Srikant Chellappa is the Co-Founder and CEO at Engagedly and is a passionate entrepreneur and people leader. He is an author, producer/director of 6 feature films, a music album with his band Manchester Underground, and is the host of The People Strategy Leaders Podcast.
Annual performance reviews are outdated. They do not provide clarity regarding an employee’s performance, moreover they can lead to disgruntled and unproductive workforce. But still many organizations are using them to conduct yearly performance evaluations. A research conducted by Gallup found that 86% of employees do not feel that their reviews provide fair picture of their performance.
In this article, we will discuss some reasons for ditching your annual performance reviews and adopt a continuous evaluation performance evaluation system.
Problems With Annual Performance Reviews
Here are some reasons why progressive organizations are letting go of their annual performance review systems and adopting a more systematic, structured, and continuous process.
1. It’s Annual
Yes, one of the problems with conducting the annual performance review is that it is annual. An entire performance review just once a year. Therefore, annual performance reviews are rightly hard to sustain. To cram an entire year’s work into a two page report or a 15 minute session seems impossible and not feasible, yet, that is how it happens, which of course leads to more issues.
An annual performance review will work when in the time leading up to the review the manager has been constantly checking in with the employees, has been offering feedback etc. When all of that doesn’t happen, and all a manager has is a day or so to prepare for the process, it is understandable that the review process might proceed in a less than favorable manner. It is easier to carry out a performance review twice a year instead of just once. It reduces the burden placed upon the manager as well as the HR and it also allows the process to be more organic, thereby reducing the chance of the entire performance review process failing.
2. It’s Not Managed Well
This is unfortunately true of most performance review processes at organizations. Organizations see the process as important but they don’t know how to make sure that is a valuable to both the employee and the manager. Performance reviews might begin at the end of the financial year, but a good performance review process has already begun much before that.
In order to make sure that the performance review process is valuable to both the employee and the manager, from the beginning, managers need to set goals and objectives, revisit those goals and objectives monthly, conduct feedback sessions frequently, and have some method to track an employee’s progress. That is how a performance review becomes valuable. Otherwise it is just another process that we carry out in an organization.
3. They Disengage Employees From Work
Rather than providing any benefit to employees, annual performance reviews can dissuade them from the path of productivity. An ideal performance evaluation system should engage and motivate employees to work and stay productive, but an inaccurate review can do a lot of harm to them.
Recency bias is one of the culprits that lets managers assess their team members based on their most recent interaction with them. With limited time available for managers to review all their employees, it becomes apparent that they are unable to take an employee’s annual progress into consideration.
4. Interlinking Salary Hike To Performance Reviews
Often, performance reviews are linked to salary hikes, which makes the process more stressful for both employees and managers. Every employee wants to get a salary hike, but it depends on a manager’s assessment of their contribution to the organization. If managers are able to accurately gauge the performance of employees and provide them with positive reviews, they will feel motivated. Otherwise, they may end up fretting and becoming disengaged from work.
5. Inefficient Performance Evaluation Systems
The traditional performance review systems used by organizations lack continuous feedback, check-ins, and goal tracking features, which makes them inept for conducting a fair and accurate review. With the changing demands of businesses, customer personalization, and changes in working setups, such systems have become even more incompetent. The only solution available to organizations is to switch to a progressive and continuous performance management system.
Engagedly’s powerful and employee-centric performance management system allows real-time evaluation of employees and offers actionable insights to managers to develop their workforce. Its other useful features, such as 360-degree feedback, OKRs, and learning and development, aid in the overall growth and development of employees. Additionally, it helps in conducting quick surveys to understand the pulse of employees and offers interactive dashboards for quick interpretation of data.
Your business is full of talented, hard-working employees. But it’s not enough that they can perform well as individuals.
They have to be able to work in efficient, productive teams.
And in some ways, that’s getting harder. Your team might have remote or hybrid members — you could even be in completely different time zones.
With the right tools and techniques, any team can be high-performing. This article gives you the tips you need to improve team performance.
Why is Team Performance Important?
Team performance is related to job performance. Research shows that team members who are highly engaged in their work and motivated by the mission of their organization tend to produce higher quality, more innovative products than those who are disengaged or uninvolved.
Types Of Teams In The Workplace
Hybrid and Remote Teams
The days of everyone coming to the office every day are over for most teams. While many employees only started working from home in 2020 as a safety measure, most don’t want to go back full-time.
75.6% of employees want to work from home at least one day per week. 33.3% want to work from home five days per week. And employers are allowing it.
Source: hbr.org
Only 4% of employers have communicated that they expect employees to return full-time. 19.7% have no clear plans,
Another 64.5% will allow some degree of remote work.
That creates a new challenge: teams have to work smoothly and efficiently despite not being in the same room.
Cross-Functional Teams
Cross-functional teams are made up of people with different skill sets and expertise.
They’re often set up temporarily to work on a specific project. For example, a cross-functional team working on a product launch could include employees from product development, marketing, sales, and finance.
They bring a range of perspectives together, which fosters innovation and creativity, and they allow organizations to tackle more complex projects. But there are downsides.
Ineffective communication and misaligned goals in cross-functional teams can lead to issues in coordination, project management, and project delivery. Implementing team management best practices can help cross-functional teams perform better.
Qualities Of An Effective Team
How do you evaluate your team’s performance? We’ll talk about choosing specific metrics of success in a bit, but in general, a high-performing team will have these qualities:
Clear Goals
The best teams can meet or exceed the goals that are set for them. They know exactly what’s expected, and they get it done.
Efficiency
High-performing teams don’t waste time. They get a lot done by operating as efficiently as possible.
If a team is inefficient, it doesn’t necessarily mean the team members aren’t working hard enough. Sometimes, a team’s performance is hampered by outdated tools or processes that need to be reevaluated.
Motivation
The team members of an efficient team are motivated to do their best.
This usually comes from a sense of ownership in the team’s work. Team members feel positive about being a part of the team and are driven to achieve team goals.
6 Tips for Improving Team Performance
Team performance improvements often come from working smarter, not harder. These six strategies can be applied to any team to improve performance.
1. Set Clear Expectations
Teams can’t succeed if they don’t know what success looks like. Your team members should understand their goals and roles, as well as how they’ll be evaluated. Use the below suggestions to set clear expectations in the team.
Use KPIs for measuring the team’s performance
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, are quantifiable measures of performance. They’re the numbers that tell you how you’re doing on your goals.
Your team’s KPIs should include a combination of individual goals and team objectives. For example, a customer service team could track the total number of tickets the team resolved and measure the customer satisfaction ratings of each team member.
Reports and dashboards make KPIs much more useful. Team members should know how to check in on their progress and see how the team is doing.
Roles Within Teams
Each member of the team must have an understanding of their role. Unclear communication about who’s responsible for a task can lead to duplicated or unfinished work.
Work management software that can ensure that there’s no confusion about who’s supposed to do what.
Performance Review Process
In addition to knowing what they’re supposed to do, team members should understand how their achievements will be evaluated. Are there incentives for doing well? What metrics affect the likelihood that they’ll get a raise?
If employees don’t understand how their KPI numbers translate into real-life rewards, they’ll be less motivated to perform well.
2. Automate and Streamline Team Processes
Even the best team will fail if it has inefficient processes. So assign the processes according to the team’s calibre to improve the productivity of the entire team.
No one wants to do things the slow way, but it’s really easy for inefficiencies to become standard if you don’t regularly evaluate and optimize the way you do things.
Sometimes, an inefficient process is just how things have always been done. A team member has painstakingly created the same excel report every Monday for years, and no one has taken the time to find a better method.
Sometimes it’s because you have tools that don’t work together. For example, did you know that the average organization uses ten different sales technology tools? Switching between them for different tasks is a big waste of time.
A sales CRM solution can bring all of your customer relationship processes together and automate the repetitive parts of the job.
Talk to your team members about which manual processes are taking up the most time. Are there modifications that could save the invaluable time of the team? Better yet, could the process be automated?
3. Respect your Team’s Time
Have you ever had to attend an unproductive meeting that could have been an email?
Of course you have. We all have.
Pointless meetings are one of the biggest time sucks in the workplace. 44% of professionals say that poorly organized meetings are keeping them from doing their real work.
By using a meeting scheduler, you can manage your time and meetings in an effective manner. The tool enables your customers to view available time-slots in your calendar and book meetings accordingly, to avoid any conflicts.
And all that wasted time means wasted money. In fact, 34% of professionals consider unnecessary meetings to be the biggest cost to their organization.
Source: Zippia.com
Team leaders have a responsibility to communicate information efficiently. A meeting isn’t always the best way to go. That meeting could be an email, but we have an even better idea — that meeting could be a conversation on your work management platform.
4. Foster Transparency
In a successful team, every team member trusts every other team member to do their part. There’s a group dynamic of openness and honesty.
You can improve transparency at the team level by doing the following:
Provide Visibility Into What the Team Is Doing
Anyone working on a project should have complete information about it. When a team member can only see their own piece of the puzzle, decision-making and problem-solving are impacted.
Project management software can ensure that everyone on the team knows what other team members are doing.
That level of visibility also holds team members accountable. Knowing that your coworkers can see how much you’re contributing to the project is motivational.
Offer Insights Through Reports and Dashboards
Ideally, team members should have visibility of each other’s tasks.
Using a solution with sophisticated reporting and dashboard software gives the whole team insights into progress and performance.
Encourage Feedback
Encourage everyone on the team to speak their mind. If they have feedback about the way the team is managed or how a process is done, be open to hearing it.
Team leaders should also give constructive feedback to direct reports. That improves team performance while letting team members know that you’ll be honest with them.
5. Reward Success
Everyone loves to be rewarded for their hard work. Whether it’s a monetary bonus or simple recognition, team members are motivated by incentives.
Most businesses only reward individual achievements.
No matter how many talented individuals you have on a work team, the team will only be successful if those individuals work well together. As per Deloitte, only 28% of organizations give performance rewards based on team metrics. 39% use individual metrics, and 55% use individual performance reviews.
Choose a team goal that everyone can work on together and let the team know that there’ll be a reward if they meet it.
6. Choose the Right Tools
It’s easy to talk about things like improving accountability or streamlining processes.
But if you don’t have the right team software solutions, it’s impossible to actually do it.
For example, you might feel strongly about the importance of team communication, but some of that communication is going to get lost in disorganized email inboxes if you don’t have a better tool to manage your emails.
Communication
Have a question about a task’s status?
Don’t send an email or use a separate messaging app. That’s how you end up with five different disjointed conversations around the same issue.
Communication happens where the work happens. A good communication platform is especially important if you have hybrid or virtual teams or if team members come from a variety of departments. Moreover, good communication during meetings is equally as important. To facilitate this, you could use a meeting note app
Transparency
A good project management platform provides visibility into what everyone on the team is doing. Project information, deadlines, files, and conversations are all easy to find.
Reports and dashboards let team members visualize the group’s progress and achievements. This kind of visibility also makes reporting to stakeholders on project statuses simpler.
Process Automation
You don’t have to be a tech wiz to automate workflows.Save time by automating mundane tasks like status updates and email notifications. Or get fancy with multi-step automation recipes that streamline entire workflows.
Conclusion
By following the six tips above, any team can improve performance without adding extra work.
Remember that team development is an ongoing process. Meet with your team regularly to openly discuss any frustrations they have or inefficiencies they’ve discovered.
One of the biggest things you can do to improve team performance is to use the right tools. Discuss with your team the tools that can add more value to their work and help solve challenges. However, you may want the assistance of a third party with such a new pair of eyes to understand what more you may add to your team, so be sure to look out for staff augmentation services that can help you boost your overall productivity.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with Real-Time Performance Management? Book a live demo with us.
Earlier, it was viewed as a system where managers would assess the performance of their employees annually based on some specific parameters. The system had a series of flaws that would lead to inaccurate measurement of performance and eventual disengagement and dissatisfaction among employees.
On the flip side, the modern approach to performance management is highly focused on the development and growth of employees. It is a continuous and ongoing set of processes that helps to identify, examine, measure, and improve the performance of employees. Other than focusing on employees’ personal and professional development, it provides great insights into the untapped potential of employees and identifies the blindspots that are a hurdle to organizational development.
There are a multitude of reasons why companies like Accenture, Adobe, Google, Microsoft, and GE have ditched their traditional command-and-control management systems for people-focused and growth-oriented performance management. Organizations that are highly invested in the performance of their workforce have higher ROI, lower employee turnover, are more innovative, and are better at problem-solving. They are able to sail through turbulent times without compromising on their work quality.
This article will talk at length about the intricacies of performance management and will unpack details about the following:
Performance management is crucial for the success of any business. It helps align the resources in the right direction and ensures higher growth potential. It encompasses a set of processes that continuously measure employees’ performance and build a communication channel between managers and employees to accomplish the strategic objectives of the organization.
Performance management plays an important role in every industry. It helps create an environment where employees are motivated to be better at their jobs by offering them regular feedback and resources to improve their skills.
Furthermore, it is a periodic and systematic process that helps align individual goals to organizational goals, and therefore key decisions like appraisals, promotions, and bonuses are linked to it.
