, recognition, and insights, enhancing employee engagement and retention for thriving businesses.

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Essential Time-Management Hacks for Today’s Professionals

Did you know that only 20% of people feel that they have their workload under control daily?

Let’s begin by imagining A Day in the Life of a busy professional.

Wake up in the morning and check the day’s to-do list, only to realize that there is a lot more to do than there are hours in a day.

Sounds relatable? That’s where effective time management comes into play!

Gone are the days when multitasking used to be one of the highly desirable employee skills. Today, multitasking is viewed as prioritizing quantity over quality. And that doesn’t work in the professional world.

To avoid delivering substandard results, there is a need to learn to utilize the time you have to its maximum potential. That is why time management has emerged as a critical life skill to have.

By managing your time instead of letting it manage you, you can ensure higher productivity and quality, impacting your professional reputation. And who knows, you might even reclaim those lost hours for some well-deserved ‘me time.’

Here, we will discuss the top seven time management hacks that will enable you to efficiently use the time you have and boost productivity.

1. Prioritization and Goal Setting

It is easy to feel stressed in a demanding world where to-do lists seem to only get longer and juggling tasks feel like an uncalled-for adventure. The good thing is that not all tasks are created equal. Some are always more important than others. Prioritizing those high-importance tasks is a vital strategy that boosts productivity.

Once you have established your daily work goals, you must categorize them, ranking them in order of priority. Start the morning by working on the most important task before getting derailed by emails and other menial tasks.

You can leverage the project matrix tool created by Steven Covey to identify the tasks you can delegate. The method helps to determine what’s urgent, important, neither, or both (as shown in the image below).

2. Time Blocking and Scheduling

Another effective time management strategy is time blocking, i.e. planning out every part of your day in advance. Essentially, it involves breaking your entire work week into small, bite-sized time slots where you work on projects, check your emails, and even take a break.

To most, this technique may sound like turning your calendar into a completely frenzied mess. However, it can have the opposite effect. The technique not only provides a better sense of where your time is going, but also promotes focus.

It enables professionals to focus all their energies on a single task at a time, which can boost productivity by up to 80%. Brilliant, isn’t it?

3. Delegation and Outsourcing

Despite wanting to do it all, understand that this is impossible. So don’t be apprehensive about distributing tasks among your team members to ease your workload and boost overall efficiency.

Start by evaluating your strengths and weaknesses. Focus on the tasks that align with your expertise and consider delegating those that fall outside your core competencies.

For instance, say you are working on a marketing campaign for a mattress company like Each night. If the intricacies of video marketing strategies aren’t your forte, take the opportunity to delegate or outsource this aspect. This strategic move allows you to concentrate on your strengths, such as crafting compelling content tailored to the brand.

4. Minimizing Distractions

Browsing through social media, chatting with co-workers, text messages, instant messaging–distractions at work are endless. And these distractions significantly reduce productivity. A survey results on Statista reveal that 80% of workers agree that chatting with colleagues is the leading cause of procrastination at work.

Shut your doors to distractions by being more proactive. This involves taking steps like–closing all tabs except the ones you are currently working on, turning off notifications, leaving your calls for lunchtime, etc. One of the best ways to go about this is to identify your top two distractions and focus on eliminating those for two weeks.

5. Technology Tools and Apps

Enlist technology assistance wherever possible. There is a plethora of useful apps out there that can help you take charge of your day, week, and month. These apps, when used appropriately, can help you stay on top of your progress and maximize efficiency.

For instance, there are time-tracking tools that give you an accurate idea of how you are spending your time. Additionally, some text-to-speech readers enable users to save valuable time by swiftly converting text files into spoken words. Once you know your requirements, you can easily choose from the many tools available online.

Let’s look at some of the most notable tools/apps you can consider using:

Notion: Notion offers a comprehensive platform that combines several productivity apps. You can use the app to streamline various tasks, such as project management, note-taking, to-do lists, and more.
Serene: Distractions are one of the biggest time wasters. Serene drastically boosts productivity by blocking all distractions and improving focus through regular timers and breaks.
Focus@Will: This is another incredible app that combines music and neuroscience to boost focus and subsequent productivity. It also helps to manage your ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder).

6. Batching and Time Efficiency

Batching is a highly effective time management technique that lets you get more things done in less time. The technique involves grouping similar tasks so you can work on them at the same time rather than approaching them sporadically throughout the day.

For instance, responding to your emails, replying to social media messages, editing a work, video, etc. These are all menial tasks that you can do in a single sitting. Complete them all together so you can eliminate them from the rest of your day.

Creating small batches of work helps, as it makes it easier to focus and manage your goals. You don’t have to constantly switch gears. Science has shown that every time an individual shifts to a new task, there is a ‘retooling’ process that occurs. And this takes a lot more time than one anticipates.

7. Taking Regular Breaks

This may sound counterintuitive, but taking regular breaks in between tasks is crucial for better time management.

A report by Michigan State University stresses the unparalleled importance of taking regular breaks to boost productivity, mental well-being, and decision-making. It also claims that skipping breaks can result in more stress and faster burnout.

High levels of stress impact energy, cognition, and engagement at work. Therefore, by working fewer (by taking more breaks), you can achieve more in less time.

Make small breaks a part of your schedule. Ensure these breaks are spread throughout your day, giving you enough time to relax and rejuvenate.

Conclusion

Mastering the skill of time management stands as a cornerstone of success. Luckily, there is always room for improvement for effective time management.

Follow the aforementioned tips to get the maximum things done in the shortest possible time frame. Also, make sure to include certain time management or productivity apps in your routine for the best outcome.

Remember, the journey to effective time management is a continuous evolution, and each refined step brings you closer to achieving your goals efficiently.

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Engagedly’s Recurrence for Survey Assignments

The process of designing a questionnaire involves multiple stages, demanding simultaneous attention to various details. Among these stages, the development of survey questions stands out as the most crucial step, as it effectively assesses the public’s attitudes, experiences, and actions.

Surveys serve as valuable tools for gathering authentic data in business settings. They offer a strategic approach to understanding people’s preferences, interests, opinions, and beliefs. However, the routine creation and distribution of surveys can be a demanding task. Enter Engagedly’s innovative solution – the recurrence feature for survey assignments, designed to alleviate HR and managers from the burden of this laborious work. Explore the advantages, solutions, and more related to the recurrence feature for survey assignments.

What is the Recurrence for Survey Assignments?

The recurrence feature streamlines the process of regularly sharing the same survey, enabling consistent data collection over an extended period. Participants engaging in recurring surveys respond to a standardized set of questions repeatedly. Over time, their evolving responses to these questions provide management with valuable insights and patterns. Recurring surveys are versatile and suitable for both internal surveys within a corporation and open-ended surveys seeking descriptive responses.

Setting up a recurrence is a straightforward way to schedule the same survey for a consistent group, whether daily, weekly, quarterly, or on specific days, like the first Monday of each month. By configuring recurrence surveys just once, you ensure automated surveys are dispatched punctually, proving far more efficient than manual distribution and collection each time.

For seamless business operations and insightful data analysis, utilizing recurring surveys with the same questionnaire or template is a strategic and beneficial approach, particularly when comparing participants’ responses to the same question at different points in time.

Why are Recurrence Surveys Used?

Recurring surveys are frequently used to gather or track employee progress, engagement, and experience, or evaluate the effectiveness of product features. Some benefits of using recurrence surveys are as follows:

Saves Time

Leverage the survey recurrence feature to effortlessly automate the deployment of recurring surveys. This eliminates the manual effort required for deployment each time. Whether it’s weekly progress updates or monthly assessments of engagement levels, setting up recurrences allows automation to seamlessly handle the survey deployment process.

The manual deployment of surveys can be both tedious and time-consuming. By utilizing the survey recurrence feature, organizations can streamline this process, saving valuable time and resources.

Reduces Errors

HR professionals often find themselves loaded with various responsibilities, making it challenging to focus on operational tasks. While these tasks may not be intentionally neglected, the repercussions of not executing them can be significant. For instance, if a weekly survey is not deployed on time, the data for that particular week will be missed, resulting in process inconsistency.

The recurrence feature for survey assignments allows HR professionals to set up recurring surveys, automating the process and ensuring the seamless deployment of tasks on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, ensuring consistency and efficiency in the process.

Also read: Employee Engagement Surveys| Questions| Templates| Process

Recurrence for Survey Assignments – Features

Streamlining your survey process becomes more efficient when you schedule and automate them in advance, especially for regular intervals such as monthly, quarterly, or annually. Recurring surveys offer a seamless way to accumulate data over time, featuring:

Automated Deployment: Save time and reduce operational redundancy by automating the deployment of surveys.
Employee Empowerment: The recurrence feature empowers employees to effortlessly create and manage survey assignments.
Flexible Survey Creation: Tailor surveys to your organization’s needs using two options—start from scratch or choose from a template collection provided by the tool.
Digital Records: Survey records are securely stored digitally indefinitely, allowing for analysis whenever needed, without the risk of data loss.
Data Security: The platform ensures the security and protection of survey data, fostering an environment where employees can confidently fill out forms without concerns about data theft.

Also read: Engagedly + Meta: Elevating Rewards and Recognition

How does Engagedly’s Recurrence for Survey Assignments Work?

Set It Up Easily

Setting up and utilizing Engagedly’s recurrence feature for survey assignments is straightforward and user-friendly. Easily implement automated recurring surveys for various purposes, such as weekly team evaluations, monthly activity assessments, or even fun polls to decide on the next team game. Once configured, seamlessly collect data over time. Save time and effort by configuring all your recurring surveys at once with the convenient recurring surveys option!

Also read: MS Teams Integration with Engagedly

Create a Custom Schedule

Select the survey you wish to deploy and specify the frequency of its recurrence—whether daily, weekly, monthly, or on a custom date or day. This ensures precise deployment at the optimal times for employees to complete them.

With a custom schedule, you have visibility into the number of times the recurring survey has taken place and the times you want it scheduled. Set the schedule according to your preferences, and Engagedly will seamlessly manage the rest.

Embrace the Power of Recurrence

Ease the burden of juggling multiple surveys and meeting deadlines by leveraging the advantages of recurrence. With a user-friendly interface, streamline survey deployment and empower yourself to navigate the entire process effortlessly, making it remarkably smoother.

Use Engagedly for Deploying Recurring Surveys

Recurrence makes it possible to send surveys regularly. Now, you don’t have to repeat the mundane task of creating surveys manually. Recurrence for Survey Assignments is key to a smooth and stress-free survey deployment! It helps you maintain consistency, monitor real-time updates, and collect insights and data.

Frequently Asked Questions

How is a survey recurrence feature useful in an organization?

Utilizing the recurrence feature for surveys empowers managers and leaders to automate survey deployment regularly. The valuable insights gleaned from these surveys provide managers with a deeper understanding of employee engagement levels, performance metrics, or specific activities, enabling them to make well-informed decisions based on real-time data.

Why set up a recurrence for surveys?

Utilizing survey recurrence simplifies the process of identifying patterns and tracking progress over time by consistently administering the same survey. This practice facilitates the monitoring of engagement, productivity, and other data trends, providing enhanced insights. Additionally, recurrence surveys contribute to time savings by eliminating the need for repetitive manual entry of survey questions.

Is it complicated to set up a recurrence survey?

Setting up recurrences for surveys is easy with Engagedly. To set it up, you must:

Navigate to the survey module
Select the survey assignment you want to set up recurrence for
Configure the settings like – frequency, schedule, etc.
Finish up and save the configuration. And that’s it; you’re all done.

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Stay on Top of Your Goals with the Flow of Work

Goal setting is crucial for clarifying direction and assessing organizational progress. Organizations that set clear and realistic goals can more effectively guide their performance and evaluate their outcomes. Goal management is important for organizational growth. However, it is equally vital to establish these goals and actively strive to achieve them.

Research supports that when specific, attainable, measurable, and time-sensitive goals (SMART goals) are set with clearly defined expected outcomes, the overall performance of an organization goes up several notches. Additionally, setting clear goals helps employees work toward fulfilling management expectations and reaping the results, leading to higher employee satisfaction and retention.

Goal Management in the Flow of Work

Navigating the process of setting and pursuing goals can prove to be exceptionally challenging, especially in the face of evolving circumstances. Market conditions may undergo fluctuations, customer expectations might shift, and unforeseen opportunities may emerge, rendering initially established goals obsolete. However, falling short of a goal doesn’t equate to failure in your overall work.

In such instances, it becomes crucial to reassess the feasibility of your goals and make necessary adjustments, realigning your plans and processes with a more relevant direction. According to research by Gartner, aligning employee goals with organizational objectives can elevate performance by nearly 22%.

Regardless of the size or structure of an enterprise, goal setting demands dedicated time and meticulous planning. Moreover, even with well-defined goals, a lack of effective communication and an inability to adapt to changing circumstances often derail the entire process. Hence, leveraging robust goal management software that facilitates efficient goal management within the workflow becomes imperative, aiding businesses and individuals in maintaining direction and avoiding goal misalignments.

Research from May 2021 underscores that employees with clearly defined goals are 14.2 times more likely to be engaged at work. Establishing clear, measurable, and quantifiable goals and consistently monitoring their progress empowers organizations to motivate and inspire their workforce. This, in turn, propels personal development within the team and contributes significantly to the overall growth of the firm.

Engagedly’s Goals 2.0: Supercharge Employee Performance

Engagedly’s Goals 2.0 is an effective solution to manage employees’ goals and track performance. The software assists you in identifying your long-term goals and breaking them down into milestones, or KPIs. It also enables organizations to have a smooth flow of work. The powerful goal-setting software offers an organized method for establishing and monitoring goals.

Goals 2.0: Key Features and Benefits

Effective Goal Alignment

To ensure effective goal alignment across the organization, all teams must be synchronized and collaboratively working towards overarching objectives. Constant communication between managers and their teams is key. Engagedly’s Goals 2.0 is designed to facilitate seamless coordination and alignment of goals across teams, ensuring everyone is directed towards the same strategic objectives.

With Goals 2.0, managers can refine goals through multiple drafts, sharing them with stakeholders for proper alignment before publication. The platform guides managers through the alignment process with these key steps:

Define and Draft Overarching Goals: Clearly articulate and draft high-level organizational goals.
Precise KPIs or Milestones with Marissa AI: Leverage Marissa AI to create specific Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) or milestones for a more detailed and measurable approach.
Review and Track Progress: Monitor progress systematically, allowing for ongoing assessment and adjustments.
Collaborate and Provide Real-time Feedback: Foster collaboration and immediate feedback loops to enhance goal execution and adaptability.

Transparent communication is pivotal for building trust among teams and employees. Goals 2.0 ensures transparency in goals and their progress. The platform provides a space for employees to comment and pose questions within the goals module, promoting a collaborative environment and enhancing overall clarity.

Easy to Integrate

Goals 2.0 offers best-in-segment integrations to optimize efficiency. Goals 2.0 effortlessly integrates with platforms like Salesforce, JIRA, and Google Sheets. This helps manage and track progress while reducing errors and data redundancy. This enables employees to work without wasting time chasing down reports, and managers or decision-makers get instant insights at any time!

Intuitive Interface for a Seamless User Experience

Goals 2.0 presents a highly interactive and user-friendly interface, featuring detailed graphics and visuals that efficiently convey information and insights. This design facilitates easy data analysis and understanding. The platform offers a straightforward user experience, allowing users to navigate core information and functions seamlessly across various devices, including laptops and mobile phones.

Easy Milestone Tracking

Setting and tracking milestones is pivotal to propelling an organization’s performance. A survey found that 98% of employees feel performance evaluation and milestone tracking are crucial for driving motivation. With Engagedly’s Goals 2.0, you can set and define milestones to help measure progress, align your team, and communicate the value of efforts to stakeholders.

Aligned and Contributing Goals

Aligned goals are those directly tied to organizational objectives while contributing goals play a supportive role to another goal or a set of goals. Both aligned and contributing goals play integral roles in driving organizational success. Through Goals 2.0, these goals can be interconnected, allowing employees to collaborate on them seamlessly. This integration not only promotes synergy but also mitigates the risk of goal overlapping and duplication of work.

Enhanced Collaboration

With Goals 2.0, employees can collaborate effortlessly. They can connect with colleagues or managers anytime within the goals module and request assistance. The simple tagging feature in the goal-setting software allows employees to tag the person they need help from, facilitating direct communication and providing access to necessary guidance and resources.