All the major parameters of organizational and individual success are linked to performance management in the following ways:
Helps in setting goals that are inclined to organizational objectives
Provides regular feedback to team members
Acts as a medium of communication to discuss issues, opportunities, threats, and progress of projects
Offers learning and development opportunities, and reward and recognition based on individual performance
Creates performance standards for employees
It is critically important to note that performance management is not a one-size-fits-all approach for every organization.
Even though it is a corporate tool that helps solve challenges related to productivity, performance, retention, and engagement, every organization needs to redesign or customize performance management as per their business requirements to get optimum results.
Another common misconception about performance management is relating it to traditional performance appraisals that were limited in scope, as they did not include clear goal setting and frequent feedback mechanisms.
Why Is Performance Management Important?
The changing global business environment, the rapidly evolving technical landscape, changing customer preferences, challenges with global supply chain management, and employees’ expectations from employers are the chief factors that will define the success of an organization in the coming years.
The below image provides a clear understanding of changing employees’ expectations and values at work in the post-pandemic world.
The recent developments in the market, The Great Resignation, and IT automation are adding to the predicaments of human resource managers. Finding the right talent and retaining potential employees is getting tougher every day. On top of that, organizations are still reeling under the economic stress of the pandemic.
The following image highlights some of the challenges that HR leaders need to be prepared for.
Source: home.KPMG (New challenges perceived by HR leaders, 2021)
The situation does not seem to get easier anytime soon. So, how do organizations manage their most valuable resources in turbulent times? This is where performance management becomes indispensable to an organization’s sustainability and growth.
By leveraging different components of performance management, organizations can not only retain their employees but also be prepared for unprecedented changes in their business. Furthermore, they can create a differentiated brand position for themselves and attract new talent easily.
To remain competitive in the current business environment, it is imperative to focus on building a systematic, goal-centered, and employee-centric performance management system.
What Are The Key Components of Performance Management?
Performance management is responsible for the creation of a growth-driven, engaging, and productive environment. A well-thought-out, innovative, and strategically laid-out performance management system can boost performance and lead to the development of a dynamic and highly skilled workforce. In order for performance management to bring effective results, organizations need to incorporate its components into every process and ensure compliance.
The different components of performance management goal setting, ongoing communication through frequent feedback, performance reviews, rewarding good performance, creating improvement plans, and learning and development help to make it a vital tool for organizational development.
What Are The Benefits Of Effective Performance Management?
Performance management is a multi-faceted tool that helps in the overall development of employees and, thereby, achieves organizational objectives. By working at the individual and team level, performance management helps in identifying blindspots in employee productivity and development that are a barrier to the achievement of company goals. Furthermore, it supports management in reducing employee turnover, getting higher ROI, enhancing employee engagement and productivity, and building a more diverse and inclusive culture.
Source: Profit.co
The benefits of performance management are not just limited to the organization, but spread across all the stakeholders. It plays a crucial role in increasing the organizational efficiency by:
Creating an open channel of communication between managers and employees
Building trust, integrity, and loyalty in employees
Aligning individual goals with organizational objectives
Providing the right resources to employees for growth and development
Helping in goal setting and making employees accountable for their progress in the organization
Offering visibility to employees for their efforts and ensuring that employees understand the impact of their efforts on organizational success
Reducing conflicts between team members
Offering a platform for self-assessment, learning, performance review, and discussions
Providing open feedback to employees on their skills, competencies, progress, and future development
Checking the readiness of employees to undertake more responsible positions
Creating personalized development plans for employees
Motivating low-performing employees through coaching and mentoring
Principles Of Performance Management
Performance management is a vast process. It requires collaboration from multiple levels to be successful. It is an integrated approach that touches both vertical and horizontal segments of the organization. To ensure the success of performance management, human resource leaders must adhere to some fundamental principles that serve as supporting pillars to the overall process.
The process is founded on the following principles of performance management:
Without incorporating its basic tenets, performance management will not be fruitful in the long run.
Performance Management Best Practices
Following the disruptions caused by the pandemic, many HR processes, including performance management, have started to gravitate toward becoming strategic business contributors to the organization. The concept of performance management has been redefined by the leaders, and it now encompasses the series of changes brought in by the radical developments in the business environment.
Performance management has metamorphosed into a real-time goal setting and employee development tool that overlooks different aspects of employee and organizational performance. As organizations are now juggling between remote and hybrid work setups, it is important for them to keep a tab on the overall performance of their employees.
Human resource managers must incorporate certain best practices to enhance the performance of their remote and hybrid teams. These include:
UsingOKR methodology (Objectives And Key Results) for goal setting, tracking, analyzing, and improving performance
Redesigning employee KPIs and goals as per the work setup
SettingSMART(specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based) goals for employees
What Are The Problems With Performance Management?
A survey by Deloitte highlights that only 8% of organizations derive high value from their performance management processes, while 58% find it ineffective in delivering results.
Despite numerous developments in the field of HR management and strategies, there are certain problems that are a huge barrier to implementing effective performance management in organizations. If left unchecked, these problems can cascade into the system and result in conflicts among employees and leaders, low performance, underachievement of organizational goals, and low customer retention and acquisition. On the employee front, ineffective performance management can lead to demotivation, disengagement, lack of trust, and high turnover.
Some of the major problems with performance management:
A performance management system is a collaborative approach between employees and management to frequently review the performance of employees and provide them with constructive feedback.
It entails planning, monitoring, and reviewing the performance to achieve short and long-term organizational goals and also provide a growth trajectory to employees for their overall development.
To ensure higher performance and achievement of objectives, organizations develop a series of activities that help employees understand their strengths and weaknesses and offer them learning opportunities to nurture their skills.
But what’s the purpose?
It’s multifold and it touches upon individual, team, and organizational productivity, goal goal-setting methodologies. Further, it helps in creating frequent check-ins and feedback processes, learning and development, and rewarding employees for exemplary performance.
Types Of Performance Management Systems
A performance management system acts as a guiding light that helps organizations stay committed to their mission and vision by constantly monitoring the performance of employees and offering support wherever required so as to not stray from the optimal path.
There are different types of performance management systems available at the disposal of organizations. Some of the most commonly used ones are:
Based on the business requirements, organizational culture, and goals, organizations can select the ones that help them achieve better results. However, many organizations are now making a shift to OKRs and 360 degrees because of the numerous benefits they offer.
How To Get Started With Performance Management?
Whether you are running a startup with a handful of employees or a multinational organization, it is always difficult to align everyone’s vision to achieve overarching goals. Every organization wants to achieve more through continuous improvement, but without a proper framework to support it, it can be extremely challenging to make a mark.
Having a performance management framework to create alignment between organizational and employee goals is the starting point of mastering the art of performance management. When done right, performance management harbingers great results for an organization.
Meticulously analyze the industry and business environment
List your most important organizational goals
Ruminate over the problems you would like to resolve with the help of performance management
Take management’s support in understanding the intricacies of performance management
Analyze the previously available data, if any, to understand what processes did not work well and what improvements can be made
If required, seek external support from leading performance management experts
Technology And Performance Management?
The growing need for innovation, creativity, problem solving, and adaptability is transforming workplaces. Employees’ expectations have changed over the years, and so has the way organizations operate.
The current demands of digitization and agility have led to a fast adaptation of automated performance management systems that can reduce the manual workload of HR managers and optimize the processes.
provide a framework for collaboration between employees and management.
The below image provides an overview of real-time dashboards visible to leaders and managers. With their help, managers are able to keep track of the progress of organizational goals.
By doing away with redundant tasks, HR leaders can focus on important issues and help create a better learning environment for employees.
83% say that the quality of conversations has improved between managers and employees
96% found the process to be simpler than before
Google, Kelly Services, IBM, Cargill, and Juniper are some of the companies that have redefined their performance management systems. They are leveraging technology to create a continuous performance management system. It helps support processes such as feedback management, check-ins, creating better job descriptions, performance reviews, and even learning and development. These companies are now more focused on employee development and engagement rather than annual performance reviews that would give inaccurate results.
Key Takeaways
Performance management is at the heart of every organization. It helps in creating a formidable performance-driven culture that supports higher productivity, engagement, and optimal utilization of resources. Effective performance management systems are one of the key distinguishing parameters of high-performing organizations. By utilizing the various components of performance management effectively, organizations can create a skilled workforce that is ready to take challenges head-on.
Did you know your employees could do a lot more for your business than they actually do? Well, if you didn’t know, the answer is yes. However, you have an important part to play as an employer. Maximizing employee ability doesn’t just happen. You need to motivate your employees to give their best at work. When you fail to do this, employees can easily feel unvalued, which decreases their engagement and ultimately their performance. What’s worse, this can have a detrimental effect on the company’s bottom line.
So, how can you ensure that your employees’ potential is maximized for improved performance? Here, we tip you on 5 things that you can offer your team.
Training and development opportunities
Providing training and development opportunities for employees boosts their potential in several ways. For starters, it bridges the skills gaps. This means that employees gain additional skills to perform their work better and even take on other roles effectively. In addition, it increases motivation and engagement. Employees are more likely to invest in an organization that invests in their career development. Moreover, employees give their best at work when they are highly engaged.
Think of ways to help your employees improve their skills. Assigning projects for experiential learning and offering mentorship programs go a long way. In addition, you can sponsor employees to take up various courses such as PMP certification training, CIPM certification, financial analyst training, sales certification, and SHRM certification, among others.
You may have a highly skilled workforce in place, but if you are not acknowledging their good work, you are impeding their ability to work at full potential. For employees to see that their capabilities matter in the organization, they need to feel and see that it matters to you as well. And, the best way to show them is by recognizing their efforts.
You may be shying away from this, thinking that it is expensive. However, most employees aren’t after glamorous and expensive rewards. A shout-out during the morning meeting, a pat on the back, or a genuine thank-you letter can go a long way. If the budget allows occasional gifts such as lunch vouchers, travel tickets, and things like these, can be a good potential booster.
Flexible working hours
Not everyone is wired to work an 8 to 5 job. Some people are highly productive early in the morning, others in the afternoon, and others late at night. Insisting on having such individuals at their desks the whole day isn’t only demoralizing, but also inhibits their potential. You can consider offering flexible hours for roles that don’t need the employee to be present full time.
Flexible working hours give employees an opportunity to improve their work-life balance. This results in happy and satisfied employees who are willing to work at their best. In addition, employees’ productivity and quality of work go up when they work during the hours that they feel most productive.
Constructive feedback
Giving feedback to your employees is one of the most effective tools for managing employee performance. It helps employees see areas of strength and motivates them to do better. Giving balanced feedback, which means including areas of weaknesses, helps employees improve on those areas.
However, for employee feedback to be effective in increasing potential, it has to be balanced as mentioned. In addition, make it two-way. Have the employees gauge their performance before offering your feedback. Also, ensure that it is objective and timely.
The work environment has a lot to do with how employees perform. Individuals work better in a positive culture that promotes psychological safety, wellbeing, teamwork, mutual respect, compassion, and healthy work relationships. Such an environment boosts morale and increases engagement, which inspires employees to work at their best. To create a positive culture, start encouraging social connections, show empathy and compassion, and be an approachable leader among other steps that make a happy and satisfying work environment.
Conclusion
Unlocking your employees’ full potential is paramount in increasing profits and achieving company growth. In addition, it increases engagement, which is important in reducing employee turnover and building a positive brand. You can enhance employee potential by nurturing your team’s skills, capabilities, and efforts as well as offering incentives that communicate to them that they are a valuable part of the organization. The above tips give you ways that you can do exactly that.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you enhance your employees’ potential? Book a live demo with us.
Daisy is an industrial and organizational psychologist who researches to identify solutions to problems that improve the well-being and performance of organizations and their employees. Daisy is also a freelance writer and often writes articles for credible blogs.
Are you looking for inspirational new ways to attract top talent and improve employee retention? The more excellent your benefits program, the happier your employees will be.
Through word of mouth and reputation, you’ll find applicants with the desired employee experience clamoring for a role within your organization. And it doesn’t have to break the bank. Check out our top unique employee benefits ideas for all budgets.
What are employee benefits?
Employee benefits are indirect, non-cash compensation paid by a company to an employee in addition to their salary. They might also be called fringe benefits. Companies recognize that they need to show appreciation, allowing employees to grow and thrive within the business. Benefits might be anything from an employee discount at a store or additional time off.
Many employees apply for jobs because of the offered perks and benefits. Job satisfaction and employee satisfaction are linked; ignoring employee satisfaction will decrease commitment, motivation, and productivity. Discover our creative employee benefits ideas if you believe your employees are your most valuable asset.
Why offer employee benefits?
Only 49% of Americans are satisfied with their jobs. Introducing a job perk or two will help improve employee happiness, boost employee morale, and lead to more productive employees.
Essentially, the more you look after employee health, your company will perform better, and this includes everything from creating welcoming company cultures to offering corporate discounts. So, why should business owners offer employee benefit programs?
If you’re looking for a new employee benefits idea for your business, consider the following suggestions.
Health and wellness benefits
A health and wellness program is suitable for your employees’ physical and mental health. It’s an excellent way to encourage physical activity and offer a benefits package simultaneously. Anything from gym memberships to health insurance plans will attract and retain the top talent for your business.
1. Gym membership
Offering a gym membership or corporate discounts at your local gym or leisure center is an excellent perk. Many companies already provide gym memberships, so adding this health benefit to your bonuses will help you compete with the competition.