Overview of Organizational Goal

In a diverse workplace with numerous employees and teams involved in various projects, monitoring each project and individual performance can be a complex task. Inefficient progress tracking may result in the misalignment of team goals and potential conflicts if not effectively managed.

The Goals 2.0 milestone propagation feature provides organizations with the capability to easily observe the goals of every business unit, department, team member, and individual in one consolidated view. This holistic perspective adds clarity and purpose to the overall efforts of the organization.

Also Read: Can AI Reduce Discrimination in the Recruitment Process?

Handling Recurring Goals

Repeating short-term goals, whether on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, can be essential milestones that remain unchanged across goal cycles. However, manually entering these repetitive goals at the outset of each cycle can be time-consuming. Engagedly’s Goals 2.0 streamlines this process by facilitating the import and replication of goals, effectively saving time and effort.

With Goals 2.0, managers have the convenience of seamlessly transferring recurring goals stored in Excel sheets into the system, eliminating the need to start from scratch. After importing, they can make necessary modifications and publish the goals as required, allowing Goals 2.0 to manage the subsequent steps.

Unified Dashboard Experience

Goals 2.0 provides a comprehensive dashboard that consolidates insights and metrics in a single location. Gain swift access to all project data, enabling efficient management and organization of project objectives and activities. The Goals 2.0 dashboard offers a complete timeline and calendar display, providing real-time insights into project status and essential information. This tool empowers CXOs and managers to stay informed about progress and comprehend the overall organizational efforts.

Engagedly’s Goals 2.0 for All

Goals play a pivotal role in shaping the organizational workflow. By establishing employee goals, businesses can articulate expectations and enable teams to comprehend the broader impact of these objectives. Engagedly’s Goals 2.0 stands out as an all-encompassing platform service accessible to entrepreneurs, small businesses, and large enterprises alike. With its user-friendly interface, it facilitates seamless management of goal-setting, progress monitoring, and the cultivation of collaborative teamwork.

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Engagedly’s Marissa AI now Generates Impactful Summaries and Descriptions

In the fast-paced and ever-evolving business landscape, businesses prioritize employee engagement and performance management to achieve organizational goals. They constantly search for progressive solutions to enhance productivity, motivation, and achievements. In this realm, Engagedly’s AI-enablement coach, Marissa AI, is here to revolutionize HR management. It leverages modern technology and delivers solutions to elevate engagement and experience for your workforce.

Marissa AI can comprehend one-of-a-kind contexts and is going beyond simple, generic summaries. The summaries generated through this platform aren’t collections of random sentences but are coherent and concise points of the unique prompts. Moreover, it can additionally generate descriptions for a range of applications, including feedback, praise, learning course descriptions, job descriptions, and much more.

So, if you want to revolutionize your employee engagement and overall performance management techniques, Marissa AI is the solution you have been waiting for.

Also read: Qualities of a Good Manager: 10 Important Skills You Need

Functions of Marissa AI

The following are the key functions of Marissa AI, encompassing accurate and effective high-quality content:

Survey Insights

Conducting surveys is common among businesses to accumulate insights from their employees and customers. However, analyzing and summarizing survey responses is difficult. This is where Marissa AI’s summarization simplifies the extraction process responses for HR professionals and managers. The AI platform identifies the responses’ key concerns, sentiments, and patterns to summarize the findings comprehensively. All you have to do is:

Collect responses for your surveys through the platform, e-mail, or social module.
Click on the ‘Summarize’ button, and wait for Marissa AI to generate summaries in a few seconds.
Present the information in a visually appealing format after Marissa AI’s summarization to stakeholders.

The advanced algorithms can discover correlations and relationships, presenting a more profound result of participants’ responses.

IDP Descriptions

Do you want to help to craft employees’ Individual Development Plan (IDP) descriptions? IDP is a crucial tool for the improvement and growth of employees in the company. It includes goal-setting, progress tracking, and initiatives to upskill the employees’ talents and knowledge. Marissa AI takes the guesswork out of crafting IDP descriptions by generating impactful descriptions and milestones.

The descriptions generated use persuasive language and storytelling techniques to inspire employees. Moreover, it creates simple descriptions, suggests modifications to the IDP based on dynamic information, and enables unlimited recommendations.

Survey Description

Survey descriptions communicate the motive of the survey and its importance to the audience. They are short introductions for participants to understand what the survey is about. A nicely written survey description motivates participants to complete their survey. Marissa AI helps generate survey descriptions with just a few prompts. The generated description is clear, concise, and engaging enough to capture the employee’s attention. Here’s how to leverage this feature:

Input the prompts that are relevant to the survey that you want to launch.
Marissa AI will generate survey descriptions based on the prompts entered. You can regenerate the description if required.
HR professionals can upload precise instructions, mention any incentives for participation, or provide any extra details to motivate the contributors.
Marissa AI provides real-time recommendations and suggestions for the description.

Course Descriptions

Companies invest in training courses ranging from onboarding to re-training, upskilling, and other technical training for their employees. It helps employees gain knowledge and excel in their roles. Onboarding courses familiarize new employees with the company’s culture, policies, and procedures. On the other hand, re-training courses upgrade employee skills and knowledge during changes in technology, processes, or industry standards. Upskilling courses improve the organization’s value, from leadership development to technical skills.

Engagedly’s Marissa AI makes it easier for HR professionals to generate engaging course descriptions. This helps employees get an overview of the course and also helps them understand the impact the course will have on their growth. These descriptions help employees make informed decisions about their career and development goals. Moreover, Marissa AI helps managers and HR professionals communicate the courses to their employees for better engagement and participation.

Job Titles and Descriptions

Marissa AI is transforming creating job titles and descriptions by excelling at crafting detailed and engaging job descriptions. These descriptions include bullet points and buzzwords and provide an overview of the company culture, values, missions, roles, and responsibilities using storytelling techniques and customized narratives.

Engagedly recognizes the importance of providing accurate and fresh information about job titles and descriptions to applicants. It believes that finding the right balance between creativity and clarity can help companies attract talented candidates.

Also read: How HR Helps Performance Review Calibration and Standardization

How Does Marissa AI Work?

Marissa AI uses natural language processing (NLP) and machine learning techniques to research and interpret performance statistics. These underlying technologies and algorithms extract valuable insights from employee self-assessments, supervisor’s remarks, and peer feedback. The AI can understand and interpret unstructured facts, along with open-ended comments. The advanced NLP algorithms recognize those remarks’ sentiment, context, and issues.

Marissa AI lets users define inputs and prompts to align with the organization’s requirements.
It then processes the prompts using the SBI (Situation Behaviour Impact) framework to generate content that is in line with the expectations of the user.
Marissa AI can generate descriptions and summaries and also fetch information from saved resources based on the prompts.

Also read: 5 Ways How Effective HR Management Helps Business Growth

Importance of Marissa AI

Businesses always look for different ways to streamline their content creation process. Marissa AI, as a powerful tool, generates engaging and accurate descriptions or summaries to ease the work of HR management. Here are the key benefits:

Saves Time and Effort

Crafting summaries or descriptions can be a time-consuming task for HR professionals, especially when dealing with a large volume of information. Marissa AI, integrated with Engagedly, offers a solution by automating this process, enabling HR teams to concentrate on essential operational tasks. The system efficiently generates clear and concise summaries by compiling relevant information. This allows HR to focus on developing interviewing strategies for top candidates and enhancing employee benefits programs.

Accuracy and Reliability

The AI platform ensures precision in content creation, capturing the essence of unique content. It leverages algorithms to safeguard content against human errors and enhance overall performance.

Also read: How HR and People Strategy Leaders are Responding to Pay Equity

Craft Great Content for Stakeholders with Engagedly’s Marissa AI

In conclusion, Marissa AI offers a valuable solution for content generation in various HR contexts. The platform’s ability to create summaries and descriptions enhances the productivity and performance of both individuals and organizations. Additionally, its user-friendly interface and advanced AI capabilities make it a promising tool that has the potential to revolutionize content creation and management.

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What Are the Best Strategies for a Manager to Boost their Sales Performance?

In 2024, having the right strategies to improve sales performance is crucial for driving business success, revenue growth, and profitability. In a competitive business environment, maintaining a high level of sales success is strategically imperative, as it determines your ability to attract new customers and retain current ones.

This blog provides sales managers with a comprehensive guide to enhancing sales representative performance in 2024. It covers effective strategies, proven best practices, and actionable steps to achieve outstanding results, with a focus on understanding, building, and managing high-performing sales teams.

Unlocking Sales Success Through Performance Management

Before diving into sales strategies, it is important to understand the role of performance management in achieving organizational success. A comprehensive understanding of performance measurement is crucial for thriving in the dynamic world of sales. Sales leaders can leverage this valuable tool to drive their teams toward exceeding sales goals.

Performance measurement equips sales professionals with the ability to set SMART sales objectives, which serve as a guide, ensuring that every effort aligns with broader business goals. These benchmarks allow sales managers to monitor progress, make data-driven decisions, and motivate their teams through performance-based rewards and incentives.

In today’s highly competitive landscape, attaining sales success requires a steadfast commitment to performance measurement, fostering a culture of excellence, and fueling revenue growth.

Sales Performance Metrics and KPIs

KPIs and sales metrics are two different ways to evaluate sales performance. KPIs are used to measure goals, while sales metrics are used to measure sales-related activities. KPIs and sales performance metrics can help you assess how to increase sales and analyze sales team performance. Here are a few examples:

Sales Growth Rate calculates the percentage increase in revenue from sales over a given period.
The Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) measures the cost of obtaining a new customer.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) calculates how much money a customer will bring into your company throughout the customer relationship.
Win Rate, expressed as a percentage, measures the number of deals your sales team closes in relation to deals created.
Average Deal Size measures the average value and revenue of each deal closed by your sales team.
Sales Cycle Length measures the duration a sales lead takes to become a customer.

Tracking metrics enables the identification of the team’s strengths and weaknesses, facilitating data-driven decisions to optimize sales processes.

Most Effective Strategies to Improve Sales Performance in 2024

Assessing Your Current State

The first step toward determining how to improve your sales performance is to assess your current situation.

You can gain insights into your sales processes’ strengths and weaknesses by evaluating them, allowing you to identify what’s working and what isn’t.
Analyzing your sales strategy is equally crucial, ensuring it remains aligned with ever-changing market dynamics.
Finally, reviewing sales activities and their effectiveness through a data-driven assessment of your team’s activities is vital.

This analysis helps you modify sales performance management decisions and drives better results.

Building an Effective Sales Team

The cornerstone of sales success lies in building effective, high-performing sales teams.

It is essential to recruit and hire top talent who can bring in the required skills to enhance your team’s performance. Retaining these professionals is equally vital.
Investing in continuous training to improve sales performance, sharpen their skills, and expand their capabilities is crucial to developing a high-performing sales team.
Structured guidance and mentorship through sales coaching and training programs are significant in ensuring your team is well-equipped to excel in sales.
Crafting a Winning Sales Strategy

Three critical things must be targeted to create an effective sales strategy:

Prioritize the essential elements of a good sales strategy first. This entails creating a detailed plan comprising positioning, segmentation, and targeting. This will help align your efforts with your target audience’s unique needs.
Remain adaptable by consistently adjusting your strategy to market changes. It demonstrates agility in response to evolving market dynamics and emerging trends.
Align your strategy with sales goals. By doing so, you will optimize overall performance and achieve the desired results.
Empowering Individual and Team Performance

When considering improving sales performance, managers must empower individuals and teams to pursue excellence.

Utilize the potential of data and analytics in monitoring and measuring sales performance, offering real-time insights and metrics to assess individual and team achievements.
Implement effective strategies like regular performance evaluations and coaching for setting and achieving sales goals. Also, managers must ensure that goals are aligned with specific methodologies for tracking and attaining them, thereby fostering success.
Remember that motivated and engaged team members are the foundation of a high-performing sales team. Concentrate on motivating and engaging team members, cultivating a dynamic work environment that fosters enthusiasm and dedication, resulting in exceptional sales performance.
Discovering Effective Sales Activities and Techniques

To achieve exceptional outcomes, managers must discover effective sales activities and techniques.

Some tactics that can guarantee success include determining and focusing on the right clientele, creating compelling sales proposals, utilizing effective closing techniques, and leveraging technology to optimize sales operations.
Further emphasis should be laid on reducing the sales cycle length to promptly convert leads into customers and ensure a smooth customer journey.
Mastering the skill of successfully closing deals is vital, as it not only finalizes the sale but also significantly enhances revenue, making it a critical component of top strategies to improve sales performance.
Assessing and refining sales plans regularly based on client feedback and market trends can assist in discovering avenues for improvement and boost total sales growth.

Tips and Tricks to Close Sales Deals Easily

Enhancing sales performance is a multifaceted challenge that demands a strategic approach for success. To elevate your sales outcomes, consider implementing the following tips:

Strategic Goal Setting:
- Prioritize annual goals and formulate a comprehensive plan to achieve them.
- Establish short-term priorities and develop actionable plans to drive success incrementally.
Optimized Timing:
- Analyze sales data to pinpoint the optimal moments for marketing your products or services.
- Identify weaknesses and create a targeted strategy to fortify those areas.
Proactive Follow-Up:
- Increase the likelihood of closing deals by adopting a proactive follow-up procedure with leads and prospects.
- Seek out high-potential customers in your existing database and present them with personalized offers.
Pipeline Management:
- Ensure a robust sales pipeline by effectively managing leads, nurturing potential customers, and guiding them through the sales process.
- Improve conversion rates through efficient lead management and nurturing strategies.
Continuous Training:
- Uphold sales excellence with an ongoing training program tailored to the team’s needs, fostering professional growth, and addressing challenges.
- Encourage continuous learning and development to enhance individual performance and nurture an innovative sales culture.
Stay Informed:
- Managers should stay abreast of the latest sales updates and incorporate both fundamental and advanced sales strategies into their approach.
Team Collaboration:
- Foster effective communication and teamwork within the sales team through regular meetings, shared dashboards, and the implementation of sales enablement tools.
Utilize Advanced Analytics:
- Leverage advanced tools and analytics to gather crucial data, track progress, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions for better outcomes.
Customer-Centric Approach:
- Understand and address the distinctive needs and pain points of your target audience to stay ahead of the competition.

Summing Up

In the dynamic sales industry, excellence is an ongoing journey. The strategies presented in this blog necessitate continuous adaptation, enhancement, and innovation. By 2024, businesses should embrace flexibility, data-driven approaches, and customer-centricity. Sales managers must implement effective strategies to boost sales performance and empower their teams to excel.

Frequently Asked Questions

What trends may have an impact on their sales strategies in 2024?

Sustainability, digital transformation, and remote work will likely impact organizations’ sales strategies in the coming year.

How can businesses ensure their salespeople have a work-life balance while still performing well?

Businesses can ensure salespeople have work-life balance by offering flexible schedules, realistic targets, encouraging breaks, providing support and training, utilizing remote work options, fostering a positive culture, and maintaining open communication. Prioritizing employee well-being contributes to sustained high performance.

What are the key characteristics of effective sales managers?

Effective sales managers exhibit strong leadership, communication, and motivational skills. They possess strategic thinking abilities to navigate dynamic market conditions and adapt sales strategies accordingly. These managers prioritize coaching and development, analyze sales data for informed decision-making, and maintain a results-oriented focus, consistently exceeding targets.

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What is a High Performance Culture and How to Create It?

Globally, businesses are facing significant challenges in recruiting and retaining talent. The unprecedented shifts in the business landscape, the changing needs of the modern workforce, and financial uncertainty have left organizations in a difficult position.

Traditional organizational cultures are struggling to provide an environment where employees can truly thrive and engage.

In today’s evolving work environment, company culture serves as the cornerstone of an organization, with the power to either stabilize or disrupt the entire setup. HR leaders must grasp the complexities of a progressive, high-performance culture and apply them wisely.

A genuine, supportive, trustworthy, reliable, and performance-oriented company culture is essential to addressing the demands of the contemporary workforce. Such a culture fosters effective team collaboration, reduces employee turnover, builds strong relationships, delivers higher returns on investment, and boosts productivity.