2. Healthy snacks
Many offices provide free snacks or ice cream lunches. While these fun food options go down well, why not set yourself apart with healthy snacks that encourage your employees to feel good about themselves?
3. Bike to work scheme
A bike-to-work scheme is a wellness benefit that helps your employees while commuting and in their free time. Bikes are expensive. You can offer to reimburse your workers the cost of their bikes if they cycle to work, improving their mental and physical fitness and encouraging sustainable travel and improving employee motivation.
Employee recognition
Employee reward and recognition are crucial for your company. When a worker does something good, you want to reinforce them positively. However, you shouldn’t solely offer performance bonuses or recognition when they do something well — you should continuously recognize their hard work.
4. Monthly awards
Holding regular — whether weekly, monthly, or quarterly — awards is a great way to ensure that you continuously support your employees. Make sure you recognize those who are doing well and those who work hard but often slip under the radar. An excellent way to ensure everyone feels included is to host rewards for years of service, birthday parties, and mistakes of the month awards.
5. New hire welcome packages
Offering desirable welcome packages is an excellent employee perk that will tempt the top talent to join your company. An inclusive introduction, a book with all the details they need to know (including job perks), and personalized company goodies (e.g., a notebook with their name on it or a reusable water bottle) are just a few ideas to put in your welcome box.
Family-friendly
Depending on who works in your company, offering family-friendly job perks is an excellent way to encourage a welcoming and inclusive atmosphere. Whether you add dependents to health insurance, provide extensive maternity and paternity leaves, or hold family BBQs, including your employee’s families in your benefits program is crucial.
6. Maternity and paternity leave
Welcoming a new child is an exciting time; you want to ensure your employees feel supported by their company. Paid parental leave is a massive draw for many job applicants. Under the law, parents are allowed up to 12 weeks of paid parental leave. If you go above and beyond your obligation to offer even just an extra two weeks, your employees will likely feel eternally grateful.
7. Family BBQs
Many employees balk at work socials because it means time away from their families. However, if you host family BBQs, movie nights, or other events open to spouses and kids, you’ll encourage your workers to attend get-togethers and improve office relations.
Big budget
Job perks aren’t always about how much money you can throw at your employee benefits package. While not every company can afford to offer high-budget perks, they’re an excellent way to stay competitive. Of course, if expensive meals and costly benefits are out of your budget, don’t worry.
For instance, a family BBQ doesn’t have to cost a lot but will go a long way to improving your workers’ motivation. However, if you have a bigger budget and wish to spend it on your employees, there are many high-budget rewards and recognition programs you can offer.
8. Company cars
Company cars enable your employees to work more efficiently for you (particularly if they’re moving about) and enjoy the freedom of a vehicle in their personal lives. You might not offer a company car to all your employees, but rather offer a chance for them to rent an electric car for a weekend away from the company.
There are few better ways to encourage your company’s values than to offer community involvement in gifting and rewards. Charitable work promotes a better attitude within the organization while attracting employees who want to work for a company that cares about their community.
9. Volunteering PTO days
Whether you offer volunteer time as part of a company-wide shutdown, organize charity events, or offer volunteer PTO, charity work is an excellent way to encourage employees to give back to their community. You might also arrange to match charity donations too.
Culture benefits
Office perks should benefit your employees and company. If you’re looking for a creative benefit that sets you apart from other companies, consider offering employees cultural days out or events.
10. Flextime
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, more and more companies offer flexible hours or the chance to work from home. It’s convenient and allows employees to do things they usually wouldn’t have the time for, such as doctor’s appointments or cultural events.
For practical reasons, you may need core official work hours or days, but you could encourage a flex schedule on Fridays or in less busy periods.
11. Office Olympics
Holding an office “sports day” is an excellent way to encourage team bonding and get everyone out of the office. You could also join after-work sports clubs or teams to continue the activity beyond the workplace.
12. Relaxed dress code
A relaxed dress code or ‘dress down Fridays’ are good ways to encourage a more casual atmosphere in the office.
13. Pet-friendly office
Inviting employees’ pets to work every day or just one day a month or week will add excitement to the office and offer convenience for pet owners.
Time-off options
No matter how exciting you make your workplace, everyone values time off. You could offer extended paid vacation time to all employees or a reward for commitment to the role.
14. Extended paid vacation
Burn out decreases productivity. Offering extended vacation time will encourage a better work-life balance and promote a healthier attitude to work.
15. Work from home options
Working from home (WFH) is more popular than ever. While it’s not for everyone, most employees appreciate the option to set up a home office. It enables trust and might improve productivity as well as employee communications if your employees work in a comfortable environment.
16. Childcare support
Employees with kids will inevitably need to take a sick day to look after their children. Encouraging child support or offering an onsite nursery is an excellent way to improve employee retention.
Stress relief
83% of US employees develop work-related stress. It almost feels like an inevitable part of modern life. However, the more you can do to relieve workplace stress, the more productive your employees will work and improve their attitudes. Promoting mental health day or offering stress management training is one way to ensure your employees’ happiness.
17. Free therapy
Free or subsidized therapy is an excellent job perk that attracts many employees. Therapy is expensive but highly beneficial for your employees’ overall happiness, health, and wellbeing.
18. Mental health awareness
One of the most important steps to improving mental health is encouraging awareness. Many workers feel stress is not a valid excuse for time off. By highlighting the importance of looking after your mental health, your employees will feel happier and healthier.
Invest in talent
Workers want to feel valued beyond their current roles. Offering continuing education, tuition reimbursement, or opportunities for professional development is an excellent way to retain employees.
19. Mentor program
Offering a mentoring program for new employees will help them understand how their careers might progress and motivate them to pursue their goals. If you make it clear that you want to invest in their career and professional progression, they’re more likely to stick with your company than look for work elsewhere.
20. Tuition reimbursement
Investing in your workers’ talent is crucial for your company and your employees’ success. Not only will your workers continue to improve themselves, but their new skills will benefit your company. Subsidizing or reimbursing your employees’ tuition is a great way to encourage learning and attract and retain good employees.
Team building
Team building activities don’t have to be boring corporate exercises or awkward ice breakers. Consider how you can introduce new and exciting team-building fun.
21. Office get-togethers
Regular office get-togethers will improve employee relations, even if it’s just attending happy hours after work. Team meals, theater evenings, or interactive events (such as our sports day idea) are good ways to encourage bonding. The better your team gets on, the more productive and harmonious the workplace.
22. Virtual team building
If your team is still working remotely or you have some employees wishing to work from home, virtual team-building events are more inclusive for remote employees. Whether you hold regular virtual quizzes or remote movie nights, it’s still essential that you create a social atmosphere.
Other employee benefits ideas
Consider the following options if you’re looking for other creative employee benefits beyond financial wellness and holiday parties.
23. Phone discounts
Offering discounts, free phones, or subscriptions are an excellent job perk that doesn’t cost the company too much. It will help retain and attract the top talent.
24. TGIF giveaways
Everyone loves a freebie. Why not offer surprise gifts to a lucky winner each Friday? You don’t have to offer huge prizes, even something small will go a long way to creating a warm environment.
25. Free breakfast
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Offering a complimentary breakfast option is an excellent way to boost your workers’ productivity, encourage an early start, and look after their health.
Summing up
Showing employee appreciation is the best way to boost morale and attract top talent. Offering flexible schedules and office perks will demonstrate your commitment to your workers. You could run a referral program to encourage recommendations and offer benefits to your current workers.
Want to know how Engagedly can help boost employee productivity and performance? Book are free demo with our experts!!
St. Louis, MO, May 27, 2022: Engagedly Inc, a leading solution provider of performance management and employee engagement software, is delighted to receive the HR Tech Awards for the Best Virtual / Hybrid Solution 2022 in Talent Management category announced on 18th May 2022. HR Tech recognized Engagedly as “A solution that enables people to be their best selves at work.”
Engagedly helps organizations digitize their performance management and improve employee engagement. Engagedly’s cloud platform is built to enable your teams, execute your strategies, and engage your employees. It offers an easy-to-use and comprehensive set of features to ensure that people’s reviews are effective and easy, so that employees stay engaged and productive.
“It is exciting to win HR Tech Awards two years in a row. Winning the best hybrid / virtual solution in the talent management category is a testament to how Engagedly has been successfully able to bridge the gap between people and strategy for our clients in #futureofwork.”
– Sri Chellappa, President and Co-Founder at Engagedly Inc.
The HR Tech Awards, powered by Lighthouse Research & Advisory, is to help buyers and employers understand some of the best companies in the industry for technology selection needs. According to Lighthouse Research & Advisory data, more than 5,000 providers exist across the HR technology landscape today, with more entering the space every single day. This year, the HR Tech Awards is recognizing approximately 1% of those firms for their focus on creating solutions that solve problems their customers care about.
“With fragmentation in the talent management space, it’s easy to be overwhelmed by too many tools. Engagedly brings a robust, comprehensive solution to the table that employees actually like to use. One customer gave it the highest praise, citing the platform’s ability to support culture development and evolution over time..”
– Ben Eubanks, Chief Research Officer, Lighthouse Research & Advisory.
Engagedly is a fast-paced growth provider and an award-winning talent management solution provider. Built upon best practices and decades of research, Engagedly’s People + Strategy platform is evolving performance management, development and engagement to drive successful organizational outcomes across the globe. Engagedly’s E3 unified platform combines the power of business strategy execution, talent enablement, and employee engagement with one easy-to-use software solution.
Lighthouse Research & Advisory is a modern, independent analyst firm dedicated to setting the standard for excellence in talent, learning, and HR with practical research and a hands-on approach. By providing compelling research and actionable insights, our team enables HR, learning, and talent leaders to deliver more value to the business. Our research examines competitive practices, cutting-edge technologies, and innovative strategies.
To learn more about Lighthouse Research & Advisory, visit https://lhra.io
Employee happiness is crucial to the success of any organization. Contented and engaged employees are more productive and driven, which may contribute to a positive and successful work environment. Thus, maintaining high employee satisfaction is vital; but, to do so, you must monitor the happiness of your workforce.
Surveys are one of the most practical and successful solutions for measuring employee happiness. Surveys can help you understand the outlook of the employees and how well their performance is aligned with the objectives of the company.
However, having said that, a badly designed survey may be a waste of time and resources for your employees and your HR department. Therefore, it is crucial that you adhere to best practices when conducting surveys in order to improve employee engagement and get relevant data.
What is an Employee Engagement Survey?
A thorough understanding of your employees’ engagement levels is essential for determining whether or not your employees are happy. It would give you a clear idea about their inclination to stay with your company. This is where an employee engagement survey comes in handy. According to a new study of 5,000 U.S. families, just 45 percent of the employees are content with their jobs, indicating a dramatic decline in job satisfaction over the previous two decades.
Employee engagement survey questions can help you to understand a lot about an employee’s outlook; satisfaction; commitment toward his company, and the likelihood of remaining with the company. Further, an employee engagement survey can help to determine employees’ loyalty, enthusiasm, and dedication to their jobs.
It can be used to determine if employees’ opinions about their jobs, corporate culture, and management are in line with the organization’s or department’s objectives.
All top-notch organizations prioritize and give high value to their work culture and employee engagement because highly focused and committed employees help them gain more customers while demotivated and uninvolved employees can lead to a loss of customers and negatively impact business.
Employee engagement surveys are based on certain important metrics. You can use a questionnaire-based survey to elicit responses from employees in order to decide on important metrics to measure employee engagement. The metrics will focus on the following aspects associated with the employees:
Mental and emotional status of your employees
Employees’ degrees of motivation
Alignment of employees’ understanding with your broad strategic objectives and company goals.
Insights into the most effective means of enhancing employee profitability.
An analysis of survey responses, with an eye toward benchmarking across groups.
Employee engagement surveys and research are essential for developing a corporate culture that encourages employee loyalty and dedication. The survey should also capture all essential aspects to improve your workforce’s profitability and create a happy and productive workplace.
Why are employee engagement surveys important?
Performing employee engagement surveys is an effective method for gaining insight into what employees value and what matters to them the most. Continue reading to learn the most compelling reasons employee engagement surveys are so vital from a company’s perspective.
Organization development:
Having a clear understanding of factors like employee happiness, management/leadership performance, and company culture will enable you to set concrete improvement goals.
You will also be able to uncover areas of best practice within your business by assessing employees’ engagement. By evaluating the employees’ engagement data, you may obtain insight into how a certain department is attaining high levels of engagement. Using department-level engagement data, you can implement the same best practices across the firm.
Simply said, feedback from an engagement survey will provide you with valuable, meaningful data that you can use to promote organizational development.
Measure employee commitment:
The main purpose of employee engagement surveys is to determine the degree of employee engagement. You can uncover the level of employee engagement by measuring the major drivers of employee engagement. While there are no universal drivers of employee engagement, the following criteria are often evaluated:
Promotion
Recognition
Future prospects
Compensation
Job role
Training
Workplace culture
Boost employee involvement and commitment:
Once you’ve determined the level of employee engagement, you can develop a strategy to boost it. The information received from the evaluation will enable you to discover organizational engagement strengths and weaknesses. Once you have identified the changes to be made, you may select priorities, assess resources, and develop a timetable for execution. You may design a company-wide engagement strategy or concentrate on specific action areas for each division.