A report by Raj Shivagopal, a professor at Columbia Business School, found that company culture is essential for organizations to excel, with 90% of respondents saying that culture is important for their firms as it leads to higher productivity, performance, and ROI.

Even with all the research and data corroborating the impact of company culture on growth and profitability, it hasn’t received much attention from global leaders. While many organizations are looking for quick fixes, questions like, “Who is responsible for changing the culture?” and “How do you create a high-performance culture in an unpredictable business environment?” remain unanswered.

In this article, we will discuss the intricacies of high-performance culture and help you create a framework to cultivate it in your organization.

What is a High-Performance Culture?
Characteristics of a High-Performance Culture
What Are the Benefits of a High-Performance Culture
How to Cultivate a High-Performance Culture (High-Performance Culture Framework)
How Does Technology Support a High-Performance Culture?

What is a High-Performance Culture?

To set the high-performance culture definition straight, let’s break it down into two parts: organizational culture and high performance.

Company culture or organizational culture is the set of values, beliefs, attitudes, philosophies, and practices followed by organizations that guide the actions and behaviors of employees to execute their activities. A strong and positive culture has the potential to enhance the performance of employees by acting as the fabric that weaves everything together.

High performance refers to individuals, teams, or organizations as a whole that are highly focused on their goals and can achieve better results through a common vision, collaboration, skills, and resilience.

A high-performance culture empowers employees to excel beyond their roles, guided by shared values, beliefs, and philosophy. This culture promotes accountability, and ownership, and allocates resources for continuous improvement and goal achievement, ensuring both professional success and business growth.

“The traditional employer-centric world of work is fading. If the companies do not step up to provide a better employee experience now, their future is also bound to fade with time. Today’s organizations need to bolster forward and maintain a highly generous and driven work culture for their employees if they wish to become and remain industry leaders.” Aishwarya Khan, Content Head, Engagedly

Characteristics of a High-Performance Culture

There are multiple elements to organizational culture, and leaders define these elements based on the core values of their organizations.

But how do you identify the cultural values and elements that reciprocate the most with employees and lead them down the path of high performance?

Knowledge of high-performance culture values and characteristics is a must for building high-performing teams—teams that go beyond and above their job responsibilities to add value to the tasks they perform and ensure organizational success.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach that organizations can use to build a strong culture, but the hallmarks of a high-performance corporate culture include the following:

1. Supportive, Inclusive, and Empathetic Leadership

Employees look up to leaders as role models. Their ideologies and principles, the way they behave, execute tasks, reciprocate to challenges, and connect with employees, have a profound impact on the productivity, engagement, and performance of the workforce.

Empathy in organizations goes a long way in the workplace. Empathetic leaders can cultivate an environment of diversity, innovation, problem-solving, adaptability, and inclusiveness, thereby creating a high-performance culture in the organization.

Organizations with empathetic and inclusive leadership reap higher dividends. As per EY’s Empathy in Business Survey report 2021, empathetic leadership has the following effects on the organization:

Loyalty: 88% of employees feel loyal to their empathetic leaders
Job Satisfaction: 90% of employees believe empathetic leadership leads to higher job satisfaction
Trust: 87% of employees believe empathy is the foundation of trust between employees and leaders

2. Respect for Employees

Respect is the predominant factor responsible for building a high-performance culture. Employees who feel respected at the workplace are more productive, efficient, and loyal towards their employers.

“Your employees are individuals with hopes, fears, and ambitions. Respect their individuality, differences, contributions, personal goals, and ambitions, and be considerate toward their problems. Genuine and authentic respect propels your workforce towards higher levels of commitment towards the organization.” Srikant Chellappa, President, Engagedly

In any industry, employees expect the culture to be respectful and considerate of their feelings.

The research by Christine Porath, in her book Mastering Civility: A Manifesto for the Workplace, highlights how incivility in the workplace can have serious ramifications on businesses.

The research found that the lack of respect led to the following among employees:

48% intentionally reduced their work effort
47% spent less time at work
66% saw their performance decline after being treated disrespectfully
80% of employees found themselves thinking about projects that caused disrespect

3. Learning and Development

Businesses understand the importance of learning and development in organizations. How it helps in creating a skilled, dynamic, and engaged workforce, and its impact on the key performance areas.

However recent research shows that learning programs focused on both the personal and professional development of employees are much more effective. It helps create a culture of high performance by making employees accountable and aware of their training needs and by aligning personal goals with organizational objectives.

The decreasing shelf life of skills has made continuous learning and skill development the fuel for business sustainability and growth. Employers who understand and invest in their talent needs reap multiple benefits from a high-performance learning culture.

Focus on creating structured and customized employee development programs rather than offering occasional training sessions that do not focus on the actual training needs of employees.

4. Workplace Transparency

One of the most important characteristics of a high-performance culture is workplace transparency.

An environment that provides comfort for employees to freely share their thoughts and ideas helps harbinger transparency, builds trust between employees and managers, and encourages employees to innovate and use their creativity in the workplace.

Transparency in the workplace has become a gold standard for both employees and customers.

As per Jayashankar Balaraman, Founder & CEO of Engagedly, “Transparency in the workplace reflects vulnerability, but without it, there’ll be insecurities that will rule out the possibility of a positive workplace culture. That’s a hard pass. This kind of bargain will cost organizations more than what they can think of.”

The Future of Work study conducted by Slack found that 87% of employees want their next employers to be more transparent with them. Another report by Sprout Social highlighted that 73% of consumers are willing to pay for transparent brands.

These startling statistics show the importance of transparency in an organizational culture for both employee performance and business sustainability.

5. Employee Empowerment

Employee empowerment happens when leadership provides their employees with the autonomy, resources, and support required to make decisions and execute their tasks with confidence.

Accountability is the key to driving a high-performance culture. When employees have the freedom to make their own choices, they see a boost in their confidence, motivation, and productivity. It further leads to more participation, collaboration, and happiness in the workplace.

What are the Benefits of a High-Performance Culture?

So far, we have understood the different characteristics of a high-performance culture and how they impact the organization. Before we discuss the steps to building a high-performance framework, let us dive into the different aspects of businesses that organizational culture touches upon and what benefits can be derived from them.

The following are some of the upsides of a high-performance culture:

Benefits to Employees

Recent events in the global business space have catapulted the expectations of employees. They now want to work in a culture that helps them thrive, understands and recognizes their contributions, supports them to achieve more, and makes them feel like part of the organizational journey.

A high-performance work culture benefits employees in the following ways:

Increases innovation, creativity, and problem-solving skills of employees
Improves relationship between employees and managers
Improves intra-organizational communication
Enhances employee productivity and performance
Creates a positive, healthy, and vibrant environment
Keeps employees motivated and focussed on the tasks
Increases happiness quotient in the workplace

Benefits to Employers

Per the PwC Global Survey, organizational culture has become a priority for business leaders.

In the last decade, the importance of culture has risen tremendously, and it has become an important agenda item for senior management.

High-performance culture companies have swung the pendulum in their favor by leveraging their culture as a competitive advantage, resulting in success across multiple domains.

Employers can get the following benefits from a high-performance work culture:

Improved customer satisfaction
Reduced employee turnover
Higher revenue streams
Organizational adaptability to unprecedented changes
A healthier and happier workforce
Enhanced employee brand image

How to Create a High-Performance Culture? (High-Performance Culture Framework)

Creating a high-performance culture takes time, ownership, and resources. Leaders need to first gauge the current state of the organizational culture before they jump into making changes.

The following process highlights the high-performance framework required to create a performance-driven culture:

1. Monitor Culture from Employees’ Perspective

The first step to building a high-performance culture requires understanding it from the employees’ perspectives. The following questions will help you comprehend that.

What do employees feel about the current state of the culture?
What elements do employees think are important to drive positive change?
How do employees define a high-performance culture?
What changes would employees like to see in the company culture?
What role do employees feel that leadership has to play in organizational culture?

A thorough diagnosis of organizational culture from the employees’ perspective will provide the action points needed to start building the foundation of a high-performance culture model.

2. Leadership Communication

Leaders need to walk the talk. They must communicate frequently with employees to:

Exhibit values and behaviors they want to instill in the company culture
Communicate goals and shared values to get employees onboarded
Answer questions to instill confidence and resilience in employees
Gain trust and support, inspire change, and align the workforce with the leadership strategy
Gather feedback from employees and act on it with intent

Without effective communication from leaders, a cultural shift becomes ineffective and loses its value.

3. Set Shared Values

What does the organization stand for? What policies and practices make it unique? What is the mission and vision of the organization? And how can employees embody these organizational principles and values in their day-to-day tasks?

Answering the foregoing questions is important to building trust, engagement, and unanimity in the organization. Only when employees embrace organizational values and align their goals with them can the organization build a high-performance culture.

Refer to the below high-performance culture values when designing yours:

Respect for everyone
Empowering employees
Transparent and open workplace
Inclusive, supportive, and employee-centric leadership
Building a growth mindset through continuous learning and development

4. Define Behaviors That Drive High Performance

Once you have defined the shared values with employees, it is now time to articulate them into behaviors that employees can execute in their daily tasks. As every employee is responsible for creating a high-performing culture, it is important to involve the whole workforce in this process.

5. Measure Your Company Culture

Even though company culture is not directly measurable, connecting it to some tangible metric like employee engagement and performance can help measure the impact of the high-performance culture model.

It is important to understand how the process is working out. Moreover, it helps in removing inconsistencies and taking employee feedback to alter the processes.

Leveraging engagement surveys, real-time feedback, pulse surveys, and exit interviews can help understand the real impact of the activities undertaken in the whole culture change process.

How Does Technology Support a High-Performance Culture?

Technology has transformed the way companies do business. In an increasingly complex and dynamic business environment, technology has enabled organizations to refine and recreate their strategies to provide more value to their stakeholders.

Even in HR tech, technologies like performance management tools have helped streamline processes and systems to create a tech-enabled, data-powered, and performance-driven workplace.

High-performance culture companies leverage technology to improve their internal processes, thereby enhancing the overall experience of their employees. They can find future trends, monitor the engagement level of their workforce, and use people analytics to create HR strategies.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. What is a high-performance culture?

Ans. A high-performance culture means an organizational culture whose values, beliefs, and philosophy guide the employees to go above and beyond their roles to achieve business goals and personal success. It leads to better idea generation and encourages employees to take more ownership of their work.

Q. How to create a high-performance culture?

Ans. Creating a high-performance culture takes time and resources. The following process will guide you to cultivate a high-performance culture in your organization:

Understand culture from your employees’ perspectives
Focus on effective and frequent leadership communication
Set shared values in the workplace
Define behaviors that drive high-performance
Measure your company culture through different tools

Q. Why is a high-performance culture important?

Ans. In a high-performance culture, employees trust their leadership, are loyal to the organization, and work hard to achieve the organization’s goals. Moreover, such a culture leads to higher engagement and motivation among employees.

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Your Guide to Creating a Strategic Business Development Plan

Every business faces the challenge of crafting an effective business development strategy. But what exactly is strategic business development? In simple terms, it’s a vital tool that ensures long-term success by aligning everyone in your organization towards a common objective.

A well-defined strategy outlines what your organization aims to achieve and the necessary steps to get there. It provides a clear roadmap, guiding your transition from broad directions to specific initiatives and ongoing operations. A strategic business development plan plays a crucial role in driving growth and ensuring sustainable success.

Now, let’s explore the strategic plan further, understand its significance, and dive into the art of crafting a winning business development plan.

Strategic Business Development Plan – What Is It?

A business development strategy is crucial for achieving organizational objectives and driving growth. It involves finding and implementing effective business growth strategies. With a well-defined growth strategy, teams can better understand their goals and contribute to organizational objectives. Business development focuses on attracting and retaining new customers to enhance revenue and expand your organization. By developing a clear plan, your business can plan to achieve these goals.

According to a poll conducted by Bridges Business Consultancy, a staggering 48% of organizations and 85% of businesses fail to achieve even half of their strategic goals. This highlights the importance of creating a strategic business development plan.

Importance of Strategic Business Development Plan

A well-crafted strategic business development plan is the key to unlock long-term success and growth for your organization. By defining clear goals and actionable plans, businesses can thrive and achieve greatness. But why exactly is a strategic business development plan crucial? Let’s dive into a few compelling reasons.

Improves transparency

Transparency has become recognized as a critical business trait for both customers and employees. By cultivating transparency, you can enhance your company’s success and reputation. From strengthening your sales team to improving employee retention, transparency has the power to make a significant impact. Implementing a strategic growth strategy ensures that everyone in your organization is aware of the goals and their role in achieving them, thus promoting transparency.

Increases sales

At the heart of business development lies growth. Increasing sales is the ultimate goal, and businesses need a plan to make it happen. A strategic business development plan allows you to identify markets and products with high-profit potential, enabling you to prioritize partnerships and make informed decisions. It also helps you reduce expenses, uncover untapped growth opportunities, and allocate resources efficiently. With a solid business development strategy, your bottom line will thrive.

Growth

In today’s competitive landscape, businesses must actively seek growth opportunities. A thoughtfully designed business development strategy enables you to expand your clientele, explore new markets, and offer innovative products or services. By identifying your differentiators and value propositions, you’ll set your organization apart from competitors and take a lead in the market.

How to Create a Strategic Business Development Plan?

Effective strategic management involves identifying an organization’s strengths and acknowledging its weaknesses. It goes beyond mere recognition and outlines a robust business strategy that maximizes the benefits and mitigates the drawbacks. A comprehensive corporate development plan comprises various components, each strategically aligned with distinct goals and objectives. Now, let’s delve into a detailed possess to create a business plan:

Define your purpose

A strategic plan serves as the overarching mission or vision statement for a company. When embarking on the creation of a corporate plan, it proves advantageous to initiate the process by clearly defining the goal of your organization. This entails a meticulous identification of the needs, preferences, and pain points of your ideal customers. By gaining a profound understanding of these factors, your plan can be more effectively tailored to cater to their specific requirements. Initiating the strategic planning process with a well-defined purpose sets the foundation for your company to deliver enhanced value over time.

Perform market research

After identifying your target market, it’s time to delve into comprehending their needs. To effectively persuade them to collaborate with you, you need to address the following inquiries:

What are the major challenges they currently face?
What specific services pique their interest?
How do they approach problem-solving at present?
How can your products or services uplift their current situation?

Once you have solid answers to these questions, it’s crucial to thoroughly research your competitors. Identify what makes you stand out from the crowd and emphasize this unique value proposition to potential clients, leveraging it as your competitive advantage.

Consider SWOT analysis

To gain a profound understanding of your company’s current standing, conducting a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) is a paramount strategy. Each element of the SWOT matrix plays a crucial role in shaping and executing an organization’s strategy. Some factors fall under internal control, while others are significantly influenced by external forces. A SWOT analysis provides a comprehensive view of your business from various perspectives. It not only sheds light on internal aspects for improvement and areas of success but also necessitates an evaluation of the external environment. This evaluation helps identify potential threats and business opportunities that can be either mitigated or seized in the future.”

Provide value to stakeholders

Investing in lasting connections with your clients is a worthwhile expense. Repeat customers not only contribute significantly to your business’s revenue but also come at a lower conversion cost. Moreover, returning customers are more open to your sales pitches, providing valuable insights for your company’s growth. However, remember that your suppliers deserve value too – it’s crucial to prioritize delivering value to them alongside your customers. And let’s not forget about the importance of prioritizing employee satisfaction in your business plan. By doing so, you’ll not only enhance employee morale but also improve customer satisfaction in the process.

Identify ways to monitor progress

Effectively monitoring the progress of your business development strategy is crucial for achieving your goals. One key approach is the utilization of key performance indicators (KPIs) tailored to your strategic objectives. Regularly tracking these KPIs provides real-time insights into the performance of various initiatives, allowing for timely adjustments and improvements. Data analytics tools play a vital role in quantifying metrics such as customer acquisition costs, conversion rates, and website traffic. Additionally, seeking feedback from customers, conducting market research, and implementing surveys can offer qualitative insights that complement quantitative data.

Make use of technology

Embrace tools and platforms designed to enhance the efficiency of your business development activities. Utilize advanced solutions to manage leads, keep track of interactions, and engage with prospects seamlessly. Leverage social networking sites, implement marketing automation software, and integrate CRM systems to streamline your processes. Maintain flexibility and readiness to adapt to evolving consumer demands and market conditions. Regularly assess and enhance your business development approach to stay ahead and remain competitive in a dynamic business landscape.