Give your employees a say in their job role:
Employee engagement surveys are vital because they provide a platform for providing their candid inputs. It is a chance to build two-way communication and engage employees in the planning and growth process. By providing them direct access to the management team and allowing them to be part of the planning process, employees feel they are respected and have a stake in the organization.
Performance metrics:
By carrying out employee engagement surveys, you will be able to generate benchmark data, enabling you to compare performances. To elaborate, you may compare your findings to statistics from related industries to get a sense of how your company stacks up against others. In addition, benchmarking enables you to determine if some challenges are unique to your organization or industry-wide.
What types of employee engagement surveys are there?
Employee opinion and satisfaction surveys, and employee engagement surveys, make up the three most popular forms of employee surveys.
Employee opinion and satisfaction surveys: Employee satisfaction and opinion surveys, commonly referred to as climate surveys, gauge employee perspectives, attitudes, and impressions of their firm.
Employee culture survey: The purpose of an employee culture survey is to determine whether employees’ perspectives and values conform with those of the company or specific departments.
Employee engagement surveys: Employee engagement surveys assess employees’ dedication, drive, sense of responsibility, and enthusiasm for their job and company.
Courtesy – Harvard Business Review – Getting the Truth into Workplace Surveys
How often should companies run employee engagement surveys?
Performing an employee engagement survey actually depends on your business; its present status and the goals you’re pursuing. Before deciding on a survey cycle, your Human Resources department must evaluate a myriad of factors before launching a formal feedback program, such as:
The size and demographic makeup of the organization.
How responsive are both the managers and the workforce to the survey inputs?
How does the organization intend to use the feedback?
The lowest levels of employee engagement are related to individuals who are requested to take surveys less than once per year. Surprisingly, even firms that do not conduct any surveys have some levels of employee engagement.
In no way should this mean that you should never conduct a survey of your employees; rather, it emphasizes the significance of developing a thorough listening strategy that seeks useful inputs and feedback from employees continually.
Once your employer has built a listening strategy that emphasizes implementing employees’ inputs, perform surveys four to five times per year for best outcomes.
Add pulse and lifecycle surveys to a yearly employee engagement survey to measure the performance of your HR efforts. Ensure that you take actions based on your findings to increase employee engagement and development.
What are the best practices for running employee engagement surveys?
Given below are some of the best practices you can employ while conducting employee engagement surveys.
Begin the survey with clarity:
A survey must always have a clearly stated purpose. Your employee satisfaction survey questions should measure the attitudes, motives, and views of your employees and help you to determine how they feel about their job and the company.
Hence, before you begin drafting your survey questions, you must have clarity about the following aspects of the survey:
What is the best way to obtain relevant information and insight into employee engagement?
Are you interested in finding out employee contentment levels in your organization, or are you trying to figure out ways to increase it?
What are you attempting to learn or quantify?
Choose a relevant audience:
Once you have clearly defined goals, you may discover that not every employee needs to participate in your survey. Depending on your objectives, it may make more sense to concentrate on a certain group of employees. Whether you want to focus on a certain department, new recruits, or low-level managers, narrowing your survey to a specific group will give you more accurate results.
Be more specific while drafting questions to get relevant answers:
Creating an interesting questionnaire that augers well with everyone is difficult, although surveying the whole organization may first seem simpler. Asking the same set of questions to upper-level managers and team members renders the entire process of surveying employees futile.
Instead, employ highly targeted surveys that will enable you to ask more specific and important questions, hence increasing the relevancy of each survey.
Increase Participation Rates:
Creating an outstanding survey can be challenging, especially when employees do not feel compelled to answer your questions. Without a high participation rate, you would not get accurate and relevant information.
In fact, 29% of employees believe such surveys are useless. With an average response rate of 30%, it is essential that as many employees as possible participate.
While there are several methods for increasing response rates, keeping surveys brief is the most effective. Surveys that take more than 7-8 minutes to complete have a 20% abandonment rate.
Offering rewards is another approach to increase involvement. Fuel the competitive spirit of your employees by organizing a contest amongst the employees, working in the various departments or locations of the company.
Rewarding the employees or department with the highest participation rate with a prize will encourage them to take part in future surveys. At the end of the survey, don’t forget to thank participants, as this would make them feel valued.
Assure Confidentiality:
If you want direct and honest responses to your questions, you ensure your employees may complete the survey anonymously. Employees will provide candid feedback and express their true feelings without fear of reprisal or judgment if confidentiality is maintained. Assure your employees that their responses will be kept strictly secret to increase response rates and get honest feedback.
There are many methods for conducting anonymous surveys. You can perform anonymous voting through online software such as Engagedly solution, which allows to conduct employee surveys with neither the survey author nor the administrator able to see employee choices.
Select the appropriate questions:
The nature of your inquiries will impact the nature of the responses you get. While Yes/No questions may be useful, including a combination of multiple-choice and open-ended questions will be much better.
You need to strike a balance by using the Likert scale type of questions, based on an agree/disagree answer format (agree, strongly agree, neutral, strongly disagree, and disagree) with open-ended questions. Ensure that the survey is both simple to complete and informative.
Using Pulse Surveys:
Adopt a rapid and regular Pulse Survey in lieu of an annual survey that will take an hour to complete. Annual surveys, although being standard and providing more extensive responses, are not the most effective method for measuring employee happiness. Instead, shorter and more frequent Pulse Surveys are more effective.
Despite the newness of pulse surveys, they may give a real-time evaluation of employee happiness over time, making it simpler to identify engagement patterns.
When performing a pulse survey, choose four to ten specific questions depending on your objectives. The questions should include topics related to engagement, happiness, workload, emotions about the firm, and work-life balance, among others.
Conduct the survey on a platform that employees may find easy to understand and use.
Software such as Engagedly is easy to use and allows the employees to reply to the survey questionnaire quickly and without interruptions.
Share the findings with employees:
Lastly, remember to share your findings with your employees! Even if the outcomes are not as expected, it is essential to discuss them with your employees if you want them to feel appreciated and make them believe their ideas matter.
Moreover, openness demonstrates that management is receptive and willing to make required adjustments.
Show the intent on taking action.
Finally, until you take action after the employee engagement survey, conducting the survey is meaningless! The data you unearth must be translated into concrete initiatives that would increase employee happiness in your firm.
Build employee trust in your leadership by concentrating on a few simple improvements that show your willingness to act while crafting a more thorough strategy for the larger challenges.
Conclusion
Conducting an engagement survey should be part of a broader effort to boost morale among employees. The thoroughness with which you execute your engagement survey and solicit responses reflects the rigor with which you approach the overall employee engagement survey process.
You can use a software such as the one offered by Engagedly to conduct Likert scale and Pulse Surveys and to provide feedback to the employees anonymously so that they can work on the areas of weakness. Using software would also encourage more employee participation, as it would be conducted anonymously.
But most significantly, you must transform the insights you unearth into tangible initiatives that increase employee happiness within your firm. Build employee trust in your leadership by concentrating on a few simple improvements that show your willingness to act while crafting a more thorough strategy for the larger challenges.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.
The performance management system is a process that many companies have been using over some decades now. It has undergone many changes so that managers can get a better understanding of the employees’ productivity and achievements. However, recently, forward-thinking companies have redirected their perspectives and have adopted the Agile Performance Management process. It is reliable and is considered as a best practice for grading the performance of employees and gaining an insight into their contribution toward a company’s progress.
Why did the need for Agile Performance Management arise?
The need for Agile Performance Management arose as workplaces no longer wanted to follow a hierarchical top-down structure and wanted to adopt an open and collaborative work environment wherein employees, managers, and higher management can join forces to achieve the set objectives.
Another reason for the adoption of this process being, employees preferred to develop their own individual objectives, aligned with the company’s objectives. They didn’t prefer the idea of working as per the objective checklist handed over to them.
If you’re one of those companies looking out for gaining an understanding of the Agile Performance Management process, and it’s working and benefits, then this blog post would help you.
Understanding the workings of Agile Performance Management
Agile Performance Management was created for a new era that is more communicative, efficient, and social. It focuses more on frequent employee performance discussions throughout the year as compared to conventional reviews, which are conducted annually or bi-annually.
The unique feature of this is that it incorporates the concept of frequent performance discussions–on a quarterly or mid-yearly basis. This helps in addressing various problems faced by the employees and how they can be guided to overcome the challenges and be aligned with a company objectives.
Another great aspect of Agile Performance Management is that it is based on the process of achieving an objective rather than solely focusing on annual performance ratings and outcomes.
This approach of frequent discussions with the employees and helping them to overcome their barriers helps to cultivate a robust and meaningful relationship among employees and managers.
What factors differentiate Agile Performance Management from a traditional system?
Given below are some factors that differentiate an Agile Performance Management system from a traditional performance management process.
Improves the existing process: Agile Performance Management system scores over a traditional system because of its ability to improve the existing process and help employees to overcome the challenges related to their work.
Frequent discussion to solve problems: Unlike a conventional system that focuses on annual appraisal and midyear review, Agile Performance Management happens quarterly or bi-yearly. As a result, it immediately helps to identify different employees’ issues in a short span and fix them. It saves time and employees can focus on the work, rather than sulking and getting bogged down by existing problems.
Employees usually use the review processes to express their opinions and concerns. Using a traditional performance management system, addressing the concerns of the employees may or may not be only possible during an annual performance review. Till then, employees will have to wait to share their problems with their managers or higher management.
Systematic and meaningful: Another concerning area of a traditional performance management system is that a lot has to be understood in a few sessions that happen once a year. To elaborate, managers have to identify employees’ capability to meet the company’s objectives; employees’ effectiveness in aligning themselves with the company’s goals; their behavior or competencies; their personal development, and their career aspiration – everything in one to two conversations. To achieve these agendas in a single meeting or a string of meetings in two days may not be possible, rendering pressure on the employees and turning the whole activity to be a ‘tick-box’ exercise.
Agile performance management allows the discussions to take place periodically and eliminates rushed discussions that are meaningless.
Flexibility: Since the traditional performance management process is based on fixed outcomes or rigid grading systems, without in-depth analysis, conducted annually, the management may not get a proper understanding of employees’ performance; challenges, and their efforts to meet the objectives.
Compared to this, the Agile Performance Management system focuses on near-term goals, most commonly, monthly or quarterly goals, which ensure that all potential hindrances are eliminated during the manager-employee conversation and employees stay abreast with the shifting priorities of the business.
Interestingly, employees derive larger benefits because of this system as it focuses on employees’ development, and quicker feedback implementation. A completely opposite process takes place in the case of a traditional performance management system, as there is a time gap between the performance review and feedback process.
Almost every employee in the current era does not favor annual performance reviews. Because of the annual performance review, employees’ stress level may increase substantially and companies may witness employee turnover. In fact, companies observed a high percentage of voluntary attrition after annual reviews. Reversely, once they adopted agile performance management, they witnessed a 30 percent decrease in voluntary turnover.
Deloitte’s research indicates that organizations that maintain a collaborative atmosphere are profitable and twice as likely to outperform their competitors.
Implementing the process in a smart way
We advocate the following strategies to set off your Agile Performance Management process to a successful start:
Getting employees to trust the new performance review system: The management should build trust among employees regarding the new performance management process, before replacing the traditional performance management process. For the same, the management should discuss the large scope of the Agile Performance Management System and the wide range of benefits it offers.
Besides, the employees should be made to understand the need for the company to make a transition from the conventional performance management process to Agile Performance Management System. Transparency and frequent discussion to solve the problems of the employees should be emphasized while discussing the benefits of this Process.
Training: Employees cannot be expected to understand the Agile Performance Management system in a day or two, as it requires a total change in the thinking and behavior of the employees. It would be preposterous if a company expects the employees to shift to the new system without any form of training. This is one of the reasons why adequate training should be provided to the managers and the employees while shifting from a traditional performance management system to their Agile performance management process. The training should be comprehensive and should answer all the queries and concerns of the participants.
Setting Goals:
A company’s primary goals should be communicated to the workforce in a detailed and non-hurried manner, an essential step not to be overlooked.
The managers and employees should set quarterly goals and how they would achieve those goals as per the Agile Performance Management system. The goal should be set in such a way that every required step is well defined. The discussion should involve the elaborate techniques to measure the outcomes. Thus, aligned with the goals, employees will have to meet a set target every month.
Managers will play an important role in helping the employees to meet the set target every month. Managers will provide feedback to the employees as when they feel it is necessary. All these action plans ensure the goals set out are relevant, realistic, attainable, and thoroughly understood by employees. If required, the managers can suggest ways such as upgrading existing skills in order to enhance employees’ knowledge and skill set.
Explaining opportunities and career development: Employees will happily accept the Agile Performance Management system if it is going to be beneficial for them and provide new opportunities for career development.
Assessing adoption of this system: Conduct a regular assessment of the new system to understand how well this system has been accepted by the employees. In case there is low adoption, find out the reasons behind it and address the concerns of the employees so that they will embrace it at the earliest.
Why most companies are opting for the Agile Performance Management system?
An Agile Performance Management strategy involves employees in a continuous, year-round process of personal growth. Employees actively take part in developing their abilities in ways that positively affect themselves and the organization.
Meanwhile, a company preserves or enhances its employee capabilities as business requirements evolve. By using the Agile workforce management system, businesses may have employees working toward common goals and boosting productivity. The Agile Performance Management System results in less turnover, increased employee engagement, and higher earnings.
How this system benefits an organization?