Monitor and alter your approach

Regularly monitoring the effectiveness of your business development strategy enables you to make necessary adjustments based on valuable information and insights. Keep a close eye on the progress of your objectives and assess the efficiency of your strategy using key performance indicators (KPIs). Stay proactive by consistently evaluating market developments, gathering customer input, and monitoring competitor activities.

A comprehensive understanding of your target market, specific objectives, and a clearly articulated value proposition are essential for crafting a successful business growth strategy.

Also Read: Modern Performance Appraisal Types that Create a Winning Culture

Summing it up!

Every successful business has its own unique qualities. That’s why it is crucial to tailor these tactics to align with your specific goals, industry, and target audience. Continuously evaluate your business development efforts and make the necessary adjustments to foster growth and triumph.

With a well-structured strategic management approach, you can not only enjoy this process but also proudly propel your company forward. Remember, implementing a company plan requires dedication, but it is just the beginning of an exciting journey. By embracing the right planning and utilizing the appropriate resources, your organization stands a fair chance of achieving remarkable success.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is the primary purpose of a strategic business development plan?

A strategic business development plan serves as a roadmap for guiding your company’s growth and success. It outlines goals, identifies opportunities, and sets a clear path for achieving sustainable development. By aligning your business activities with a well-thought-out plan, you can enhance decision-making and improve overall efficiency.

2. How often should I update my strategic business development plan?

Regular updates are crucial for keeping your strategic business development plan relevant and effective. Aim to review and, if necessary, revise the plan at least annually. However, more frequent assessments may be required if there are significant changes in your industry, market conditions, or internal factors. Flexibility and adaptability are key in ensuring your plan remains a dynamic tool for success.

3. What are the key components of a successful strategic business development plan?

A comprehensive strategic business development plan typically includes key components such as a clear mission statement, a thorough analysis of the current business environment, defined short-term and long-term goals, identification of target markets, competitive analysis, and a detailed implementation strategy. It should also outline how progress will be measured and what mechanisms are in place for regular evaluation and adjustments.

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Engagedly’s Social and Org Directory now Accessible in the Mobile App

In the virtually connected world, organizations constantly seek innovative ways to improve employee engagement and streamline their internal strategies. Engagedly, an AI-powered talent management platform has made innovative enhancements to its mobile application to improve social dialogue and streamline the org directory for a seamless user experience.

One of the latest capabilities of Engagedly’s mobile utility is its improved social module. The module lets employees connect and engage with each other, fostering an experience of networking and collaboration within the organization. It’s the corporate counterpart of social media networking, like Facebook or Instagram.

The mobile app also streamlines the org directory, making it easier for employees to find contact information and connect with colleagues. The directory presents unique profiles, key employee information, business units, designations, and roles. With the mobile application, employees can look for a specific colleague or browse through the directory to discover new connections. In this blog, we will learn about Engagedly mobile app’s contribution to the social and org directory.

Also read: 7 Signs That Can Help You Recognize A Toxic Workplace

Introducing the Enhanced Social Module

The social module in Engagedly’s mobile application lets employees connect and collaborate, fostering an experience of community and teamwork in the organization. The mobile application lets employees easily access the social module from their smartphones or tablets. They can post updates, give feedback, and participate in discussions on their mobile devices. Here are a few ways Engagedly’s app complements the social module:

Real-Time Communication

The mobile app lets employees immediately communicate with their colleagues through the social module. This real-time conversation eliminates the need for prolonged email threads, and ensures brief and precise information exchange. Employees can stay connected from anywhere, whether discussing updates, looking for feedback, or having a casual conversation.

Social Recognition

Engagedly’s app makes it easy for employees to understand and acknowledge their peers and co-workers socially. The social module allows users to give shout-outs, share achievements, and acknowledge the efforts of their colleagues. It creates a happy work culture, and boosts employee morale with a feeling of pride and motivation among teams and colleagues.

Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing

The mobile application enables employees to collaborate on tasks and share knowledge. Employees can create groups, participate in discussions, and share files or resources through Engagedly’s social module. It promotes collaboration, idea sharing, and productivity within the organization.

News Feed and Updates

The mobile application presents an updated feed that includes latest conversations, knowledge posts, organizational updates, announcements or news. Employees can stay updated in real-time with all the latest information or keep track of specific topics, obtain relevant facts, and stay informed.

Gamification and Engagement

Engagedly’s mobile application hosts gamification features to make the social module more engaging. Employees can earn badges, points, and achievements for participation and contributions. This encourages healthy competition, boosts engagement, and encourages employees to participate and stay engaged with the social module.

Mobile Accessibility

Employees can access the social module anytime and anywhere through their smartphones. This flexibility allows remote workers, frontline employees, and those on-the-go to stay connected and engaged with their colleagues and the organization.

Also read: What Is the True Cost of Recruiting and Onboarding Employees?

Introducing Streamlined Organization Directory

Engagedly’s mobile application now offers seamless access to the Organization Directory. The app lets employees access up-to-date information about their colleagues, including contact details, departmental systems functions, etc. It eliminates the demand for outdated paper directories or time-consuming processes via other platforms or databases. Here are more benefits and features of the directory:

User-Friendly Interface

The org directory is easy to navigate, ensuring employees can quickly locate the information they want. Whether it’s attempting to find a specific colleague or searching via departmental titles, the app provides a seamless experience to save time and effort.

Fosters Collaboration and Engagement

The org directory enables employees to access and look up contact information of their colleagues without any hassle. This helps employees to connect and collaborate and promotes a sense of camaraderie. The app includes a social module, allowing employees to collaborate in real time. It eliminates separate messaging systems, and ensures crucial information is easily accessible to all employees.

It allows managers and colleagues to appreciate and recognize every employee’s contributions, fostering high-quality work and improving worker engagement.

Eliminates Manual Updates

Historically, HR departments relied on employees to offer updated information and spent valuable time manually updating the organization’s directory. Now, HR professionals can take care of their core tasks by eliminating the tedious process.

Engagedly’s mobile app ensures that sensitive information is protected from unauthorized access. It utilizes encryption technology and follows industry practices to protect information. It gives employees peace of mind knowing their data is safe and secure.

Also read: Can AI Reduce Discrimination in the Recruitment Process?

Importance of Engagedly’s Mobile Application

Explore the advantages of Engagedly’s mobile application for employees and employers!

1. Enhanced Communication

The app allows employees to connect with their colleagues and supervisors, regardless of location. It is especially crucial in the current business environment, where employees and HR professionals are located in different offices and geographical locations. Engagedly allows employees to collaborate effectively, share thoughts, and search for important comments and files, fostering engagement and teamwork.

2.Feedback and Recognition

The app is more than just a recognition tool; it’s a powerful platform designed to foster a culture of continuous feedback and employee growth. By empowering employees to recognize each other’s accomplishments and receive feedback from peers, managers, and clients, the app creates a transparent environment where everyone feels valued and appreciated.

3.Performance Management

The mobile application has features that help companies and HR professionals set goals, track progress, and conduct performance reviews. It streamlines the performance management process, and identifies areas for employee improvement. It helps managers identify employees who need support. It also helps everyone stay aligned with the company’s objectives and achieve its goals.

4. Analytics and Reporting Capabilities

Engagedly provides capabilities to measure employee engagement, overall performance, and productivity. Employers can discover trends, make informed decisions, and implement techniques to improve standard organizational effectiveness by studying those metrics.

Also read: 5 Tips to Boost Your Small Business’ Productivity

Engagedly’s Social and Org Directory for All

Engagedly’s Social and Org Directory is a revolutionary tool designed to empower organizations with streamlined communication, collaboration, and employee engagement. This comprehensive solution provides a user-friendly interface and a powerful array of features that cater to the needs of modern workforces.

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Product Update: Engagedly’s Goal and Google Sheets Integration

According to studies, 90% of strategic goals remain unachieved due to poor execution. Setting goals for your team is essential for the growth of your business. By doing this, managers can support their employees’ success and the company’s growth. This approach prevents the organization from becoming stagnant and helps to keep employees invested in their work.

Efficiently setting and tracking goals is crucial for every organization. The manual process of setting and monitoring progress can be challenging, making it wise to invest in goal-setting software. A goal-setting platform can significantly enhance collaboration efficiency. Eager to discover how?

Introducing Engagedly’s Goals and Google Sheets Integration for Enhanced Goal Tracking and Management

If you need help creating goals and templates that make sense for your workforce, Engagedly’s Goals + Google Sheets integration can help. With cloud-based software, you can develop and prioritize goals, schedule them on a dynamic calendar, track them, and much more. The platform creates and integrates individual goals with department-wide and organizational objectives. Personal goals, metrics, and teams can also be organized within specific timelines by supervisors.

Also read: Strategic Workforce Planning: Aligning Human Resources With Business Goals

Effective Goal-Setting to Fuel Your Business Growth

Engagedly’s seamless integration of Goals and G-Sheets revolutionizes goal-setting and tracking by offering real-time status updates, ensuring everyone stays synchronized. This platform facilitates efficient communication of goals between team members and supervisors while also simplifying the tracking and sharing of progress for swift adjustments when necessary.

Bringing together two powerful time management tools, Engagedly provides a comprehensive overview of goal progress and its alignment with organizational objectives through its integrated features. Key components of the Engagedly Goals and G-Sheets platform include:

Stakeholder Feedback

The goal-setting software allows managers to create multiple drafts regarding the goals and share them with stakeholders. The key stakeholders can then give their feedback and suggest any changes. The feature ensures proper alignment before publishing the goals, ensuring everyone is on board.

Seamless Integration

With Engagedly Goals seamlessly integrated with Google Sheets, there is no risk of duplicate reports or data. The progress is easily updated on the platform dashboard, and all the data gets synced effortlessly. This integration eliminates errors and guarantees that progress information is complete and accurate.

Mini Goals

The goal tracker helps managers break big-picture ideas and goals into multi-level, manageable subgoals. Supervisors can then track progress using various methods and built-in goal templates with detailed action plans. This provides a well-defined and unparalleled clarity to an employee’s journey towards achieving their goals.

With the integrated platform, supervisors also gain the liberty to add new owners or change the existing ones for certain milestones and KRAs (key result areas), cultivating a culture of flexibility and teamwork.

Quick View of Goals Insights

Engagedly’s Goals + G-Sheet module features a comprehensive ‘stat’ section that displays all the information related to organizational goals, business units, departments, team members, and individual goals—all at a glance.

Additionally, the platform provides a holistic picture of goals’ progress, adding more sense and purpose to your efforts.

Visual Elements to View Progress

Visual graphs offer a quick and easily accessible way for managers to understand employees’ expected progress and current status. With interactive visual elements, managers can quickly identify gaps, adjust their approach if needed, and ensure timely goal attainment. The user interface is perfect for those looking to represent their goals visually.

With Engagedly, individuals can outline their goals, monitor progress, discuss obstacles, highlight achievements, and color-code different objectives to mention priorities.

Time-Saving and Convenience

The seamlessly integrated goal-setting software assures a significant enhancement in team functionality throughout the organization. Engagedly Goals, when combined with Google Sheets, not only saves valuable time but also effortlessly tracks goal progress, eliminating the need for continuous check-ins or meticulous monitoring of team performance. This streamlined approach promotes efficiency and allows teams to focus on achieving their objectives with greater autonomy.

Goal Progress Transparency

A study by Inc. reveals that 70% of companies considered “communicating business goals” an effective way to foster a high-performance culture. Engagedly’s Goals and G-Sheets integration enables visible goal-setting across all levels of an organization.

Visual graphs offer a convenient way for managers to monitor and track the goals of their teams. They provide insights into key information and allow managers to assess gaps or areas that may need adjustments. The interactive nature of the visual elements enables managers to adapt their approach if needed, ensuring timely goal attainment.

Monitoring, tracking, and updating these goals can increase individual commitment. Further, employees can view their goals and understand their contributions and value to the organization’s overall objectives.

Also read: 7 Common Goal Setting Mistakes Managers Should Avoid

Real-Time Progress Updates

The goal-setting platform provides instant updates on individuals’ progress toward their goals. This feature allows the organization to respond quickly to important developments, whether it’s an individual excelling or a team falling behind in achieving their goals.

User-Friendly Platform

With an easy-to-navigate interface, the integrated goal-setting software removes the requirement of signing into different applications with multiple login credentials.

The integration offers features such as comprehensive ‘stats’ sections and customizable dashboards, making it easy for users to share goals and track progress across teams. The platform offers smooth navigation, ensuring uninterrupted operations for users.

Engagedly’s Goals and Google Sheets: Your Partner in Productivity

Engagedly’s integrated Goals and G-Sheets software is dedicated to consistently delivering high-quality performance in a timely manner. With an efficient goal tracker at your disposal, whether managing one employee or a thousand, organizing, communicating, and realizing your vision becomes simpler. The visual representations not only hold users accountable but also provide in-depth workflow analysis that traditional pen-and-paper goal-management systems cannot offer.

Employees are driven by achievable objectives they can envision accomplishing. This underscores the importance of providing staff with clear and straightforward productivity targets. Goal setting not only encourages focus but also clarifies the steps needed for goal achievement. Research indicates a 22% increase in employee productivity when goals align with both organizational and individual needs. Beyond performance enhancement, employees with clearly defined goals display increased self-confidence, resilience, and job satisfaction. The platform facilitates the assignment and review of goals, streamlining the entire process.

A key feature of the platform is its customizable dashboards, making it an effective goal-management tool. Businesses can tailor their performance review dashboards to specific requirements, incorporating KPIs, charts, and action items for effective progress monitoring. This feature enables organizations to conduct productive weekly and monthly business review meetings, identify potential roadblocks in advance, and help teams prioritize their objectives.

Embrace the Power of Effective Goal-Setting

In the workplace, effective goal-setting is a cornerstone of business success. It not only guides employees on the right path but also serves as a powerful motivator, particularly during challenging periods. The establishment of employee goals goes beyond individual accomplishments; it cultivates a culture of continuous feedback, transparency, and open communication. Adding to the intrigue, software tailored to the company’s needs can significantly enhance the goal-setting process.

Engagedly’s integration of Goals and Google Sheets provides a comprehensive solution for tracking and managing goals, ensuring you stay informed with actionable insights. Its user-friendly interface empowers businesses to navigate and optimize their success by facilitating goal-setting and collaboration within the organization. Effortlessly set, monitor, and manage employee goals, enhance employee engagement through progress tracking, encourage continuous feedback and open communication, facilitate regular check-ins, and monitor individual performance along with company goal progress.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What are OKRs?

OKR, or Objectives and Key Results, is a goal-setting framework widely used in organizations to define and track objectives and their outcomes. The framework consists of setting clear, ambitious objectives that articulate the organization’s goals, along with specific key results that measure progress toward achieving those objectives.

Q2. What is a SMART framework for goal setting?

The SMART framework is used for fine-tuning an organization’s goal-setting strategy. As per the framework, goals should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based.

Q3. How do Engagedly’s goal setting and G-sheet integration support effective goal setting?

The integration provides a streamlined platform for tracking, managing, and staying updated on goals with actionable insights. The integration ensures a user-friendly experience, allowing businesses to easily set, monitor, and manage employee goals. It enhances engagement through progress tracking, encourages continuous feedback and open communication, facilitates regular check-ins, and enables the monitoring of individual performance and company goal progress, contributing to a more effective and transparent goal-setting process.

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Embrace HR Automation with Engagedly + HiBob

In the ever-changing business landscape, human resource management is grappling with numerous challenges. These challenges can range from data fragmentation, inconsistent procedures, and outdated technology to employee experience enhancement and talent acquisition difficulties. Organizations must rely on efficient HR processes in such a setting to successfully manage their employees and remain competitive.

Engagedly has teamed with HiBob HR integration to bring effective HR innovation in response to these concerns. This collaboration seeks to increase organizational performance through streamlined HR processes. Companies can now efficiently manage their employees, automate administrative processes, and build a culture of feedback using Engagedly and HiBob HRIS’ seamless integration capabilities. Let’s explore how!