Transitioning to an Agile Performance Management system yields substantial advantages on several fronts.
Benefits at the individual level:
At the one-on-one level, Agile Performance Management enhances everyday performance and enables managers to understand the strengths and weaknesses of the employees in real-time. Developing a routine of regular check-ins enables employees to communicate problems and work impediments to their managers, who serve as coaches to assist them in overcoming obstacles. The managers can also provide team members with feedback and instructions aimed at achieving continual improvement.
Reevaluating organizational goals:This system focuses on a frequent reporting and feedback loop process to promote organizational goal awareness. As a result, executives and employees are made aware of OKRs regularly and, over time, everyone knows their goals, resulting in greater employee engagement and productivity.
Benefits at the team level:
At the team level, Agile Performance Management provides team leaders with a more accurate perspective of the team’s capabilities. This makes it possible for the team to shift gears when business objectives change.
Facilitates enhanced team collaboration: With the Agile system in place,managers may concentrate on guiding and instructing employees to complete work on schedule and within budget. Team members become more dependable contributors, which strengthens the team as a whole.
Performance data:
Agile performance management generates significant amounts of performance data at the enterprise level, enabling Human Resources to monitor organizational capabilities. These data help to identify a benchmark of the workforce’s strengths and shortcomings. In fact, they serve as a crucial starting point for building talent strategies and advancing company objectives.
Agile Performance Management takes a company’s productivity to an altogether different level, as employees become self-aware of the required commitments and witness personal development.
Agile Performance Management tools to implement Agile process correctly and easily
Implementing this process necessitates a shift from the old annual reporting approach to a more comprehensive, engaging, and quicker Agile culture. Employing this process incorrectly might pour cold water on the entire effort.
Thus, it makes sense to make use of digitized HR software such as Engagedly solution to ensure the Agile Performance Management process is implemented properly, with no hassles.
Engagedly solution helps managers to track their employees’ progress and milestone achievements and facilitates the exchange of real-time feedback, in line with this process. Also, incorporating Agile training for transitioning to a more dynamic performance management process is pivotal. To guarantee its seamless execution and leverage its benefits effectively, integrating digitized HR software like Engagedly is imperative. This solution empowers managers to navigate the evolving landscape, ensuring streamlined progress tracking, milestone accomplishments, and real-time feedback exchange, thus amplifying the success of Agile Performance Management.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.
There are many companies which have successfully adopted OKRs and modified them based on their organizational needs and industry trends. Here’s a list of few companies that adopted OKRs successfully.
As a manager, you may have heard the phrase: Happy employees make happy customers. This idea rings true as a pool of joyful and contented employees can serve customers better. Doing so will make customers a happy camper, whether they receive goods or services from your company. Ultimately, employee happiness can translate into a boost in your business.
Unfortunately, some employees in many companies and organizations aren’t happy. This feeling can get attributed to several factors such as unjust compensation, lack of benefits, stagnant career growth, zero-to-minimal employee engagement, poor management, and business burnout.
In most cases, these employees end up tendering their resignations. While some employees quit, others choose to stay to pay their bills. However, they become unhealthy at work, influence colleagues, affect productivity, and hurt the business.
As a manager, you do not only conduct stay interviews with your top performers and loyal employees. It’s imperative to sit down and talk to your unhappy and dissatisfied employees. Find out what critical questions you should carefully ask them.
Why It Pays to Have Happy and Content Employees
A recent study showed how happy and engaged employees make customers a priority.
The researchers used the Glassdoor database consisting of several insights about employment experiences. They studied its data and information about jobs, salaries, business ratings, and customer reviews. Their objective was to understand the impact of employee satisfaction on employee retention and not to mention customer satisfaction.
The results revealed a strong correlation between employee happiness and customer satisfaction. It showed that the happier the employees are, the better they can serve and the more satisfied their customers will be. It’s safe to say that employee happiness can lead to a boost in business.
On a more specific note, here’s why it pays to have happy and contented employees:
Employee retention:It’s easy for unhappy employees to leave the company or organization. They don’t only hurt your attrition and performance, but they can also cost your business. Look at your applicant tracking system and how hard it was for your recruiters to hire the right people. When these employees leave, they’ll have to start from scratch. Making your employees happy ensures that they’ll stay for the long term.
Employee engagement:Happy employees are most likely to engage in various activities in your business. They’ll not only be active but proactive in a handful of ways. They can help contribute to the progress and success of your business.
Improved workplace culture:Workplace culture boils down to what the management does and how the employees usually react. If you have happy employees, you can have a positive working environment. You’ll have positive energies resonating within the four walls of your office.
Increased productivity:Happy employees in the workplace will always go to work on time. But not only are they punctual and always present, but they can also be very hardworking. You’ll be amazed at how productive they can be almost every day.
Quality output:Besides productivity, expect happy employees to deliver quality outputs. They have no time to rant and complain. Instead, they focus more on accomplishing their tasks and giving their best.
Customer satisfaction:With increased productivity and quality services your happy employees provide, the receiving end will greatly benefit — your customers. They will always be satisfied with your products or services.
Business profitability:All the benefits above, from increased productivity to quality outputs to customer satisfaction, can lead to one thing: A boost in your profits!
How to Deal with Unhappy Employees – Ask These Seven Questions:
Happy and content employees can do a lot for your company or organization. On the other hand, miserable and dissatisfied employees can negatively impact your business.
As a manager, you must be a keen observer. As soon as you notice negativities looming overhead in the workplace, take concrete action immediately. Schedule a one-on-one dialogue with these unhappy employees.
Most importantly, make sure to ask the following questions:
1. How are you generally feeling at work?
This question will either confirm or dispel your assumption about whether or not your employee is happy at work. It must be the initial question to ask.
It’s like asking, “how are you?” However, the question gets framed such that it reveals your employee’s general feelings towards work. However, you have to dig in further with the following question.
2. Do you love what you’re doing in the workplace?
This question is a straightforward way of asking if your employee is happy or not. After the subtle initial query, you want to get the answer straight.
This question will immediately confirm how happy or frustrated your employee is at work. Or chances are, your employee is generally okay but merely has minor issues to be remedied.
3. What do you love the most and least about your work?
This time around, you want to weigh your employee’s level of happiness. So it’s right to ask what they love about their work and what they don’t.
While some employees are either downright happy or miserable, others have mixed emotions towards their work.
So never immediately assume the extreme sides of happiness. In some cases, employees merely have a fleeting emotion towards a temporary work issue.
4. How are your working relationships with your colleagues?
Now, you may want to dig in further about the reason for the employee’s unhappiness. For the most, it may have to do with their working relationships with their colleagues that are causing them stress.
For instance, they probably have a conflict with another team member. If that’s the case, you can let both meet halfway or put them in different teams.
5. What do you like the most and least about the management?
In most cases, the management makes the employees unhappy. They require employees to work hard to please the clients. These employees become burned out, thus wanting to quit.
As a manager, this scenario is the best time to get actual feedback from your frustrated team members. Have an open dialogue and allow them to express themselves freely. Be sure to collate all their rants and sentiments.
Ultimately, let them understand what the management does and assure them that you’ll work on some areas of opportunities.
6. Do you have any requests about your compensation and benefits?
Aside from the management, the salary is the primary culprit employees become unhappy at work. It’s all the more frustrating if they know that they are unpaid. In this case, you can only do so much in motivating your employees to work.
David Patterson-Cole, the CEO and Co-Founder of Moonchaser said that the best course of action for any salary issue is to refer your employees to HR.
He said, however, that “As a manager, you can teach your employees how to negotiate if you truly want to help them. Your company probably provides yearly appraisals based on the employees’ performances. You can help them justify their appraisal by providing performance reports.”
7. How can I make things easier for you at work?
The purpose of this one-on-one dialogue isn’t only to know if your employee is happy or not. As a manager, your primary goal is to see what you can do to help them.
Once you find what area causes their level of unhappiness or dissatisfaction, you can find the right solutions to this. But on the other side of the spectrum, it is also the employee’s responsibility to find their happiness in the workplace. So it’s just right to ask how you can make things easier for them at work.
Keep in mind that workplace happiness entails intrinsic motivation. As a leader, figure this out and see how you can help your employees. In the end, it’s not all about offering extra perks or providing amenities. It’s about recognizing talents and empowering your employees.
Employee Happiness Translates into a Boost in Business
Employees can make or break a business.
In general, employee happiness can boost a company or organization. As discussed above, it can ensure retention, trigger engagement, and improve workplace culture. It can also increase productivity and yield quality outputs. Ultimately, it can lead to customer satisfaction and business profitability.
But when you have some unhappy and dissatisfied employees, you must take prompt action. Be sure to schedule one-on-one dialogues with these employees individually. While at it, be highly critical in asking the right questions by following those recommended above.
Once you get valuable insights from them, you can now decide how to help them. As a manager or leader, you have the responsibility to take care of your people. Ultimately, you have the power to make them happy and satisfied!
Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your employees better? Request us for a demo.
Goals are necessary for any business that wishes to thrive or succeed. And while most organizations do this already, measuring and tracking the progress of these goals is as important as setting them. Considering this truth, companies have come up with ways to measure performance, namely KPIs and OKRs. They are the two most widely used and misunderstood frameworks in the business world. This article will explore the following:
What is a KPI
KPI Examples
What is an OKR
OKR Examples
OKR vs KPI: What is the Difference?
How OKRs and KPIs Work Together? [Analogy]
KPI and OKR Best Practices
What is a KPI?
KPI stands for Key Performance Indicator, which helps measure the health of a company. They are measurable numbers that show or point to how effective your strategy is as it moves towards a set target. KPIs can also highlight problems in a business strategy. They help steer management to decide to continue at their current pace, quicken the pace or, if not meeting targets, improve.
Companies can set a KPI daily, weekly, quarterly, or yearly, depending on what indicators the organization wants to measure and how often they choose to measure it. We can set KPIs for individuals, teams, departments, or the entire organization.
KPI Examples
KPI talks about business-as-usual metrics. In simple terms, it means what employees should be doing as per their job descriptions to achieve organizational targets. The below KPI examples will make it more clear.
OKR stands for Objectives and Key Results. It’s a strategic framework that helps companies improve their performance. The process entails setting objectives in any area of your business you want to improve, then writing key results to reach those objectives.
It is a collaborative methodology that provides a match between the objectives that organizations want to achieve and the key results that help measure their progress. By tying objectives to small and measurable key results, the framework enhances visibility and provides actionable insights into every employee’s contribution and performance.
Unlike other goal-setting frameworks, OKRs are clearly defined, making it easier for managers and employees to track progress. By breaking down objectives into small key results, managers can create milestones that help accomplish challenging goals.
Sales OKRS
Objective:
Attract 50 B2B new customers
Key Results:
Increase funds by 30% for advertising through influencers
Reach out to 30 industry experts/ influencers in Q1
Get 20% of customers to participate in the community in Q1
Interview and launch 10 podcasts from key industry influencers
Customer Success OKRs
Objective:
Improve Customer Satisfaction Index in Q4 by 30%
Key Results:
Conduct 50 customer satisfaction surveys every month
Conduct monthly interviews with 10 recently churned customers
Achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 10.0
The whole concept of OKR is to identify an area that needs improvement, create a goal, which is the Objective, and then state how you should meet that goal, which is the Key Result. The goal is to get from point A (where you are now) to point B (where you want to be) by the end of the quarter or year. It’s strategic in its approach because it’s holistic compared to the KPI.
Let’s understand the differences between OKRs and KPIs through an analogy.
A parent wishing to know their child’s performance at school can do that by checking the child’s grades. Grades on individual subjects can act as a KPI. We can assume the target for each subject is to get a pass.
Imagine now that the student failed one or more of these subjects or didn’t meet the expected target set by their parents. A parent can use OKR by taking the subject of math as an example and then creating an objective to get good at mathematics and subsequently working on creating strategic key results.
The aim is to improve the student’s performance in math. The parent can then set different KPIs for various tests to measure the effectiveness of the OKR strategy.
Check out the below differences between OKRs and KPIs to get an even clearer understanding.
KPI
OKR
Key Performance Indicator
Objective and Key Results
Business-as-usual metrics to highlight performance
Goal-setting methodology that drives higher employee performance
Used for performance measurement
Used for performance improvements, enhancement, and engagement
Top-down approach only
Mix of top-down and bottom-up approaches
A certain level of performance
Strategic improvements in performance through specific initiatives
Ongoing process, usually revised quarterly or yearly
Periodically, as and when objectives and key results need adjustment
OKR vs KPI: How They Complement One Another
Understanding OKR and KPI framework allows you to appreciate them for what they do individually and how they can work together if implemented well. It’s possible to use both together instead of pitting OKR vs. KPI, missing out on both. This section will show examples of how both can work together.
KPIs bring management attention to underperforming areas. The reason companies have KPIs in the first place is to make sure activities are going on smoothly, so when a company misses its targets twice or twice in a row, it needs management intervention. OKRs are perfect for such a case. Identify a clear objective to aim for before brainstorming on the key results you need to achieve the goal.
How OKRs and KPIs Work Together? [Analogy]
OKR and KPI complement each other. We will use the grades analogy from earlier to showcase the relationship.
In our example, a parent wants to know how well their child is doing at school and uses their grades to measure them. We assume the target is a pass in all their subjects. This example was to demonstrate an example of a KPI.
We then said if the student failed math, we needed to do something about it. So, the parent would use the OKR framework in this situation. In our example, the objective was for the student to improve in math, and then we drew up key results to achieve this goal.
The key results are to enable the child to be better at math. While the KPI brought our attention to the problem of not getting a pass mark, the objective is to make sure the child doesn’t have a problem with math again. The parent can set a new KPI for the child based on the new objective. The KPI for the next test can be 70%, and the one after that can be 80%, and the one after that can be 90%.
A well-implemented OKR can give birth to new KPIs, and these KPIs will ensure that the key results are effective and produce the desired result.
If the child doesn’t meet the first target of 70% in the first test, let’s say a 67% or so, then the parent can look into it to see if it is a process issue or if they should readjust the next test KPI, which was an 80%, to a 75%.
The example above is a simple illustration of viewing the interrelationship between KPIs and OKRs. Failing any target will lead to the business looking at that area to improve on it. The OKR framework is a suitable tool to use to achieve this goal.
Another scenario where both can work together is if a company wants to step up their current performance because they believe they can do more, and then using the OKR framework can be helpful. After this, KPIs can be derived from the framework to monitor performance. On rare occasions, some companies’ key results are also their KPIs. Although it’s not always the best practice, it’s still possible and unusual.
While setting up your KPI or OKR frameworks, there are some do’s and don’t you should know, and in this section, we will look at some of them.
Best Practices for KPI
Be Clear and Specific
KPIs need to be clear to prevent personal interpretations. KPIs should also be specific; for example, increase customers by 25% in Q4.
Keep your KPI to the Minimum
This tip is in its name key, meaning that the indicators your company tracks are critical for the sustainability and profitability of your business. Work on creating between 12 and 25 KPIs for the entire company. The idea is the smaller you track, the better.
Attainable but Challenging
When targets are unreasonable, it discourages your employees, and if they are too easy, there is little sense of achievement. The secret is to make them challenging as well as reasonable.
Frequently Review and Update
You should set KPIs and reset them because they are subject to yearly review and not set and forget them. It’s important that the KPIs stay updated with changing business objectives to reflect the organizational performance.
Use Software to Track
Technology has made it easier for us to monitor and track KPIs. Using good software like Engagedly can help you easily keep tabs on the KPIs set for departments and the company.
Best Practices for OKR
Be ambitious with it
The objectives of OKR are aspirational. There are objectives that one can look forward to accomplishing in the long run.
Don’t have too many objectives.
It’s advisable to have a maximum of three objectives and three key results in order to focus on them and maximize your results. Paying attention to many objectives at once can be counterproductive for the company, and it may also point to the objective not being broad enough.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the OKR vs. KPI war is one that will continue to rage well into the future as different companies and their managements will have varying opinions. The crucial point to note is that both are adequate tools when properly implemented, and if used together, they will make the management job a lot easier.
One of the most essential aspects of the onboarding process is helping new recruits to connect with their colleagues and make them feel like a part of the team. This encompasses both occupational training and a process of personal familiarization, trust development, and socializing. Allowing team members to get to know each other fosters comfort and lays the groundwork for collaboration between new recruits and their colleagues.
The icebreaker, a relaxation activity for employees, helps to break the ice between new recruits and existing team members. Icebreakers can also be games or discussions that help you and your team members get to know each other better and spark discussion. Primarily, they are meant to “break the ice” between employees who don’t know each other much. One could get to know a new team member, or it might be used to kick off a training session or a team activity.
However, would this approach work for remote employees as well? Yes, “virtual icebreakers” are an excellent method to overcome one of the most significant obstacles associated with managing a remote workforce. This blog would introduce you to the concept of a virtual icebreaker session; how it strengthens a team; when to use it; how to design one; its benefits, and much more.
An icebreaker is a question-based activity, puzzle, or conversation that is designed to familiarize team members with a new team leader, a new team, or a new workplace, and encourage sharing and learning. When it comes to picking the new recruit orientation icebreakers, there are no rules.
Some are rather straightforward, such as “problem-solving game, “some trivia,” or “Rock-Paper-Scissor game.” Thus, some icebreakers are physical activities or interactive ice breaker games, while others may be intellectual and some are discussions.
Virtual icebreaker process
Virtual ice breakers are identical to conventional ice breakers, but they are done using online mediums (a video call, web chat, or a conference call). They may be helpful to your team in a variety of ways, as outlined below:
Inspire employees to get better acquainted with one another.
Enhance better communication and establish rapport within the team.
Incorporate a sense of fun, competition, and interaction into team meetings and brainstorming sessions.
Assist employees in feeling calmer and more optimistic, as well as in reducing emotions of isolation and loneliness.
A virtual icebreaker: When to use it?
If team members work in different locations and cannot meet in person, virtual icebreaker ideas may assist them in getting to know one another and developing a natural connection. Another instance in which virtual icebreaker activities would be beneficial is when businesses combine or when a company is acquired.
Fun and good ice breaker activities may be an excellent method to introduce new members to a team informally. This will assist new recruits in learning more about their new colleagues (and vice versa), allowing them to create new bonds immediately.
The crucial role of icebreakers in fostering collaboration in a workplace
Icebreaker activities help lighten the mood, foster camaraderie and give an opportunity for team members to express their opinions, likes, dislikes, and distinctive traits in a fun environment. They are often amusing and bring team members together who turn resilient during chaotic times.
Moreover, icebreakers not only boost employee engagement but also turn out to be an effective tool for business growth.
Well-designed virtual icebreaker activities may assist team leaders and human resources colleagues in gaining useful knowledge about team talent and employees’ skills. This information may be used for a project as when a need pertaining to their skills and talent arises.
Factors to consider while designing virtual icebreaker activities for employees
You can follow the below techniques to design your virtual icebreaker.
Clarity
You need to have clarity on which employees will be part of the icebreaker process. Are you merely introducing employees to one another for the first time, or are you bringing together employees from various levels within your organization? Do you wish to bring together individuals from diverse cultures and backgrounds? You’ll need to navigate these distinctions delicately and ensure that everyone understands and participates in the icebreaker activities.
Breaking the ice with objectives
Are you performing icebreaker exercises in order to resolve project-related issues? Or is your goal more sophisticated, such as you want to inspire participants to think creatively or to address a specific problem?
Your icebreaker will be effective only if everyone feels comfortable taking part in it. Therefore, assist employees in feeling at ease and consider if there are any impediments, such as language or cultural issues.
Timing
Your organization’s employees, based in various locations, may participate in virtual icebreaker activities. Therefore, take into consideration various time zones and their associated degrees of comfort. Besides, regarding activity timing, determine if you want a brief five-minute exercise or something more substantial for your icebreaker activities, depending on your goals.
Process
You’ll need to decide whether the same employee would lead the virtual icebreaker activities or to implement a rotation policy – who gets to choose and lead the activity? Decide if this will be a regular exercise or a onetime activity.
Location and technology matter
Be mindful of where your participants are likely to be when virtual icebreaker activities start. Will they all be at home or traveling? This may influence the time they can devote to the call, as well as their degree of involvement and engagement.
Ascertain that everyone uses a similar video chat software and is comfortable with its operation prior to the meeting. Additionally, bear in mind that some may have issues with their internet connection.
Last, decide the format of your icebreaker activities. Will employees make use of a webcam or will a voice call suffice?
When are virtual ice breakers ineffective?
If your team works remotely and is already in touch regularly, participants may see the exercise as condescending or pointless.
If employees are under extreme time constraints, ice breakers may not be effective. Spending time on a “fun” activity may certainly distract and irate workers who are working under duress and have a lot on their plate, or who are meeting to handle a crisis or emergency.
When a new member joins an existing team, an ice breaker may help to break down harmful groupings. Such team members may initially oppose the effort, assuming it is a waste of time. If this is the case, explain why you believe it is a smart idea and urge them to participate completely in the activity.
Virtual icebreaker games for remote employees-
Here is an overview of some of the most popular virtual icebreaker games and activities below.
Icebreaker Shoes
This is a very common icebreaker game for virtual team meetings. You might invite participants to take a photograph of their shoes and share them over the intranet with the team members. The photographs must be uploaded prior to the commencement of the meeting.
Once the meeting begins, you might invite each person to talk something about their shoe choice. A fascinating component of discussing shoes is that participants may also bring up their hobbies, behavior, interests, or aspirations. For instance, describing about formal and polished shoes may elicit discussion about an employee’s ambition to be in a leadership role or his habit of achieving perfection in whatever he does.
Make a guess who it is
A guessing game helps employees to get to know one another well. Prior to the meeting, conduct a survey among employees in which they would respond to questions such as “Which is your favorite song?” Later, a song will be played and certain employees will be asked to guess whose favorite song it is.
Riddle contest
A riddle or mental challenge may be an excellent way to start a discussion. Here, you provide a hard yet solvable challenge for your team to consider. For instance:
What is densely packed with holes yet still contains water? (Answer – sponge).
What stands in front of you, but you cannot see or feel it? (Answer – future).
Time Machine is a very successful professional tool, serving as a creative virtual icebreaker for distant teams.
The host or meeting organizer invites participants to consider a time in the future or past to which they would want to visit, seated inside a time machine. Once they have determined the time, they must discuss the location they want to travel to and the people they wish to meet. They must provide a rationale for each of their responses.
Personality evaluations
Conduct a personality test or an interesting quiz before a virtual encounter. For instance, if a new movie is released, employees may take a quiz to determine which character they resemble the most. Then, at the meeting, everyone may present their insights.
You may also ask participants to photograph some of the most important objects on their work desk. It might be a souvenir, a present, or a picture stand. Participants might discuss the object’s relevance in their professional and personal lives. This dialogue might give you an idea about a person’s personality.
Culinary Affiliations
Identifying culinary interests is a nice icebreaker activity to play with distant teams. Each participant may talk about his favorite food, either as a recipe or a photograph. Then, other employees will be asked to guess whose favorite food is it.
If your team is spread across different locations, the culinary game is a fantastic way to get familiar with the local eating customs and original cuisines.
Simulated Problems
Present an issue that employees may encounter in the course of their job and encourage them to discuss ways to fix it. Invite team members to propose a solution and justify why they would take certain measures. This icebreaker allows you to see how your team members collaborate.
Expectations and worries
Employees are asked to share hope and fear they always have with the rest of the group. This might serve as a springboard for conversation among employees to allay fears and anxieties.
Benefits of virtual icebreakers for remote teams
As per a Gallup research survey, “virtual team-building activities result in an improvement in employee performance, with a 41% reduction in absenteeism and a 21% gain in profitability.” Various benefits of virtual icebreakers for remote teams include:
Adaptation
Regular virtual icebreaker activities for employees aid in the rapid adaptation of your team to a new remote work environment.
Community
“Community” in the corporate world refers to an association of employees who have similar goals, ideas, or competencies. However, the community is not limited to those people who congregate in a room. Community building is a process, and the practice of employing icebreaker activities allows employees to get to know one another.
For instance, when you discover what you have something in common with your colleagues, you will feel more connected to them; will be more supportive, and will cooperate to accomplish goals.
Interaction
Interaction is an integral part of team-building exercises. Even a few minutes of icebreaker activities may elicit laughter; open discussion, or debate. Most significantly, it avoids a compartmentalized work atmosphere, which promotes inefficiency.
Empathy
Empathy is the capacity to see events or circumstances through the eyes of someone else. Empathy is critical for developing a good team because it enables team members to take a step back; consider others’ perspectives, and then cooperate to make choices, or at the very least, decide while considering the effect on others.
When teams lack empathy, they cannot perform successfully because they, in essence, do not care. The icebreaker encourages participants to see their colleagues’ challenges in a new light, allowing them to be more compassionate.
Conclusion:
Virtual icebreakers are an excellent approach to get remote teams to interact and establish rapport. Additionally, they help improve communication; stimulating creative thinking and developing internal networks. It aids in forming a bond between new recruits and their colleagues in a positive, fun, and engaging manner.
Prior to deciding on which virtual icebreaker to utilize, there are many factors to consider. Consider your primary aims and objectives of icebreakers activities; remote employees’ time zones, comfort, and their culture variance, and type of devices used by them. You can create virtual icebreakers to assist new employees in interacting with work colleagues and to strengthen bonds among existing employees while providing a break from the grind.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your hybrid employees better? Request us for a demo.
“Caroline, you have failed to meet the deadlines way too many times this quarter, We expect more dedication from you this quarter.” How many of us are ready to face negative reviews about our work like this? Not all employees are usually open to negative performance review. Sometimes, it is demotivating to listen to negative performance reviews and employees also tend to get defensive at times.
Unlike the modern organizational culture, we consider performance management to be a forward-looking solution that is based on retrospection. With an evolving work culture, the need for continuous feedback is now felt across offices and technology has brought forward such tools which are highly advanced and need based. Now managers can anticipate problems based on the performance cycle, and initiate course corrections to bring the action plan back on track.
A performance management cycle is a round the year phenomenon and includes planning, monitoring and evaluating employee’s performance. It works in such a way that meets the overall goal of an organization. Here, the success of an employee is aligned with the success of an organization.
The performance management cycle helps employees improve skills and achieve goals. An effective cycle focuses on employee performance and tries to make necessary changes for his growth in a workplace.