HiBob HR Platform: The Force

The HiBob platform is at the heart of this integration, an HR powerhouse that delivers efficiency and consistency to HR activities. It’s an extensive system designed to streamline HR tasks, from data administration to strategic planning. The HiBob HRIS (Human Resources Information System) is the foundation, providing correct data management and fueling the whole HR lifecycle.

HiBob’s goal-setting capabilities are one of its primary features, allowing organizations to create, measure, and report on their progress.

The following components are important parts of the “HiBob Goals” feature:

Goal Definition

Managers and staff can work together to set precise short- and long-term goals that match the company’s goals. These objectives may pertain to personal performance, team accomplishments, milestones for the project, or professional development.

Goal Tracking

HiBob Goals allow real-time progress tracking of goals. Employees and managers may examine the progress of each target regularly, making it easy to recognize areas where more help or modifications may be required.

Performance Evaluation

The HiBob targets can be used for performance assessments. These objectives serve as quantifiable benchmarks, allowing for an independent assessment of an employee’s contribution to the organization.

Feedback and Recognition

The platform includes a section for giving feedback on goal progress. Managers may recognize accomplishments and provide direction and critical comments, establishing a culture of ongoing progress and acknowledgment.

Alignment

The HiBob Goals function ensures that individual and team goals align with larger organizational objectives. This alignment contributes to forming a cohesive workforce working toward common goals.

Employee Development

Goal-setting isn’t only about performance; it’s also a chance for employees to develop and grow their skills. Employees may improve professionally and contribute more effectively to the organization by establishing a mix of ambitious and realistic goals.

Also read: Benefits of Implementing an Employee Career Development Program

Leverage Engagedly to Increase HR Efficiency

Engagedly is a cloud-based talent management platform specializing in robust solutions for employee engagement and performance. With a focus on fostering communication, learning, and growth, Engagedly empowers organizations to build and sustain highly motivated and productive teams.

The platform goes beyond conventional HR tools, improving productivity through streamlined procedures, automation, and comprehensive people management capabilities. Engagedly is a valuable resource for businesses seeking to elevate employee engagement, enhance performance, and drive organizational success. Let’s take a closer look at Engagedly’s features:

Centralized Operations

Engagedly offers a centralized HR data management platform designed to streamline access, facilitate changes, and enhance tracking efficiency. This not only saves time but also helps eliminate mistakes, ensuring a more accurate and efficient HR management process.

HR Automation

Engagedly excels in task streamlining, automating HR operations, and reducing the necessity for follow-ups through effective notifications and reminders. This seamless approach enhances efficiency and ensures that crucial tasks are managed promptly and with minimal manual intervention.

Performance Management

Engagedly’s performance management tool simplifies crucial processes such as goal setting, performance evaluations, and employee feedback, leading to heightened overall organizational efficiency. This not only boosts morale and fosters a culture of appreciation but also facilitates real-time feedback and acknowledgment, contributing to a more dynamic and positive workplace environment.

Data Analytics

To inform strategic decision-making, HR professionals leverage analytics and reports from Engagedly to analyze employee data. The data-driven insights offered by Engagedly guarantee error-free processes and informed decisions, empowering HR teams with the tools they need for effective workforce management.

Customization

Every business requires HR operations – but not on the same scale. The configurable capabilities of Engagedly allow organizations to customize the software to their HR requirements.

Also read: Product Update: Engagedly’s Goal and Google Sheets Integration

Get Your Hands on Seamless Data Flow

The seamless flow of data is the true brilliance of this synergy. Powered by HiBob HRIS as the integration’s foundation and catalyzed by Engagedly software, data moves effortlessly without delays or interruptions. This synergy eliminates data silos and redundant entries. For instance, when an employee’s information is entered into HiBob, it promptly reflects in Engagedly, eradicating administrative costs and ensuring reliable, up-to-date data management.

This innovative HR approach harmonizes Engagedly and HiBob, offering organizations a comprehensive solution. While HiBob serves as a robust HRIS platform for company operations, Engagedly focuses on addressing employee needs. By leveraging these platforms, organizations can elevate performance, engagement, and retention, propelling them to new heights of success in the dynamic landscape of the future of work.

Benefits of HiBob HRIS and Engagedly Software Integration

The integration of HiBob HR and Engagedly Software is a game-changer for organizations seeking to streamline HR procedures and enhance employee engagement. This seamless integration not only saves time and effort but also ensures the accuracy and currency of information across all HR operations.

What sets this synergy apart is the combination of HiBob’s comprehensive HRIS capabilities and Engagedly’s focus on meeting employee expectations. Together, they empower organizations to adopt a holistic approach to people management, fostering a culture of continuous growth and development. Let’s delve into how this collaboration cultivates an environment dedicated to ongoing progress!

From Recruitment to Offboarding: A Unified Approach

The integrated solution provides consistency from the initial recruiting process, which is managed easily by HiBob, to continuing performance management provided by Engagedly, to the final steps of offboarding. Organizations can safely traverse each step because data and processes are in sync.

A Comprehensive Employee Experience

Employee engagement organically grows when employees can readily access and update their information, receive timely feedback, and focus on their progress. In conjunction with HiBob, Engagedly delivers a top-notch employee experience, allowing employees to access resources clearly and easily.

Strategic Growth and Impact

This integration is about more than simply making HR responsibilities easier to manage; it is also about achieving strategic effect. Organizations may use this potent pair to promote a culture of success through strategic HR initiatives. The capacity to link human resource strategy with organizational goals becomes a reality, resulting in development and success.

Compliance and Long-Term Adaptability

Organizations may successfully manage HR regulations and comply with labor laws with this integrated system. Furthermore, the system’s agility assures employees’ preparedness for the future. This implies that organizations can expand, adjust, and adapt with a solution tailored to the dynamic nature of the contemporary workforce.

Is Engagedly + HiBob Goals for You?

The synergy between Engagedly software and the HiBob platform signifies the future of HR. This integration is not just an alternative; it’s a revolutionary shift in data management, employee engagement, and how organizations perceive HR. Adopting this holistic strategy enables organizations to enhance HR operations and create a positive employee experience conducive to growth in the dynamic work landscape.

Are you ready to unlock the full potential of HR Integration? Embrace the Engagedly + HiBob Goals platform to lead your organization toward innovation, efficiency, and greater possibilities.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is the relevance of integrating Engagedly software with HiBob HR?

The integration of Engagedly and HiBobHR offers a unified solution to enhance HR efficiency, streamline operations, and elevate the employee experience. This collaboration harnesses the robust HRIS capabilities of HiBob and integrates them seamlessly with Engagedly’s performance management, engagement, and development modules. The result is a powerful partnership that reshapes the landscape of HR management.

Q2. What role does this integration play in HR strategy and innovation?

Engagedly and HiBob integration enables organizations to promote strategic initiatives, link HR with organizational goals, and provide a pleasant employee experience. It simplifies procedures, improves data quality, and allows HR professionals to be more creative in their approach to HR management. The integration marks a significant advancement in HR innovation.

Q3. How can businesses capitalize on Engagedly and HiBob HR integration for long-term success?

Organizations may use this integration to improve employee satisfaction, optimize HR processes, comply with legislation, and drive strategic development. Organizations may position themselves for success in the market by adopting the entire capabilities of Engagedly and HiBob.

Q4. How can the Engagedly software improve HR efficiency?

Engagedly significantly enhances HR efficiency through a comprehensive suite of features. This includes centralized data administration, automated processes, streamlined performance management, real-time feedback mechanisms, robust learning and development tools, advanced data analytics, and customizable options. This feature-rich package effectively reduces administrative workload, promotes seamless communication, and empowers HR professionals to concentrate on strategic projects.

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What Is Moonlighting? | Definition & Ways To Prevent It

The number of remote employees is increasing, posing a threat to IT organizations, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. Employees are now moonlighting as a result of this. The work-from-home concept helps employees practice more moonlighting. It is a popular practice to work for one organization while taking on extra job responsibilities without the employer’s knowledge, and both are performed simultaneously, termed moonlighting.

What is Moonlighting?

“Moonlighting Meaning,” according to US Legal, refers to the practice of working multiple jobs simultaneously, usually incorporating a second job outside of regular working hours. Someone who works a 9-to-5 job and takes on an evening job to supplement their income is considered moonlighting.

Based on a survey by Kotak Institutional Equities, 65% of employees are into moonlighting or looking for part-time job options while having a full-time job. Experts often believe that moonlighting should be accepted as long as employees deliver productivity and have a high commitment to the signed-up work.

As long as the purpose of moonlighting is positive and can set an hourly wage, an employee shouldn’t be restricted from practicing the trend.

Reports show this ongoing work trend is sparkling among the remote working modes. IT giants like Wipro terminated 300 workers as their competitors employed them, which fueled the situation. This is how it poses a challenge to the IT sector. As people get the option of working from home, they have free time and a chance to make the best use of it and earn money.

Delving Deeper into the Concept of Moonlighting

Moonlighting is a source of extra income besides main employment. An employee hired for a company works for another organization, working on the same project. The moonlighting employees can do app development, content writing, running a campaign, and others based on employee skills and knowledge. Moonlighting employees are free to pursue the additional task on their own, provided it doesn’t interfere with their regular schedule and offers some additional benefits.

The moonlighters may face time constraints and often feel detached from their official company. This happens when folks spend only half their efficiency on their company work and try to focus simultaneously on the extra work. It can often lead to less productivity and dedication. Juggling and balancing the two become tricky here.

Also Read: The Essential Guide to Employee Productivity in a Hybrid Setup

Moonlighting in IT

The ongoing practice of moonlighting has posed a threat to IT giants, making them come up with steps to deal with it. Reports show that 64% feel that moonlighting is ethical and has nothing to do with the loyalty of an employee. Furthermore, recent surveys show how moonlighting changes the mode of remote jobs.

Recently, Infosys warned employees about moonlighting, saying it can lead to termination. The new company assures that employees shouldn’t engage in moonlighting outside their employment, duly signed by the staff. Otherwise, the situation will lead to a violation of the employee’s code of conduct. Besides, the staff confirmed to put in their effort during their tenure for their present employer only.

Also Read: 10 Best Employee Retention Strategies to Keep Your Best Talent

IBM clearly states that double employment isn’t ethically correct, and the company won’t tolerate such practices from employees.

But, the COO of TCS, N Ganapathy Subramaniam, is of the view that if employees meet productivity and efficiency and aren’t into any illegal activities violating the company values and ethics, they don’t have any problem if they are willing to make extra bucks.

Moonlighting Is Rising – Let’s Find Out How and Why

Moonlighting is here to stay, as employees are operating more from home than from the office. It helps enhance earnings; thus, the trend is becoming a new normal.

Need for a backup plan

Having a plan B is one of the primary reasons to practice moonlighting. It grows from job insecurity and works as a backup. As an aftermath of the pandemic, unemployment has become a common concern; people are in search of additional income.

There is no need to hold on to steady jobs

People have realized that work is more than just 9-to-5 jobs. An individual has to work depending on a professional, and projects can be high-paying and other. So, working per need and including some extra work and pay can be beneficial.

Chance of change in career

Job switching may not be that easy at times, and moonlighting is a good option to try a second job while continuing with a regular job. Therefore, moonlighting gives a chance to gather experience in a skill that later yields lucrative employment.

Ethical moonlighting

Ethical moonlighting is a situation in organizations that creates multiple job opportunities and encourages them to try it. However, organizations must safeguard their company interests with written policies that clearly define the required criteria. Here, companies should prepare for the following:

Intellectual property
Financial interest
Competitive advantage
Resources like software and laptops

How to Deal with Moonlighting Employees?

Is firing the right move to deal with moonlighting employees? Though every employee needs to abide by employment contracts, the option of firing the employee is too early to decide. Let us shed some light on ways to deal with it.

Share the Consequences with Employees

If employees know that they are doing something wrong or employers don’t know of employees’ moonlighting practices, employers should convey that they trust the team. Try to share that the company is concerned about employees’ well-being and values trust. Besides, remind them of the consequences of moonlighting without knowledge of the company, and authorities can take serious action against them as required.

Before such a situation arises, communicate with employees openly and honestly. Also, share that other companies may not offer benefits, including vacation, healthcare, and other amenities. By doing so, the employees recognize that the company is highly concerned about its work culture and will discourage moonlighting practices against company policies.

Also Read: Qualities of a Good Manager: 10 Skills You Need

Have a Non-Competing Agreement

A non-compete agreement is essential to have before hiring a candidate. These can protect the company’s intellectual property, reduce competition, and prevent workers from engaging with other projects or working for competitors. This agreement should mention a prohibition when looking for employment elsewhere while employed in a company. If employees are found to be working on two company projects, strict action will be taken against disclosing any confidential data or even more.

Employers can use the agreement against employees engaged in moonlighting. In addition, the contract can limit an employee’s ability to work for another company outside of their official work. This is how the company can minimize risk and avoid unethical workplace policies.

Employees Should Understand Company Moonlighting Policy

Employees should be aware of the policies and limits set by the company. To make sure that every employee is aware of it, mention the brief in the company’s overview section with other policies. Besides, mention how the company will handle employee moonlighting cases per the policy.

Industry experts suggest IT giants look at their active policies and develop an approach to deal with moonlighting. They can do this by setting performance expectations, protecting confidential company details, and others.

Use Employee Engagement Software

The employee engagement software can track an employee’s performance, productivity, and engagement levels. It helps managers track the work activity of employees and identify any signs of moonlighting.

Employers can get information on whether some employee works for another company or pass on sensitive information outside of working hours.

Ask Questions Regarding Moonlighting

If you already know what your employees are doing or what to find out, ask them directly about it:

Are you into some new projects outside our team?
Are you engaged in other work outside normal office hours?
Can we help you balance work here?

Ask them questions and make them comfortable so that they feel free to discuss why they are into moonlighting. The more they are comfortable expressing actual reasons for moonlighting, the better you know what makes them happy. Based on this, you can take action to alleviate their concern that their full-time job will be sufficient financially.

Final Thoughts

While an employer needs to respect employees’ need to engage with more than one job, there are situations in which moonlighting can have negative effects on the company.

Beyond company policies, HR should ensure that employees are aware of their limitations outside their employment in the office. So, when it comes to addressing moonlighting workers, focus on what is legitimate and the employment-relating concerns. If a company is experiencing moonlighting problems and doesn’t know how to deal with them, it should frame a legal structure, defining norms and rules before things go out of control.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is the meaning of moonlighting?

Ans. Moonlighting refers to the practice of working more than one job at the same time, typically involving a second job outside of one’s regular working hours. It allows individuals to supplement their primary income and earn extra money.

Q2. Is moonlighting legal?

Ans. The legality of moonlighting depends on various factors, including employment contracts, company policies, and local labor laws. Some employers may prohibit moonlighting due to potential conflicts of interest or concerns about employee productivity. Employees need to review their employment agreements and seek clarity from their employers to ensure compliance with any restrictions.

Q3. How should employers address moonlighting concerns?

Ans. Addressing moonlighting concerns requires open communication and clear company policies. If prohibiting moonlighting, employers should explain the reasons while considering individual circumstances. Promoting work-life balance and addressing productivity concerns are essential for the effective management of moonlighting employees.

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15 Must Have Tools For Small Businesses In 2024

Are you interested in scaling up your small business in 2024? If the answer is “yes,” then investing in the right software is your only route to success.

The right business tools can empower your employees to provide effective solutions to your customers. Moreover, using the right tools can also provide fast and accurate information to enhance the entire customer experience. Much like accounting software can give you accurate financial information, other software such as CRM, performance management, and payroll can also give you data and therefore insights instantaneously.

Thus, having the data to hand is crucial in delivering overall performance improvements. For example, according to a report from Microsoft, 72% of customers say when they contact customer service, they expect an agent to know—

Who are they?
What have they bought?
How have they previously engaged with them?

This is only possible to deliver accurately when your team has powerful business tools at their disposal. Luckily, there are several tools that small businesses can use to provide better services to their clients and gain a competitive edge in 2024. These include a Sales CRM, employee monitoring, performance development, payment tracking, and others.

However, given the plethora of tools in the market, you may be wondering how can you afford so many different software packages and still stay within a limited budget? With this in mind, we have narrowed down the top 15 essential tools that should be affordable for most small business owners.