The performance management cycle encompasses four stages:
The management expert, Peter Drucker, designed one of the earliest performance management models. As per his sayings, whatever you can measure, can be managed and whatever you can manage, can be accomplished. Individual and organizational goals should be aligned together. The continuous process includes the following parameters to achieve the targets smoothly.
1. Planning
Planning is the first step of the performance management cycle and includes three elements:
Defining stage
Here, the management and HR team have to define jobs, include description and determine targets. Besides, it needs to list objectives, and have clear metrics on how to access and achieve the goals. The point is to make sure goals are lucid and are followed by clear performance standards.
Giving feedbacks
Once management completes the defining stage, employees should get the opportunity to give input for the materials. As they are the ones to perform the job, they should have in-depth insight of skills, goals and competencies to help the company achieve milestones easily.
Approval stage
In this, both management and employees should agree on roles, goals, and achieving objectives. This is how it is possible to make the first step in the process of collaboration, making the employees understand their engagement in goal setting.
Try to plan for it in a timely and regular manner, wherein the next step for the management cycle would start. Monitoring and training are important and here, routine meetings can help employees assess their position.
Provide training and coaching
Meetings should focus on training and give solutions through mentoring, rather than measures that result in uninspiring performance.
Accountability should be positive and engage employees to be honest to speak on what they are struggling with and what changes can be beneficial. This is where management training plans can help employees effectively.
Revisit objectives
As the process continues, management needs to revisit objectives to check on improvement and adjustments required. Management should focus on opportunities for employees.
The step reviews overall performance, and how the employees are rewarded in a meaningful manner.
3. Reviewing
Performance review
At the end of the annual performance cycle, this review is an integral part which is known as appraisal. Typically, these are once a year thing where an employee’s performance is evaluated over a span of a year.
Management checks records to evaluate the progress of an individual from the previous performance year. However, the monthly check-ins will help employees with problem solving, adjust goals and focus on future tasks. This step is included in the cycle that looks back to assess one’s behavior and potency for coming years.
Review management process
Here, both employees and management should look at how the management cycle is working and identify the areas of improvement. Asking some questions constructs an effective review mechanism:
Try to know whether organizational objectives are met
Challenges employees face and need for training
Help from management feedback and how to work on the process
Review goal completion
Of course, one important question to ask is whether employees can reach their goals. How well did the team perform to achieve the targets throughout the year? Consider all types of achievements as it helps identify areas where improvement is required.
Give effective feedback
A key part of reviewing is to provide effective feedback and receive the same. Management should focus on actionable feedback so that employees know where to improve their performance in future.
Employees should be encouraged to give feedback on the process and how it can be better.
4. Action
Plan rewards and recognition
It is a key step to keep employees motivated. This doesn’t have to be monetary, although this is a better incentive in most cases. Other rewards could be company recognition, responsibility for new projects, time off, and assigning leadership opportunities.
Set stage for upcoming performance management cycle
The last step gives one last chance to employees and management to review the feedback on the entire year’s process. As feedback is the key to the organization to plan for the next year’s cycle and make it effective.
So, with this, you can have a clear conception on what is performance management process and how it impacts business’s success.
How to Improve the Management cycle?
Do you wish to improve the management cycle of your workplace? Here are some vital questions to bring things back on track.
What workforce looks forward to in the management cycle?
A performance management process can hinder or help the workforce. Before you include a new performance management software, try to analyze what’s working and what’s not. Besides, try to find what employees want from the performance management program. As you discuss with employees, be ready to be surprised when you discover how many were looking forward to an improved process. Subsequently, bring in changes in the organization and improvements as per researched based findings.
Do you follow contentious performance management?
Even when employers want employees to be happy, the latter may seek motivation and recognition of work. A management cycle should deliver value to your employees, and companies can flourish in an increasingly motivated workforce.
However, to boost motivation, performance management should be frequent along with ongoing conversation on how to achieve goals, how it impacts progress, and how it affects employee’s personal development. Motivation is related to a future focused approach, creating developmental scopes. So, managers must engage with employees on career growth that should be the focus of the organization for its success.
Are managers using tools to handle performance management cycles?
Managers are crucial in the management program with engagement, motivation, and development plans. This should ensure that they have proper training to motivate employees and get useful feedback. They should coach employees appropriately in the continuous process.
Before introducing talent management, managers should have adequate training so that employees are comfortable being part of one such program. Use correct technology to support the performance management. It should help managers and HR to introduce and get effective results from continuous processes.
Why develop a performance management cycle in business?
The reasons behind an effective performance cycle are many, but more often, it focuses on employee productivity as its primary reason. A valuable cycle would include development, execution, and monitoring of effective performance plans. Focus on setting one’s goal and arrange for continuous coaching and it will help to improve employee’s performance automatically. It helps them reach goals easily that directly contribute to the company’s growth.
Best performance management practices
To ensure success of the management process, and whether it is continuously evolving, try to include the best practices:
Well-planned performance strategy
The strategy should include how frequently employee evaluation is required. Try to find the type of evaluation analysis trackers that suit the company best and how meetings and surveys can help. An effective approach for feedback conversation can help deploy the best evaluation system. Set the workflow right, include actionable inputs for steady improvements.
Inculcate a culture of open communication
Continuous monitoring should have effective communication to help discuss employee issues. If communication is transparent, negative feedback or matters of poor performance can be addressed. A culture of communication is widely accepted among people of all hierarchies. Managers should develop a culture of openness, expect honest feedback, allowing employees to remain honest and managers can use the information for required changes.
Transparent communication strategy should include:
Share with the employees what the company expects
Train employees to reach their potential using actionable goals
Give constructive feedbacks
Reward and recognition for successful achievement
Continuous monitoring process
Sounds like monitoring every move of an employee? Certainly not! It is real-time tracking of employee’s progress and outcomes. It necessitates keeping an eye on employee’s sentiment through open discussion and how managers can help employees deal with it better.
How can performance management software help?
Having a robust performance management software is beneficial in over one way and employers should be well trained to help teams use it. You can try to use the latest streamlined tool that enhances alignment, engagement and communication with employees. Some other benefits go as below:
Have clear goals
For ease of goal setting and tracking progress, a performance management platform is of great use. The right software elevates the employees and helps them reach the business goals. It helps get real-time results and boost goal alignment and is accountable for overall growth of workforce.
Ease of engagement recognition
As mentioned earlier, rewarding is an integral part of the performance management cycle and recognition motivates an individual. A beneficial platform helps in peer-to-peer recognition, making an employee feel valued.
Use of feedback frameworks
No matter what feedback framework or frequency a business follows, it should be continuous to protect high performing and potential candidates. An effective feedback strategy can drive individual, group, and organizational growth correctly.
Effective talent reviews
Even though reviewing outcomes is tough, try to make it insightful. With constant reviewing, it is easy to identify top performers in the workforce. Uncover the growth perceptions among employees and create performance strategies for the success of both employees and business.
Once leaders are aware of best performing management practices and tools, you should know how to leverage it for the good of employees and organizations. With this, employee productivity and business growth skyrockets. Support individuals and teams with performance strategies that help them reach their potential and to push the business outcomes.
Employee performance management is one of the most important management tools that influence employee growth and organizational development significantly.
St. Louis, MO, April 22, 2022: Engagedly, a leading solution provider of performance management and employee engagement software, announced their new partnership with Bizlibrary, a dynamic, all-in-one employee learning solution. With this, Engagedly’s users will be able to access /purchase Bizlibrary’s leading courses on HR Compliance, Business Skills, Workplace Safety, Software, Leadership Management, Information Technology, and Software & Service.
“The recent theme we constantly hear is a dire need to upskill and grow our people, to that extent, we are excited partner with Bizlibrary to offer their library of content built for the future of work to our customers on Engagedly’s Agile Learning Management System” said Sri Chellappa, President/Co-Founder of Engagedly
Organizations will now have access to an award-winning microlearning library of 9,000+ titles relevant to the ever-changing needs of the workforce. The BizLibrary Collection helps organizations train on core skills, mitigate risk, develop a culture of continuous development, and provide opportunities for development and career development. BizLibrary makes it easy for organizations to create a dynamic and agile workforce.
“Our mission to help organizations solve common business challenges aligns seamlessly with Engagedly,” said BizLibrary’s Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Alliances, Shannon Kluczny. “Together, we can further expand our content offerings and support organizations in providing a robust training program that engages and retains their employees.”
Engagedly is a fast-paced growth provider and an award-winning talent management solution provider. Built upon best practices and decades of research, Engagedly’s People + Strategy platform is evolving performance management, development and engagement to drive successful organizational outcomes across the globe. Engagedly’s E3 unified platform combines the power of business strategy execution, talent enablement, and employee engagement with one easy-to-use software solution. To learn more about Engagedly, visit: https://engagedly.com/
About BizLibrary
At BizLibrary, we’re on a mission to elevate employees’ skills, create better places to work, and do our part to build a more compassionate and competent future. We lean into these goals every day by supporting organizations’ learning and development needs through our innovative platforms, best-in-class content, and unrivaled strategic support. With L&D powered by BizLibrary, employees are equipped with the skills they need for the job today and ready to take on new challenges tomorrow. For more information, please visit https://www.bizlibrary.com/.
Many organizations are now understanding the importance of shifting from traditional performance reviews to more continuous and flexible performance management processes.
Employee onboarding is the process of assisting newly recruited employees in adjusting to the social expectations and performance dynamics of a company. This method assists skilled recruits in swiftly adjusting to their new jobs and also in acquiring the required knowledge and abilities to perform productively within the company.
Your onboarding program should be able to provide new hires an opportunity to learn about your organization; your corporate culture; and what role they would play in the organization’s growth. Importantly, employee onboarding should be more than a maze of paperwork for new recruits in the name of the onboarding process.
Companies that fail to appreciate the critical nature of employee onboarding surveys in the modern era may face far-reaching implications. Thus, employee onboarding exercises must be well-thought-out and revised frequently to acquire meaningful insights and avoid being seen as a burdensome endeavour.
Keeping these factors under consideration, well-thought and structured onboarding survey questions would be the best methodology to adopt to ensure a successful onboarding process. Onboarding survey questions help to gather feedback from recruits about their first few weeks of employment, as well as an assessment of the success and efficacy of their onboarding program. Employee onboarding experience survey insights would assist an HR department in identifying areas for improvement in your onboarding programs. Then, accordingly, the HR department can take action to rectify the mistakes it is committing.
We’ll explain what is an onboarding survey; why it is crucial for your company, and how to design your first one in this complete guide. Continue reading to learn what type of questions (open-ended and scale-rating questions) to ask your team’s newest members in an onboarding survey.
Get to know the practices to implement in an onboarding program that ensure your employees have a long, successful career in your organization.
Understanding the process of an onboarding survey
Employee onboarding surveys are conducted systematically as a part of the employee onboarding process for newly hired employees. This feedback given during the survey helps to measure new recruits’ satisfaction with the onboarding process and their overall recruitment experience.
New hire onboarding survey questions help HR management and leadership to optimize and enhance the investment they make in recruiting and training new employees by gathering data from each new hire, including information on:
How content they are
Their manager’s opinion
Orientation processes’ efficacy
Possibility of continuing with the company
Even if you believe your business currently does an amazing job of training new employees for long and illustrious careers with your company, onboarding surveys may help you fine-tune your program and ensure you’re offering an unparalleled experience to every recruit.
After all, new recruits are experiencing your onboarding resources for the first time, and they may pick up on something you overlooked. Their fresh viewpoints, along with their prior onboarding experiences, will offer a lot of knowledge that you can tap into and utilize to enhance your organization’s new recruit experience.
Significance of onboarding survey questions
You may also be shocked to find that, according to Gallup’s 2017 State of the American Workplace Report, just 12% of workers strongly feel their company does an excellent job onboarding new employees. A poorly handled onboarding process not only alienates new workers by making them feel uncomfortable but also creates an irreversible first impression.
New recruits who have an unsatisfactory onboarding and induction experience may mistakenly conclude that the company is poorly managed, and that they made a wrong choice by joining the company.
Employee onboarding survey questions allow you to familiarize new hires with your company’s culture, goal, vision, and fundamental values; thereby, encouraging them to feel immediately connected to the team. The employee onboarding experience survey will provide you with vital insight into the effectiveness of your recruiting strategy, and it reassures employees that their views and feelings about the organization are being heard. Thus, onboarding surveys are indispensable because they enable you to listen to and understand your new recruits’ demands.
The workforce is continuously evolving, and new hires often have needs that their predecessors did not. Maintaining an open channel of contact with your new hires will help you stay informed of these developments and identify concrete ways to improve your onboarding program.
Benefits of well-designed onboarding survey questions
A survey on employee onboarding experience may provide a business with a plethora of advantages. Several significant advantages of onboarding survey questions include:
Determine what works and what doesn’t:
By conducting an onboarding survey, you may ascertain what works and what doesn’t, what needs to be improved, and possibly, unforeseen factors affecting employee retention that you may not be aware of.
Establishes the tone for the employment experience as a whole:
A strong onboarding process establishes the tone for employee engagement. By focusing on corporate culture, employee development, and regular check-ins, you show to new recruits that your company cares about the employees’ success and growth in terms of knowledge and advancement.
Extending these key areas beyond the onboarding process ensures your employees are satisfied from the moment they are hired to their retirement.