Top 15 Small Business Tools for 2024

Do you want to build a high performing team but don’t you have a big budget to hire top talent? If the answer is yes, then the next best thing you can do is get the most out of your existing team members. For example, by using performance management tools, you can monitor your team and provide them with real-time feedback to boost their performance.

That’s just one example of how software can improve overall performance—below we have a curated list of simple and affordable tools every small business should have in 2024:

1. Engagedly

Best For: Talent & Performance Management Platform

Engagedly is a new generation, cloud-based solution that focuses on employee engagement and development, performance, and communication in your organization. It encompasses features such as 360-degree feedback, real-time performance management, check-ins, performance appraisals, and an LMS that supports overall organizational development.

The software has built-in gamification and social collaboration tools to better manage your people. In addition, the program lets you interact with employees using employee engagement surveys and directories.

Top Features

Activity dashboard
Assessment management
Anonymous feedback
Benchmarking
Blended learning
Badge management
Compensation management
Collaboration tool

Pricing Structure:

100% customizable plans

2. ClickUp

Best For: Smart workflow management

Source: ClickUp

ClickUp is a top-rated project management tool for remote and hybrid teams. It is an all-purpose business management platform with chat, scheduling, custom views, and more.

It is one of the best tools to deploy advanced marketing or sales strategies like account-based marketing or customer segmentation. In fact, many prominent organizations, like Airbnb, Google, and Uber, are using this tool.

Top Features

Document collaboration
Real-time chat
Whiteboards
Two-factor authentication
Agile reporting
Resource management
Timelines and mind maps

Pricing Structure:

Forever free, up to 100MB storage
Unlimited plan for $5 per user/month
Business plan for $12 per user/month
Business Plus for $19 per user/month
Customizable enterprise plan

3. Zonka Feedback

Best For: Feedback Surveys and Experience Management

Source: Zonka

Zonka Feedback is an easy-to-use customer feedback software and experience management platform that businesses of all sizes use to create intuitive and customized surveys to collect feedback through various channels and work on it to improve customer experience, enhance satisfaction, and prevent churn.

The best thing about the tool is that it empowers you with features like real-time feedback alerts and reports so that you can take appropriate action on feedback at the right time and close the feedback loop to prevent churn before it’s too late.

Top Features

40+ Ready-to-use Templates
Customization of Surveys
Multichannel Software
Measuring metrics like NPS, CSAT, and CES
Advanced Reporting and Dashboard
Real-time Feedback notifications and custom alerts
Skip Logic, Hide Logic and Survey Redirection

Pricing Structure:

A 15-day Free Trial available
Paid plans start at $29/month
Professional plan for $79/month
Growth plan for $169/month
Enterprise plan for $429/month

4. TimeCamp

Best For: Time tracking and project profitability measurement

Source: TimeCamp

TimeCamp is a free and powerful HR technology tool for small teams. Using this software, you will get accurate timesheets to integrate with your accounting software to generate timely payslips. In addition, you can also track your employee performance and project profitability in real-time.

TimeCamp has a centralized dashboard that allows you to collaborate with your remote, in-house, and freelance employees. In addition, you can integrate TimeCamp with 30+ other apps like Asana, Airtable, ClickUp, GitLab, Google Calendar, Google Docs, etc.

Top Features

Customizable invoicing
Record billable and non-billable hours
Calendar management
Expenses tracking
Payroll management
Time tracking
Tax calculation

Pricing Structure:

Forever free
Basic plan for $6.3 per user/month
Pro plan for $9 per user/month
Customizable enterprise plan

5. Social Status

Best for: Social Media Analytics

Source: SocialStatus

Social Status is a social media analytics and reporting tool. It is perfect for agencies that need a multi-channel analytics dashboard for all their clients. It supports Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, LinkedIn, and Twitter. Agencies can easily group client profiles and pages, including Facebook ad accounts, plus they can also do competitor analysis and track influencer marketing campaigns too.

Reports can be white-labeled and completely customized to suit different reporting needs. Boardroom-ready reports can be exported to a range of formats, including CSV, PDF, PowerPoint, and Google Slides.

Top Features:

Facebook Analytics
Instagram Stories Analytics
YouTube Analytics
Twitter Analytics
LinkedIn Analytics
Ads Analytics
Competitor Analytics

Pricing Structure:

Forever free
Starter plan for $29 per month
Pro plan for $199 per month
Business plan for $399 per month
Corporate plan for $599 per month
Enterprise plan for $1,499 per month

6. HubSpot CRM

Best For: Lead management

Source: HubSpot

HubSpot CRM is a customer relationship management tool suitable for both small and large businesses. It is particularly useful for businesses that want to spend less time on data entry tasks. It helps keep all your contacts, business leads, and database in one place, which allows you to have a deeper understanding of your business.

HubSpot is a cloud-based system that can help align remote and in-house teams. It can streamline sales and marketing operations to boost ROI and optimize inbound marketing strategies to generate high-value leads.

Top Features

Scheduling appointments
Campaign management
Contact management
License management
Email templates and marketing
Lead distribution, management, and qualification
Sales pipeline management
Task management

Pricing Structure:

Forever free
Starter plan for $45 per month
Professional plan for $1,600 per month
Enterprise plan for $5,000 per month

7. Woorise

Best For: Creating landing pages, quizzes, and contests

Source: WordPress

Woorise is the best tool for small businesses to collect leads and close them. It is a perfect solution for digital businesses and e-commerce brands that want to capture audience interest and boost sales.

You can integrate Woorise with multiple other business automation solutions such as AWeber, HubSpot, Zapier, Google Analytics, Bitly, PayPal, Stripe, and more. The tool is quite useful for marketing agencies and social media managers.

Top Features

Awards management
Organize skill contests like photography, essay writing, design, etc.
Fraud detection
Form management
Judging management
Entry management
Multiple language support

Pricing Structure:

Free forever up to 500 entries
Basic plan for $23 per user/month up to 2,000 entries
Grow plan for $39 per user/month up to 5,000 entries
Pro plan for $79 per user/month up to 20,000 entries

8. Saleshandy

Best For: Cold email and email tracking

Source: Saleshandy

Saleshandy is a cold-emailing platform that helps companies increase their email outreach without compromising on quality. The program has the potential to set up hundreds or even thousands of campaigns with multi-stage automated follow-up emails to generate at once.

You can also merge tags to customize your email campaigns. In addition, you can trigger follow-ups based on the previous email actions like opens or clicks. It is a potential tool for businesses that are looking forward to creating multilayered email marketing campaigns.

Top Features

Stunning email templates
Email campaign management
Content Delivery
Drip campaigns
Campaign analytics
Event-triggered actions
Lead capturing and nurturing
Performance management

Pricing Structure:

A 14-day free trial
Cold emailing packages for $25 and $60 per user/month
Email tracking is free forever. Paid plans start at $9, $22 and $59 per user/month

9. SocialPilot

Best For: Social media marketing

Source: Social Pilot

SocialPilot has everything that you need to run result-driven social media marketing campaigns in one place. It can manage all your social media accounts and help you automate social media operations, including post scheduling, insight reports, and monitoring engagement.

SocialPilot is designed to bring all social media activities under one roof, from replying to Instagram stories to responding to Facebook page comments. You can also easily collaborate with your team members or coordinate with your clients using the software.

Another great feature is that you can customize SocialPilot to match your brand identity. You can also generate branded analytics reports and provide a seamless branded experience to your clients from a centralized dashboard. When you plan to grow your small business on social media, SocialPilot is a great place to start.

Top Features

Automatic post publishing
Content management
Conversion tracking
Engagement tracking
Influencer tracking
Lead management
Multi-account management
Multiple campaign management

Pricing Structure:

Agency plan for $127.5 per month
Studio plan for $85 per month
Small team plan for $42.5 per month
Enterprise plan is fully customizable

10. GrowSurf

Best For: Customer acquisition and cost management

Source: GrowSurf

GrowSurf can help you to automate customer acquisition at the lowest possible cost. It helps both B2B and B2C tech companies to create referral programs to get new customers on autopilot mode. You can also create customer-to-customer referral programs to spread word of mouth about your brand.

GrowSurf offers a 312% return on investment, 30% new referral leads and 15% of ARR from referrals. It comes with an automatic link generator that creates unique links for each user, so they don’t have to sign up to promote your products.

Top Features

Affiliate management
Communication management
Contact management
Fraud detection
Referral templates
Referral tracking
Rewards management
Social engagement

Pricing Structure:

A 14-day free trial
100% customizable plans

11. InvoiceBerry

Best For: Online invoicing software

Source: InfoBerry

InvoiceBerry is an online invoicing solution for small businesses and freelancers. It is designed to make invoice and expense tracking processes quick and easy.

The software has a vast array of professional invoice templates that you can customize with your logo, customer information, and other details. Additionally, you can send invoices via email within the software in PDF format.

Top Features

Contact database
Customizable invoice
Online invoicing
Recurring billing
Multiple currency support
Easily print out invoices
Invoice templates

Pricing Structure:

A 14-day free trial
Solo plan for $15 per month
Pro plan for $30 per month

12. ProProfs Chat

Best For: Live chat with website visitors

Source: ProProfs

ProProfs Chat is a simple online live chat platform to engage with your website visitors. The software helps you resolve customers’ issues in real-time.

You can improve your overall customer experience with this instant support system. ProProfs Chat can also help you reduce tickets, improve customer response times, and increase sales and ROI.

You can create proactive live chat pop-ups or customize greetings to boost engagement. Also, it lets you add announcements to notify website visitors about new service updates and products.

Top Features

Canned responses
Customizable branding
Proactive chat
Screen sharing
50+ integrations
Routing
Lead capturing
Chat transcripts

Pricing Structure:

Free forever with basic features
Essential plan for $15 per user/month
Premium plan for $25 per user/month

13. Google Workspace

Best For: Business collaboration

Source: Google Blog

Google Workspace is an intuitive collaboration platform designed for all-size businesses to manage multiple operations. It helps businesses to record team meetings, send emails, and reserve conference rooms.

The best thing about the tool is that it has a noise-cancellation feature, which makes it a perfect contact center solution for sales teams.

In addition, it offers features like attendance tracking, team messaging, compliance management, shared calendars, and more. You can edit and share documents, slides, and spreadsheets among your team members in real-time.

Top Features

Content management
Commenting on documents
Backup and recovery
Customizable branding
Communication management
Data synchronization

Pricing Structure:

A 14-day free trial
Business starter plan for $6 per user/month
Business standard plan for $12 per user/month
Business plus for $18 per user/month
Customizable enterprise plan

14. FreshBooks

Best For – Managing your financial records

Source: Fresh Books

FreshBooks is powerful and intuitive accounting software that makes it easy for small businesses to keep track of their finances. With its user-friendly interface, streamlined workflows, and advanced features like automated invoicing, expense tracking, and time-saving reporting tools, Freshbooks allows you to easily manage your books while saving more time to focus on growing your business.

Whether you’re just starting out or are an established small business, Freshbooks has the features and flexibility you need to take your finances to the next level.

You can also download free accounting templates, invoicing templates, and balance sheets to easily manage your finances.

Top features:

User-friendly interface
Streamlined workflows
Automated invoicing
Expense tracking
Time-saving reporting tools
Flexible and scalable plans

FreshBooks Pricing plans:

Free Trial-Available
Basic-$15/month
Plus-$25/month
Premium-$50/month

15. CloudTalk

Best for: Customer support

Source: CloudTalk

CloudTalk is a powerful VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) platform that businesses can use to expand, scale, and improve their customer support. Unlike traditional brick-and-mortar contact centers, CloudTalk allows agents to work whenever, wherever, and from whatever device they like – as long as it has a microphone and an internet connection.

The cloud-based contact center software offers a wide selection of time-saving and experience-enhancing features, including click-to-call, call forwarding, and analytics. In total, there are over 70 features from which users can pick and choose to create a contact center experience that fits both their business needs and customer requirements.

Top Features:

Click-to-call
Call queueing
Call recording
CRM integration
Skill-based routing
Automatic Call Distribution (ACD)
International and toll-free numbers

CloudTalk Pricing Plans:

14-day free trial
Starter-$25 per user/month
Essential-$30 per user/month
Pro-$50 per user/month

Let’s Get the Best Small Business Tools To Scale Up!

There you go- you have just learned about all the awesome tools that can help you scale up your operations in 2024.

This list contains the perfect small business tools to manage finances, marketing, lead generation, and other operations.

You can use the trial versions of the tools listed above before making longer-term commitments. That way, you can better understand the individual features and whether they are suitable and beneficial for your business.

Looking forward to enhancing employee engagement, productivity, and development of your workforce? Talk to our experts for free consultation.

Request A Demo

Author’s Bio:

Vineet Gupta is a SaaS marketing professional who helps businesses in improving their online presence and lead generation.

How to Increase the Productivity of Your Sales Team

Your sales reps are struggling to close deals, and the revenue graph looks underwhelming. You can’t help but wonder, what went wrong?

The often overlooked culprit: poor sales productivity.

Maintaining good sales productivity is essential for hitting your revenue targets every quarter. Without it, your sales team is losing hours in tasks that don’t contribute to your bottom line.

You can set them up for success and increase your revenue by tracking sales productivity and proactively improving it. In this guide, you’ll uncover ten different ways to increase the productivity of your sales team.

What is sales productivity?

Sales productivity is a performance metric to measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your sales team. Tracking sales productivity will help you boost your bottom line, reduce investment in the sales ecosystem, and maximize the ROI of your sales efforts.

If your sales reps are struggling to meet their targets, your sales productivity is low. It can be because of:

- A weak or absent onboarding process
- Lack of proper training
- No concrete workflows or systems
- Lack of clear communication
- Not circulating sales goals on time

You’d be surprised to know that salespeople spend less than a third of their time selling, as non-sales tasks reduce their productivity. Instead, they spend more time in data management, tracking and entry, unnecessary team meetings, and creating workflow documents.

That’s exactly why you need an airtight strategy to maximize sales productivity and avoid draining your sales team’s efforts. Before we get to our practical tips, let’s first look at the steps for measuring sales productivity.

How to measure sales productivity

Here’s a step-by-step formula to track this metric:

Define sales output and input metrics.
Document your acquisition funnel and stages of the sales process.
Collect sales output metrics like revenue, deals closed, customer retention, and satisfaction.
Collect sales input metrics like expense on sales stack, working hours, number of emails sent and calls made, and cost of onboarding per salesperson.
Calculate the ratio of sales output over input.
Compare your sales productivity with your competitors.

Your calculation should be directed more toward revenue and ROI. Maintaining a balance between efficiency and effectiveness is the key to measuring accurate sales productivity.

10 Best Practices to Increase Sales Productivity

Sales productivity can impact your entire business. Tracking this metric will help you hit revenue targets—and exceed them. Here are 10 best ways to enhance sales productivity:

Prioritize onboarding and continuous sales training

Sales representatives with scattered efforts, a lack of skill and direction, and a disconnect with your company’s goals are a nightmare—both for you and your customers.

To maximize your sales productivity, begin with a clear, detailed, and focused onboarding process. Inform new reps about key sales goals and offer product knowledge from the outset. You should also create workflows for continuous sales training to ensure the existing reps are equipped to meet their targets and increase conversion rates.

A robust sales onboarding and training setup will also help you set best sales practices, expectations, and accurate reporting. It’ll help you mentor all representatives more effectively.

Develop scalable sales workflows

If your sales team is working to the bone and yet not seeing significant returns, you need to set up better sales workflows.

A sales workflow guides sales representatives, helps measure the team’s performance, and naturally enhances sales productivity. It also helps you focus more on selling by cutting down admin time spent on repetitive tasks.

Focus on creating a scalable sales workflow for repeatable success. Here are seven things you need to do to create a perfect sales workflow process:

Nail down your ideal customer profile (ICP) and target market
Map out the buyer journey of your ICP
Establish a sales methodology that aligns with your needs
List all the tools you use or need
Determine stages of your sales cycle
Create a sales enablement guide
Determine KPIs for your team

Build a robust sales tech stack

Without a sales tech stack, every single sale feels like you’re moving mountains. It also leads to a less productive and underperforming sales team and an unsustainable sales workflow.