Productivity: The more effective the onboarding process, the quicker new employees become productive and provide value to the organization.
Endorsement: A more effective onboarding process has been found to improve the possibility that new employees would recommend your organization as a place to work, thereby bringing in top talents.
Higher employee retention:
An effective onboarding program that delivers an exceptional employee experience may go a long way toward not just retaining talents, but also attracting outstanding potential candidates. Once you’ve delivered a world-class onboarding experience, get feedback from new recruits using new hire onboarding survey questions.
What should an onboarding survey must ideally include?
The onboarding survey questions should include both open-ended and scale-rated questions, enabling the collection of both quantitative and qualitative inputs. You may use a number scale, ranging from 1 to 5, to evaluate the preciseness of feedback.
Alternatively, you can use the Likert Scale, which includes various alternatives, ranging from ‘Strongly Disagree’, ‘Agree’, ‘Neutral’, ‘Disagree’, or ‘Strongly Agree.’
While rating scales make it simpler to gather, evaluate, and improvise on employee inputs from onboarding survey questions, open-ended questions enable you to understand your employees’ views and have a deeper understanding of their thought processes.
Questions to ask new employees during their onboarding process
Given below are new hire survey sample questions. The questions are open-ended employee onboarding survey questions; employee onboarding scale-rated survey questions (on a scale of 1 to 10); and Likert scale-rated survey answers, based on employee satisfaction.
Open-ended employee onboarding survey questions
The following are some open-ended onboarding survey questions that can be used during an employee’s onboarding process, following his first few weeks on the job.
It has been a few weeks since you started working. Do you have a thorough understanding of what is required of you in this position now?
What can we do to assist you in doing your work more effectively?
Are you satisfied with your job, career prospects, and does it fulfill what you had expected of it?
Do you feel you are able to do an assigned job easily, facing no challenges?
If you had come across any biggest challenges while working, what are they?
Do you believe you have all the tools and resources necessary to do a good job?
Is there anything about our onboarding procedure that you dislike?
Which aspect of our onboarding process do you like the most?
What additional measures should we incorporate according to you to enhance our onboarding process?
Employee onboarding questionnaire, rated on a scale of 1 to 10
On a scale of 1 to 10, the following are some employee onboarding survey questions.
If you had to rate your onboarding experience, how would you rate it on a scale of 1 to 10?
How would you rate the level of reception you have received on a scale from 1 to 10?
In your opinion, how valuable do you feel you are at work on a scale of 1 to 10?
How pleased are you with your employment so far, on a scale of 1 to 10?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how well do you believe you fit into our work culture?
On a scale of 1 to 10, how comfortable do you feel as a member of your team?
Likert scale-rated survey answers, based on employee satisfaction
Kindly take a few moments to share your thoughts on your current employment position and organization.
You can check-mark an answer, based on the scale’s responses (1 – Strongly Disagree, 2 – Somewhat Disagree, 3 – Neither Agree Nor Disagree, 4 – Somewhat Agree, 5 – Strongly Agree)
I am pleased with the onboarding process.
I am confident about my personal and career development and advancement.
I am content with my current job prospects.
I have access to all the resources necessary to do my work effectively.
My objectives are well defined.
My team members make me feel at ease.
I’m happy with my workplace.
I feel as if I am a part of the organization and its work culture
Best practices for implementing the onboarding process for new employees
It might take months to train a new employee so that they can be acquainted with the necessary knowledge, skills, and behavioral patterns to contribute to the organization’s success. This may last up to a year and it’s very hard to design a precise onboarding agenda, timetable, or template to tune an employee as per the organization’s expectations and goals.
Thus, supplement the onboarding process with the best practices, described below, that will measure the success of the onboarding process.
Best Practice #1: Begin planning the onboarding process for your new recruits before the first day of work.
Best Practice #2: Develop outstanding recruiting and welcoming procedures that will leave an excellent and memorable first impression in the mind of the new recruit.
Best Practice #3: Involve the most important members of your organization, such as team members, managers, senior leaders, and founders in onboarding events to build an engaging business culture.
Best Practice #4: Utilize an onboarding solution, such as Engagedly, which provides employee surveys with extensive analytics and reporting. It offers automated, integrated solutions in an employee’s journey that avoids data input duplication; decrease reliance on paper forms and expedite the entire process. Additionally, they ensure that the onboarding process runs well throughout the crucial first few days and weeks.
Best Practice #5: Establish a living trust agreement with your employee, since trust is the bedrock of every great working relationship, whether it’s among team members or between a management and a team member. It should be cooperatively developed, documented, evaluated, and updated regularly.
Best Practice #6: Conduct regular one-on-one meetings with team members to build strong and productive relationships.
Best Practice #7: Provide opportunities for new hires to connect with work colleagues by scheduling brief introductory meetings; assigning an existing fellow employee to function as an advisor or buddy to the new recruit; organizing a team lunch or team-building event to foster a more comfortable, informal environment for getting to know one another, and preparing a welcome video for the new hire prior to his first day of work.
Best Practice #8: Give the new recruit the opportunity to describe and express what they need to settle in and provide your feedback. This demonstrates that you value inclusiveness and belonging.
Best Practice #9: Conduct an “offboarding” exercise to determine the most common reason employees leave your company and how you can retain them.
Final Thoughts
Employee onboarding surveys can assist you in improving the onboarding process and retention rate of your organization.
According to Wynhurst group research, employees who undergo organized onboarding are 58 percent more likely to stay with the organization after three years of joining.
To ensure that your onboarding process is engaging and successful, you may consider working with Engagedly software to create, manage, and monitor your onboarding surveys. With Engagedly, you can schedule onboarding survey questions automatically, based on an employee’s start date; customize survey templates, and simply analyze employee responses to identify concrete ways to enhance your onboarding program.
Providing your new hires with the best employee onboarding experience is one of the surest ways to ensure their long-term productivity and loyalty to the company. Achieving the best employee onboarding experience isn’t easy. Your company will have to put in a lot of work towards making onboarding a more effective process. Luckily for you, our guide on the 10 ways to create the best employee onboarding experience will provide you with the knowledge you need to give your employees the onboarding experience they deserve.
What is an employee onboarding?
Employee onboarding is the process through which new employees are integrated into an organization. Employee onboarding activities help employees learn about the organization and understand their place in it. Don’t confuse onboarding with orientations. Employee orientations include only basic bureaucratic information, such as the company’s on-paper profile. Onboarding is a more in-depth process that helps employees become active parts of the organization and recognize the company’s values and work culture. Employee onboarding is a very important process because it dictates how effectively your employees become a part of your organization.
The ideal onboarding experience will transform new hires into instantly committed and motivated individuals who will fully devote themselves to your organization. The benefits of highly motivated and committed employees are fully self-evident. Ideally, you want all your employees to experience the ideal employee onboarding experience. Keep reading if you want to learn how to create the best employee onboarding experience.
The best employee onboarding experience will immensely improve the probability of your new employees remaining long term with the company. Glassdoors completed research that states that providing excellent employee onboarding experience increased retention rates of new employees by 82%. Another study by Kronos found that longer onboarding experiences resulted in better employment engagement. Nearly 57% of participants in Kronos’ study stated that their greatest issue with onboarding was over-tasked managers in insufficient onboarding time. The other leading cause of employee dissatisfaction with employee onboarding was by lack of consistent company-wide application, which was pointed out by 47% of participants.
What these studies empirically prove is that effective onboarding is vital for successful integration of new employees into your organization. It’s not possible for new employees to become a part of your work culture if they’re not given the proper onboarding experience necessary to familiarize with the company. When you properly onboard your new employees to the company, you’ll have provided them with all the information and knowledge they need to immediately become active participants in your company and act productively. Onboarding removes much of the problems in your new employees’ adjustment period in the company. For those reasons, if you want your company to successfully hire new employees, you need to prioritize providing them with a good employee onboarding experience.
The 10 ways to create the best employee onboarding experience
Now that you have a good idea of what an outstanding employee onboarding experience looks like, it’s now time to get some practical advice on how you can turn your company to provide good employee onboarding experiences.
Make your onboarding experience inclusive
We live in a multicultural society, so it’s inevitable that your employees will come from a host of different backgrounds. You need to accommodate new hires from all of these backgrounds by assuring them that your company is only concerned with productivity. You need to encourage employees, especially those from a minority background, that your company is a progressive entity that is fully committed to making everyone a part of the company. The best way to do this is to train your managers to understand diversity and to treat all employees equally, regardless of their background. Your managers should be provided with proper diversity and sensitivity training so that they don’t offend members of minority communities, especially.
2. Integrate innovative content on your onboarding
Giving conventional presentations and video conferences over applications like PowerPoint and Zoom is a dull approach. While PowerPoint and Zoom work to convey the information you want to your employees, they are not the best ways to do so. You’d be much better off integrating in-person presentations with video-conferencing software. You want your employees to remember your presentations, and you want them to fully appreciate your company’s uniqueness. One of the best ways to personalize these onboarding sessions is to have your CEO or other high-ranking managers personally talk to your new hires. You could also have senior members of your company’s management have small discussion groups and personal sessions with your employees to help them better understand the company and gain inspiration from your best leaders.
3. Treat your employee like you treat your customers
Your employee onboarding experience should have the same level of concern with quality as you would with customer service experience. Your company needs to ‘market’ itself to your new hires. They need to feel that they’re the ones benefiting from being able to work with you, and not the other way around. There are different ways to achieve this. For example, if your company provides high-end customer service, then you should build your employee onboarding experience around a similar concern with providing new hires the best onboarding experience. You need to design every aspect of your employee onboarding experience towards maximizing employee comfort and interest. Make sure that your new employees have every service and opportunity afforded to them so that they feel important in your organization.
4. Put new hires in age appropriate or post appropriate groups
One of the best ways to make new hires comfortable in your company is to provide them with socializing opportunities with one another and other employees, like we said above. One of the best ways of doing this is to divide your new hires into small groups of between 3 to 6 people and have them spend a few hours with each other every day before or after work. The benefit of these group exercises is that your employees will understand each other better and develop better social bonds with one another. This tip only works well if your company hired multiple people simultaneously, though.
5. Integrating Physical Activities in onboarding
According to some researchers, the most memorable events for most people involve high-adrenaline experiences. You might make onboarding a high-adrenaline or exciting experience by providing your new hires with physical activities. For example, you could host a company marathon, have a scavenger hunt, or a friendly soccer match. There are many activities you can choose from. Make sure that you choose an activity that your employees actually enjoy doing so that they get the most benefits from it.
6. Have your onboarding process reflect at the end of the first year
A good employee onboarding experience is an investment that can pay dividends for a very long time. For that reason, it may be desirable for your employee onboarding experience to last for a long duration of time. Also, if your company has a particularly complex or difficult work culture, you could even have the onboarding experience last for an entire year. While this sounds like a long time period, it isn’t unusual for large corporations to have onboarding periods that last this long. Through a long onboarding period, you can provide your new hires with a type of ‘story arc’ that takes them from start to finish in integrating with a new company.
Human beings naturally like to feel celebrated, and you can take advantage of that fact by providing your employees with celebrations upon joining your company. You want your employees to feel that they’ve done the best possible thing with their lives by joining your company. To achieve this, you could have your company’s existing employees sign digital or real-life welcome cards that are shared with the new hires. These cards are a small, but effective way to welcome the new employees on board your organization.
8. Encourage Network building
One of the most important goals of new employees, especially those at a lower level, is to build personal links with important people in your organization. One of the best ways to take advantage of this is to provide one-on-one chat opportunities for new employees. Give them the chance to speak with more experienced employees and learn from them. This experience is invaluable for new hires since they’ll learn a lot about your company and benefit from access to new information.
9. Have clear SOPs and easy accessibility to information
The worst employee onboarding experiences are when employees are provided with disorganized and conflicting information. Your new employees need to feel a sense of comfort and ease from the onboarding process, and that’s only possible when you have them eased into it. For that reason, your employee onboarding experience should be standardized for all employees. Every new hire should have the same positive experience. So create an SOP on how to provide employees with onboarding experiences beforehand to avoid unnecessary drama or problems later on.
10. Ask for feedback
Receiving feedback is essential for improving employee onboarding experiences in the future. You need to always ask your employees what they thought of the onboarding experience after it’s concluded. You should survey the new employees after they’ve fully onboarded, and you need to provide them with plentiful opportunities to voice their perspectives on your company. This data should then improve employee onboarding experiences for the future.
In conclusion, successful employee onboarding experiences are vital for integrating new employees into your company. The best way to improve your company’s onboarding experience is to prioritize employee comfort. Your new hires need to feel appreciated in your company, and you can follow the ten steps we’ve highlighted above to make them feel that way.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your remote employees better? Request us for a demo.
One on one meeting questions are a great way to encourage frequent and straight-forward conversations between managers and their teams. One-on-ones can be simply defined as a scheduled time for managers to check-in with their direct reports. These meetings can be key in building team relationships and trust.
A performance management system is one of the most important aspects of an organization. HR managers are usually the ones who carry out the performance management process in an organization.
Most organizations already have a performance management system, but if you are planning to implement a performance management system in your organization or to improve the existing one, here’s a list of common reasons for the failure of the performance management system that you might need to avoid.
Source: hbr.org
Source: Zippia.com
Encourage Feedback
Process Automation
Source: Profit.co