A good sales tech stack can save time, resources, and bandwidth while maximizing conversions. To set up a robust SaaS sales tech stack, you need:

Customer relationship management (CRM): to collect and track all leads
Sales intelligence tool: to get granular details about prospects
LinkedIn scraping tool: to collect leads directly from LinkedIn
Sales forecasting tool: to predict your sales performance for a month/quarter
Project management: to collaborate with your reps and manage documentation

These are some of the most commonly used sales tools by SaaS companies. You can add more to this list based on your unique needs and goals.

Automate or outsource repetitive tasks

Sales reps spend a whopping 72% of their time in non-selling activities and only 28% of their time in selling activities per week.

Source

To maximize the time and efforts of your sales team, consider setting up automated workflows. Most of the overperforming sales teams have adopted automation and AI-powered systems.

You can use AI tools to add virtual sales reps to your website, build ICPs, and predict buyer journeys and behaviors. What’s more, you can create automated workflows to maintain an efficient CRM system, generate and nurture leads, and maintain coordination internally. And this will give your team the time they need to sell.

Centralize sales content and documentation

If you’re leading sales, you know the importance of organized sales content and systematic documentation. Ask any salesperson, and they’ll tell you how much they dread an unorganized pile of documents to find the right ones in time.

You can centralize your sales content and documentation in a sales content management system. It will help your team members access the right content at the right time.

Organized documentation in place shrinks down the conversion time, helping reps focus on customers rather than mundane tasks.

Maintain open communication with reps

An obvious yet often overlooked technique to boost sales team productivity is open communication.

Things begin to go off track with misleading commitments, fake reports, and wrong sales practices. It builds up into a massive disaster that you dig up after it has done considerable damage to your sales pipeline and management.

Here are four ways to maintain open communication with your sales team:

Inculcating transparency in day-to-day interactions
Informing important pieces of information via email
Setting clear and attainable expectations beforehand
Fostering a collaborative environment

Implement a sales shadowing program

Before your sales reps hit the ground, they’ll need a live example of all your sales practices, processes, and negotiations. Throwing them on a sales expedition with no maps and sense of direction will instill fear in them and will result in underperforming sales teams.

To prepare your sales reps for sales shadowing, begin with:

Proper onboarding and training
Setting sales workflow and sales enablement
Familiarizing with sales tech, sales content, and documentation

After you’ve warmed up your reps with all the important details, it’s time for them to observe an experienced sales rep. Allow them to take notes of the observation and trace the use of all the tools you’ve trained them with.

Follow up a sales shadowing program with a debrief with the reps on their observations and add insights to it.

Offer performance-based incentives

Research suggests that incentives—like performance-based bonuses, promotions, and recognition—can significantly influence the productivity of employees in commercial organizations. These incentives can also increase employee engagement, job satisfaction, and morale.

There are multiple ways to incentivize your sales reps. Keeping a mix of monetary and non-monetary incentives is the best way to go about it.

Reduce unnecessary meetings

If you are holding meetings after meetings with your sales team to discuss goals, plans, and processes, it’s time for you to stop and reflect.

A Harvard Business Review report points out that 70% of the meetings create resistance to employee productivity. Too many meetings may be a result of a lack of an organized workflow, an absence of a defined communication channel, or a skill gap in your team.

Dig up the reason behind unnecessary meetings to optimize time for your sales team. Helping reps focus on what they’re there for – to sell to the customer – will automatically boost your team’s sales productivity.

Celebrate team and individual achievements

Moving to the next task immediately after completing one is a counterproductive approach. The human mind is wired to respond positively to appreciation and rewards; a little celebration is a great way to nail that.

Research shows that celebrating individual and collective wins will give your team a confidence boost, a dopamine hit, and the motivation to get on the next sales goals.

So, the next time you hit or exceed your sales targets, take a moment to appreciate the achievements of individuals and the team.

Hit your sales targets every month with high productivity

Sales productivity is the key if you are looking to take your business to the next level. A strategic breakdown of the sales ecosystem will uncover the areas you need to overhaul to maximize its productivity. It’ll also establish better strategies, systems, and processes to ensure maximum ROI on your sales expenses.

Automation and generative AI tools are relatively newer additions to the sales ecosystem. However, they can help SaaS sales leaders significantly cut down mundane work and increase sales productivity. All of this is possible without compromising on the quality of customer experience. It’s time for you to level up your revenue by maximizing sales productivity!

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What drives sales productivity?

Ans. Sales productivity is driven by various factors. Effective sales training, clear goal-setting, and the use of technology to streamline processes are essential. Motivated and well-compensated sales teams, along with a strong customer focus, also play a crucial role in boosting sales productivity.

Q2. What is an example of sales productivity?

Ans. Sales productivity can be exemplified by a salesperson closing a higher number of deals in less time, thanks to improved communication tools, efficient lead management, and refined sales strategies. For instance, if a sales representative increases their sales from $100,000 to $150,000 in a month through streamlined processes and effective client engagement, it demonstrates a tangible example of enhanced sales productivity.

Q3. Why is productivity important in sales?

Ans. Productivity is vital in sales for several reasons.

Efficient sales processes help maximize revenue, allowing a company to thrive. When sales teams work productively, they can reach more potential clients and close deals faster, resulting in increased profitability. Additionally, enhanced productivity contributes to improved customer satisfaction and can build a positive reputation in the market, fostering long-term success for the organization.

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Survey, Goals and other Updates

We have made a number of small tweaks to the Engagedly application. Read on to find out what has changed.

Survey

In the Survey module, it is now possible for survey creators to export the results of a survey. Creators can either export the aggregated results or individual results from a survey.

Goals

In the Goals module, when exporting goals for the My Team/Org goals page, users will now also be able to view the Overall Progress column in the Excel sheet.

Additionally, users will now also be able to export goals based on the filters that have been applied, such as Active/Archived, My Check-ins/Assigned by me/Cascaded goals, etc.

Feedback

When users receive a feedback request, they now have the option to ignore it as well, if they do not feel like responding to the request.

Multi-rater

A new setting has been added to the Multirater cycle. When this setting is enabled, reviewers will be able to skip questions that are not applicable to them without having to select N/A all the time.

This setting will only show up when the settings for ratings for each topic/question have been enabled.

We have also added a feature wherein, a new column can be added to the Org dashboard so that users can easily identify the manager’s average rating among other reviewers. This feature can be enabled when creating or editing a Multirater cycle.

Performance

It is now possible for a manager’s manager to see the review notes that have been added to a performance review. Previously, this privilege was only available to the manager of a direct report.

Rewards

In the Rewards module, in addition to Tango gift cards, Visa prepaid cards can be added as well.

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Top 8 Sales Communication Mistakes That Sales Teams Often Commit

Sales jobs are quite rewarding since they offer plenty of room for growth. The job role is thrilling, especially because it comes with various challenges and continuous learning.

Centering your sales interactions around buyer needs is critical as it allows salespeople to close more high-value deals, thus building a strong base of loyal customers. The ability to connect with customers, anticipate their needs, and persuasively sell the product benefits are all crucial skills in the complex art of selling.

However, even the best sales teams need help when achieving optimal performance. More often than not, in their drive for conversions, they commit several communication blunders, thus impacting the OKRs they’ve set for themselves.

Let’s look at the common sales communication mistakes that can be avoided when dealing with customers.

Avoiding tough sales conversations

During sales interactions, salespeople often hesitate or postpone having challenging conversations, like unpaid invoices, handling objections, or informing them of an unmet deadline. However, avoiding such conversations can lead to misunderstandings and mistrust.

In such situations, it’s important to be transparent and offer complete clarity to customers. Most businesses invest in automation to share updates and not-so-welcome information with customers or rely on their customer service team for it.

For example, billing and accounting teams often resort to an automated dunning process that reminds customers of their unpaid invoices and other debts to collect, other things need open conversations. This hugely avoids delays in the cash flow.

Tough discussions can range from conveying disappointing news to discussing a controversial issue. This avoidance is a common error in sales communication that should be mitigated.

While such avoidance is understandable, given the inherent discomfort, it can severely compromise trust and transparency in the client relationship. This sales communication error should be conscientiously identified and curbed. Remember, open communication channels can help build a robust and lasting relationship with customers, fostering trust and mutual understanding, even for tough news or difficult conversations.

Failing to notice cultural differences in communication

Interacting across diverse cultures can be challenging. The same words can hold varied interpretations, and the nuances of nonverbal behavior can differ greatly. There’s always a risk of causing offense or misunderstanding when engaging with individuals from dissimilar cultural backgrounds.

Say, an American sales personnel is approaching a lead from Japan. Using first names when addressing leads is a common practice in the West but not in East Asian countries like Japan. However, this casual approach is considered rude and disrespectful in Japanese culture, where last names and honorifics are commonly used in a professional context.

These complexities serve as a chance for expansion and insight. Empathy and a willingness to understand can encourage shared comprehension.

Therefore, the sales team must consider bridging cultural gaps that allow valuing human diversity to strengthen team capacity for global business growth.

Pivoting talks about benefits, not features

Another key sales communication mistake is spotlighting product features rather than showcasing how a product can seamlessly fit into the lives of its customers, providing efficient solutions to their unique needs or problems. Prospective clients would invariably want products that offer practical benefits tailored to their specific requirements, and that’s where sales professionals can strike a chord.

Honing in on this can help sales professionals foster a deeper, more personal bond with the customer. Rather than viewing the interaction as a simple commercial transaction, they can transform it into an insightful solution for the customer’s situation. Therefore, sales personnel can demonstrate how a product or service can effortlessly blend into their daily routines or address a particular problem. This is one of the key methods to establish a relationship that transcends the boundaries of a single purchase.

Emphasizing the benefits over the features also cultivates a pool of satisfied customers, who revisit and become brand ambassadors, endorsing the product or service to others based on their affirmative experiences.

Repeating the same old sales pitch

Prospective buyers may get dissatisfied if they hear the same thing argued repeatedly. Despite repeated attempts, some salespeople must use more effective push tactics. Instead, you should make sales proposals more appealing by referencing relevant facts, figures, case studies, and new information.

Building trust is more than simply making a sale; it’s about establishing a rapport with your customer. Because making several sales with the same client is the core of good salesmanship, not simply making one sale. The real reward is not the initial sale but the relationship built, leading to repeated business and powerful word-of-mouth referrals. Investing time in understanding your customer’s perspective can create lifelong patrons.

Pitching rather than conversing

Salespeople are notorious for their aggressive pitches. Customers are often wary of these pitches and take time to get convinced. Instead, it helps if the sales professional has a genuine conversation with the customer, listening to and understanding their issues and needs. This will make the customer more receptive to their narrative which can eventually turn into a convincing pitch.

At times, it can be tough to connect with a group of decision-makers. But it’s important to engage all of them.

In such a case, the salesperson should bounce back and forth between speakers, ensuring everyone feels included and valued in a sales conversation. Doing so can create a dynamic and interactive environment that keeps listeners attentive and interested.
Research has shown that the frequency of switches per minute during a conversation can significantly impact the likelihood of a second meeting and the strength of the connection between individuals. This means salespersons can try more switches per minute to enhance the chances of building a strong and lasting relationship.

Using jargon and complex language

When interacting with clients, most sales teams may have to use technical terminology and complex jargon, especially when the product is super technical. This can sometimes create an unintentional barrier, causing potential customers to feel disconnected due to a lack of familiarity with such industry-specific terms.

Therefore, it’s important to find simpler ways to explain complex terms and features.

Misinterpreting the message

In today’s tech-driven era, misunderstandings are bound to occur. The absence of vocal cues and physical gestures can complicate understanding for sales personnel and clients. Therefore, using clear and concise punctuation is important. The salesperson should pose clarifying questions to understand the client’s message and customers frequently.

To ensure this, start employing a vigilant approach by listening attentively to the customer and repeating their statements in our own words. The aim should be to keep digital communication as effective as in-person interactions that set the stage for fruitful and long-lasting business relationships.

Interrupting the speaker

We’ve all cut someone off while they were talking. It may happen unintentionally, or you may feel compelled to speak out because you’re too thrilled about what to say and are afraid to forget your response or miss out on context. Interrupting a conversion is a common power tactic used by others.

Good listening skills by the sales team are a crucial component of having meaningful interactions with others in which everyone involved is treated with dignity and respect. Regardless of the intention behind the interruption, the speaker (for a salesperson, it is the client) may feel that their opinion needs to be changed. Therefore, show consideration for the other person by waiting for them to complete their talk before responding.

Here are some ways a sales team can drive productive conversations:

Active listening:

Focus on the other person’s words instead of preparing your response. This indicates respect for the speaker’s thoughts and encourages a more fruitful discussion.

Patience:

Wait for the person to complete their thought or idea. Don’t rush them or try to complete their sentences.

Seek permission:

If you strongly urge to interject, ask for permission. A simple, “May I interject?”, can demonstrate respect and prevent feelings of interruption.

Focus on non-verbal cues:

Use non-verbal cues to indicate that you have a point to add. This could include raising a hand or making a particular facial expression.

Also Read: The Essential Guide To Employee Productivity In A Hybrid Setup

Wrapping up

Effective sales communication is a robust base for unleashing success. Avoiding common communication mistakes can significantly enhance a sales team’s ability to connect with customers, build trust, and close deals. By addressing the aforementioned sales communication mistakes discussed in this article, sales professionals can enhance their communication skills and overall sales performance.

By implementing these strategies, sales teams can build stronger relationships, effectively address customer needs, and drive sales success. Continuous practice and refinement of communication skills are essential for sales professionals to excel amidst the competition.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. Why is sales communication important?

Ans. Sales communication is crucial as it fosters customer relationships, boosts sales performance, and ensures effective conveying of product benefits and value propositions.

Q2. How to improve sales communication for SMEs?

Ans. To improve sales communication for SMEs, focus on active listening, personalized approach, product knowledge, clear messaging, and regular training to enhance sales effectiveness and customer satisfaction.

Q3. What are the benefits of improving sales communication?

Ans. Improving sales communication leads to increased sales, stronger customer relationships, better understanding of customer needs, and higher overall business profitability.

Author: Hazel Raoult
Hazel Raoult is a freelance marketing writer and works with PRmention. She has 6+ years of experience in writing about online business, employee productivity, HR tech tools, and entrepreneurship. Hazel loves to split her time between writing, editing, and hanging out with her family. You can connect with her on Linkedin.

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Strategic Workforce Planning: Aligning Human Resources With Business Goals

Strategic workforce planning is an essential component of managing human resources effectively. The workforce planning process involves aligning the organization’s workforce with its business goals. It helps businesses to ensure long-term sustainability and success. Organizations must be adaptive and agile in today’s dynamic business environment. Moreover, having the right people in the correct positions would be best.

It is primarily essential for attaining strategic objectives. This article will discuss strategic workforce planning. Plus, it will cover the importance of aligning human resources with business objectives.

What Is Strategic Workforce Planning?

First of all, you should know what strategic workforce planning is. It is the procedure of forecasting and analyzing a firm’s existing and future workforce needs. It ensures it has the right skills and talent at the right time and positions. Plus, it involves understanding different factors of an organization, including:

Business strategy
Identifying the skills
The competencies need to enforce that strategy
Formulating plans to meet, develop, and keep the necessary talent.

Alex Contes, co-founder & Saas Expert of Reviewgrower, said, “One of the significances of strategic workforce planning is to help firms foresee. Moreover, it assists in reacting to modifications in the business environment. When the firm aligns the workforce with its goals, it can ensure that they have the capabilities to adapt to:

growing trends
Technological advancements
Competitive pressures

When a firm has no proper workforce planning, organizations may face the following:

Skill gaps
Talent shortages
Misalignment between business needs and employee capabilities

All of the above can hinder their proficiency in achieving strategic objectives. Besides, aligning human resources with business objectives increases organizational productivity and performance. Efficient workers performing efficiently are more likely to contribute to the organization’s success.

Strategic workforce planning results in the following:

Improved operational efficiency
Higher customer satisfaction
Increased profitability”

Furthermore, strategic workforce planning is important for retention and talent acquisition. It is a significant challenge to catch and keep top talent in today’s competitive job market. A firm can align human resources with business goals, producing targeted recruitment techniques. It plays a vital role in catching candidates with relevant skills and competencies. Organizations need these skills to move the organization forward.

Also, strategic workforce planning helps recognize high-potential employees within the organization. These employees play their role in succession planning. Moreover, it reduces the risk of crucial talent leaving the firm.

Also Read: Strategic Performance Management: Definition|Benefits|Strategies

The Process Of Strategic Workforce Planning

Follow a structured approach to strategic workforce planning to align human resources with business goals. Keep reading to know the process.

Understanding The Business Strategy

The initial phase in strategic workforce planning is understanding your firm’s business strategy. It involves determining the following:

Long-term goals
Objectives
Priorities of the organization
Key drivers of success.

Business strategy can help align your workforce planning with the complete planning of your organization.

Analyzing The Current Workforce

Joe Troyer, CEO & Head of Growth of DigitalTriggers, said, “An important stage is to examine the organization’s current workforce. It is significant to test the capabilities of your workforce. Plus, you should also determine any skill gaps or departments of improvement. This analysis may involve the following:

Evaluating the skills
Competencies
Experience
Performance of individual employees or groups of employees.

Understand the steps required to align workforce knowledge with the organization’s business objectives.”

Also Read: How to Prepare for the Future of the Remote Workforce in 2023

Forecasting Future Workforce Needs

Predict your future needs by analyzing the current workforce and the organization’s strategy. It will include the following:

Estimating the number of employees required
The skills and competencies needed
Potential changes in job roles or functions.

Firms can efficiently address talent gaps by foreseeing future workforce requirements.

Developing Workforce Strategies

Prof. Dr. Te Wu, CEO of PMO Advisory, said, “After forecasting future workforce needs, you can formulate strategies. These strategies can fill the gap between the desired and current workforce. It may involve strategies like recruitment. Focus recruitment strategies on attracting candidates with the required skills and competencies.

This process may involve leveraging multiple recruitment channels, which include:

Job portals
Social media
Professional networks
Partnerships with educational institutions.

Ensuring that the recruitment procedure is fair, efficient, and transparent to entice top talent is crucial.”

Training And Development

Training and development strategies equip employees with the essential skills to perform their roles efficiently. It may involve:

Providing on-the-job training
Offering workshops and seminars
Supporting employees’ goal of professional certifications
Implementing, mentoring, or coaching programs.

When a firm invests in employee development, it improves its capabilities. Moreover, it also encourages a culture of continuous learning.

Also Read: Importance of Training And Development For Employees: 12 Benefits

Performance Management

Henry Waddilove, Managing Director of Novus Business Connections, said, “Performance management strategy is crucial for aligning individual goals with the organization’s business goals. Employees understand how their contributions align with strategic goals with clear performance expectations and regular feedback. Also, it provides opportunities for recognizing and rewarding high performers. You can also identify the areas for improvement with performance management.”

Succession Planning

Abner Miller, Founder at Starlinkhow, said in an interview, “Succession planning strategies include recognizing and developing high-potential workers. It is to fill key leadership positions in the future. By creating a channel of talent, firms can make sure of a smooth shift when key positions become empty. Moreover, succession planning also includes:

Assessing employees’ potential
Providing development opportunities
Mentoring programs to equip them for future leadership roles.
Employee Engagement Initiatives

Employee engagement strategies work for keeping a positive work environment. In such environments, employees are committed, motivated, and synced with the organization’s goals. A form can achieve this through initiatives such as:

Employee recognition programs
Work-life balance initiatives
Employee wellness programs
Opportunities for career advancement”

Also Read: Employee Happiness: 12 Ways To Keep Employees Happy

Implementing And Monitoring The Workforce Plan

Once the workforce strategies are formulated, they need to be executed effectively. It involves:

Executing the recruitment and selection procedures
Delivering training and development programs
Conducting performance evaluations
Implementing succession plans

Besides, for successful implementation, it is crucial to:

Specify clear timelines
Allocate essential resources
Engage relevant stakeholders

Additionally, make Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to calculate the workforce strategies’ success. These KPIs may contain metrics such as:

Employee turnover rates
Employee satisfaction scores
Training Effectiveness
Leadership bench strength

Why Strategic Workforce Planning Is Important

Keep reading to know the importance of strategic workforce planning in the organization.

Anticipating And Responding To Changes

Vicky Cano, Chef & Recipe Developer at Mealfan, said, “Forecasting future conditions of your firm ensures that the organization has the needed capabilities and capacities. These capabilities are crucial to adapt to:

Emerging trends
Technological advancements
Competitive pressures

When you’ve no proper workforce planning, organizations may undergo the following:

Skill gaps
Talent shortages
Misalignment between employee capabilities and business requirements

Enhancing Organizational Performance And Productivity

Josh Snow, CEO of Customerfeedback, said, “Employees with the necessary skills are more likely to contribute to the organization’s success. Strategic workforce planning makes sure that the organization has the right talent. Employees with the right skills contribute to overall good performance and productivity.”

Conclusion

Strategic workforce planning is essential for aligning human resources with business goals. Implementing strategic workforce planning can predict the future workforce needs of your firm.

Through these strategies, your firm can entice and retain the best employees. Eventually, it will benefit your organization in reaching its goals. These employees can eventually be the reason for your firm’s long-term success. Also, constantly monitoring and evaluating the workforce strategy helps organizations stay agile. Plus, it also assists firms in adjusting to changing business conditions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What Is Strategic Workforce Planning?

Ans. Strategic Workforce Planning is the process of aligning an organization’s workforce with its long-term business goals and objectives to ensure it has the right talent in the right place at the right time.

Q2. Why do businesses need Strategic Workforce Planning?

Ans. Businesses need Strategic Workforce Planning to anticipate future talent needs, address skill gaps, enhance agility, and optimize workforce efficiency, ensuring long-term success and competitiveness.

Q3. What are the benefits of Strategic Workforce Planning?

Ans. The benefits of Strategic Workforce Planning include better talent alignment, improved agility, increased productivity, reduced labor costs, and enhanced long-term organizational performance.

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Social Flow of Work: Enhance Digital Real-Time Collaboration with Engagedly

The recent pandemic redefined communication in organizations – large and small, retail and wholesale, regional and global. Internal communication underwent a revolution as employees worldwide were compelled to adopt remote-first policies supported by cutting-edge technologies. Employers and employees embraced the practice of working remotely, and thus, finding the best internal communication platform that streamlines communication, enhances efficiency, and encourages collaboration has become paramount, more than ever.

Wondering how an internal communication platform can help enhance business efficiency and collaboration?

Social Flow of Work: Engagedly’s Internal Communication Platform

Engagedly’s social flow of work helps businesses and individuals communicate in real-time through instant messaging. A must in today’s workplace, this platform enhances internal processes, like information flows and teamwork, and interactions between employees. The robust platform allows employees to broadcast information to a group chat, use private messages for direct communication, or create private channels with only a few co-workers.

Engagedly’s platform is an all-in-one internal communication tool that teams can use to plan, collaborate, analyze, and monitor work more simply. The comprehensive tool is a mix of modules that allow organizations to manage work while keeping the interaction engaging and convenient.

The platform integrates with important applications, such as MS Teams, Slack, G Suite email, and MS Outlook, to eliminate switching apps each time. It is a great option to make remote teams productive and communicate efficiently.

Also Read: How to Manage Grapevine Communication in an Organization

Inspire Team Engagement, Efficiency, and More

Engagedly’s platform streamlines communication, knowledge sharing, and peer recognition with seamless status updates that keep everyone in sync. It allows staff members and supervisors to distribute information rapidly, store and share knowledge, present ideas, and proposals, ask questions, and receive constructive feedback.

The internal communication platform constantly updates team members by collating key information about the company and projects in one organized place, always available to employees.

Furthermore, its seamless integrations offer a new, transparent, two-way asynchronous communication channel inside the organization. So, anybody may ask questions and obtain the knowledge required to make quicker and more informed decisions. Some of the salient features of the Engagedly platform include:

Easy-to-Use

With its social media style interface, users feel more comfortable using the platform from the get-go. It is the ideal solution for expediting internal communication, especially if your staff is globally dispersed and works remotely.

Thanks to its ease of use, Engagedly users need no training to use the platform regularly. Additional benefits include group or private chat, push notifications, an in-app directory, immediate updates and notifications (likes and comments), and more.

Easy-to-Integrate

Thanks to its integrations, you can integrate Engagedly with other tools your teams might already use. Team members can instantly access feedback posted on the Social feed on Engagedly. They can view comments and respond promptly from MS Teams, Slack, G Suite email, and MS Outlook.

Easy-to-Navigate

Engagedly’s messenger has been built to connect teams across organizations. It has a sleek, modern interface that users adore. With features like private messaging and group conversations, it facilitates idea sharing across teams of workers. This simple platform is designed with seamless navigational feature flows that offer excellent and uninterrupted workflows to its users.

Also Read: Employee Experience vs. Employee Productivity: Does One Affect the Other?

Fosters Employee Engagement and Motivation

Here’s an interesting fact: A survey by Cisco found that 56% of young professionals won’t work at a company if they are not provided access to social media. Another survey says that 49% of younger professionals already use social tools for internal communication and collaboration. 40% of millennials are even ready to pay for social communication tools to enhance communication and productivity. Hence, using tools that provide a social media-like platform in the day-to-day workflow is imperative.

Internal communication tool Engagedly makes talking to co-workers as easy as texting friends on social media. The all-in-one platform promotes efficiency and productivity at work while maintaining everyone’s interest and motivation. It promotes internal communication, enabling businesses to empower staff and unite everyone in a virtual setting.

Encourages Two-Way Communication

Engagedly’s platform encourages two-way dialogues by helping employees deliver and broadcast news, share information, images, and updates, share results with the team, and more. The platform extends the opportunity to promote an event online and offline by linking them to relevant pages.

The platform equips users with a quick and streamlined method of communicating with peers on any topic, providing a time-effective and notification-based alternative to more passive mediums like emails.

Facilitates Instant Messaging

With millennials forming the major part of today’s workforce, instant messaging feels natural for most users. The fundamental goal of the platform is to eliminate ineffective work – frequently checking emails and inboxes.

Email etiquette is tough to grasp and may seem too formal a forum for straightforward inquiries. A tool that aids the social flow of work allows teams to eliminate the overly professional decorum and focus solely on the matter.

The Washington Post reveals that the average worker spends about 4.1 hours daily checking their mailbox. A sound internal communication tool can reduce your teams’ emails by up to 75%, fastening the workflow.

Boosts Transparency

Engagedly offers an easy collaboration platform to initiate discussions and share files. Since all information is public, anybody may remark and express their opinion. Employee morale and satisfaction are increased through open and transparent internal communication. Employees are more likely to be pleased with their job and dedicated to the company when they feel educated, respected, and listened to.

Also Read: How Innovative Offices Improve Employee Collaboration

Connect and Engage Your Workforce

Engagedly’s platform for the social flow of work is intuitive and easy to use, so people can quickly get on board. The tool boosts employee engagement and retention using a familiar app setting (like many social media websites). With Engagedly, information exchange is done interestingly and promotes community in an organization. Companies may inform their staff via the social experience by publishing information like internal business news in a recognizable fashion. Here’s how you can utilize the platform to its fullest potential:

News and Updates

Employees appreciate when they are informed about what is happening in the organization. According to Geckoboard, a survey found that 80% of employees want their leaders to inform them about the company’s decisions and performance.

Additionally, keeping employees updated with new information, changes, and policies mitigates risks associated with grapevine communication.

Knowledge Pool

Employees possess a wealth of knowledge and information. Collaboration becomes possible, and productivity increases when they can impart that expertise to their subordinates and peers. With the internal staff communication tool, employees can easily crowdsource information on innovation, best practices, safety, and more from other employees.

Social Interaction

The internal communication platform features a social module that allows employees to share updates, create groups, and interact with each other. It can be further utilized to broadcast company announcements, welcome new hires, celebrate staff success, and create a buzz of communication. Additionally, the company can drive social engagement across the news stories with ‘Likes’ and comment threads.

Surveys and Forms

Listening to employees and implementing their feedback is critical for achieving organizational goals. The internal communication tool allows employees to voice their opinions and encourages user feedback using Forms, Surveys, Polls, Group Forums, and Assessments. This fosters proactive engagement and collaboration, allowing employers to gather valuable user feedback and gain relevant insights.

Also Read: How To Interpret Your Employee Engagement Survey Results

Social Flow of Work: Embrace the Power of Healthy Communication

While it requires time and effort, communication, in all its forms, is the adhesive that holds an organization together. Hence, investing in a robust communication tool and prioritizing high-quality, engaging communication can lead to greater stakeholder alignment, conflict resolution, transparency, and project success.

Engagedly’s internal communication platform provides many benefits, making it a modern software stack’s mainstay. It helps you position your organization as a true leader by elevating your workforce communication and outshining the competition.

Engagedly’s platform boosts teamwork and workplace atmosphere. It ensures every new member is on the same page as the rest of the team, making communicating and achieving goals easy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What does grapevine communication refer to?

Ans. Grapevine communication refers to indirect and informal channels of business communication. It stretches across the organization in all directions, regardless of authority levels.

Q2. What is crowdsourcing?

Ans. Crowdsourcing refers to collecting information, ideas, and content from a large group of people for innovation, problem-solving, and efficiency improvement.

Q3. What does ‘mushroom management’ refer to?

Ans. Mushroom management is a style of management where leaders don’t keep their employees or staff informed about major business decisions, performance, etc. Employees are kept in the dark, affecting their productivity and engagement. The management style lacks proper communication between the employees and the employer.

Also read: Which HR Roles are Most Likely to Be Replaced by AI?

What Is a Matrix Organizational Structure?

Also read: What Is a Chief People Officer? Role and Responsibilities

Also read: How to Get Started With a Career in HR: A Beginner’s Guide

Types of Matrix Structures

Weak Matrix

Balanced Matrix

Also read: Insights for HR: How to Support HR Teams Through Downsizing Challenges

Strong Matrix

Also read: Careers Spotlight: What Is an HR Generalist?

Benefits of a Matrix Organizational Structure

Also read: Essential Skills Every HR Professional Should Master

Challenges of a Matrix Organizational Structure

Also read: Top 7 Productivity Hacks Used by Successful HR Leaders

Summing Up

Frequently Asked Questions

What role does leadership play in a matrix organization?

Can a matrix structure work for all types of organizations?

How can an organization transition to a matrix structure successfully?

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Understanding the Current Generations of the Workforce

Traditionalists and Baby Boomers

Generation X

Millennials

Generation Z

Common Challenges of Managing a Multi-Generational Team

How To Bridge Generational Gaps in Your Team

Talk to your team to understand their unique experiences

Promote the beauty of age diversity

Foster psychological safety

Encourage your team to set boundaries

Debunk the negative stereotypes

Group employees with complementary skills in projects

Don’t play favorites

Facilitate diversity and inclusion training programs

Organize team-building activities

Listen to Your Employees Attentively

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What is Team Pulse?

Also read: 7 Signs To Help You Recognize A Toxic Workplace

Benefits of Using Team Pulse

Detailed Real-Time Insights

Also read: Engagedly + Meta: Elevating Rewards and Recognition

Helps Identify Problems

Provides Honest Feedback

Lowers Employee Burnout

Also read: Engagedly’s Social Flow of Work | Streamline Communication

Team Pulse is Now Accessible in the Mobile App!

Take Control, Anywhere, Anytime

Drive Success Effortlessly

Also read: Engagedly’s GrowthHub – IDP Module: Achieve Employee Growth

Your Voice, Your Impact

Boost Engagement to Activate Success

Also read: Engagedly Launches Growth Hub to Empower Career Development with Marissa AI

Engagedly Team Pulse Features

Also read: Mentoring Complete Integration with Engagedly

Engagedly Team Pulse Tool for All

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Boost Productivity with Salesforce + Engagedly Goals 2.0

Engagedly with Salesforce: Fuel Business Performance with Efficient Goal-Setting

Engagedly Goals 2.0 + Salesforce Integration: Key Features and Benefits

Effective Goal Alignment

Seamless Integration

Deep Insights into the Team’s Productivity

Increased Employee Engagement

Streamlined Communication

Intuitive UI for a Seamless User Experience

All the Major Metrics in One Place

Accurate Forecasting

Conclusion

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Salesforce integration enhance the efficiency of a goal management process?

How does a goal management tool improve business productivity?

What are some other tools to improve the productivity of an organization?

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1. Prioritization and Goal Setting

2. Time Blocking and Scheduling

3. Delegation and Outsourcing

4. Minimizing Distractions

5. Technology Tools and Apps