According to Gallup’s comprehensive 2015 study, ‘The State Of The American Manager’, 50% of Americans have left a job “to get away from their manager”.
The survey also says that workers feel like they’re given little guidance for understanding what’s expected of them. Only 12% of workers strongly agreed that their manager helps set work priorities.
Continue reading “Guide to Effective One On One Meetings[Infographic]”
We live in an information era where tech-powered innovations support business processes and increase effectiveness and productivity. COVID-19 disrupted industries worldwide, and it’s been more challenging than ever to find and retain the right talents. Far too many organizations neglect the vital Human Resources aspect called “onboarding”.
Did you know that hiring a new employee costs $4,000 and 24 days on average? On top of that, a negative onboarding experience doubles the chance of the new employee finding a job opportunity somewhere else. Investing in an effective onboarding program sounds complex and costly at first, but failing to have established onboarding processes costs way more in the long run.
Let’s talk about how tech-powered innovations can improve the onboarding experience, increase engagement levels and productivity, while decreasing employee turnover.
Virtual reality is slowly becoming more advanced, providing an abundance of opportunities, including cost-efficient and engaging employee onboarding processes. Since many social restrictions are still active due to COVID-19, it’s tough to organize an immersive onboarding process – but virtual reality technologies can help.
Walmart utilizes VR onboarding and has reported stunning results, including 30% higher employee satisfaction, 70% better test scores, and 12.5% higher knowledge rates than the traditional onboarding process.
Imagine training in a 360-degree immersive environment where employees could learn from mistakes without causing financial losses. Additionally, you can reuse and revisit the whole onboarding process as many times as needed, ensuring the highest engagement and information retention.
Johnson & Johnson conducted a comprehensive study on the effectiveness of VR in surgeon training, and the results were astonishing. 83% of VR-trained surgeons could perform surgical procedures after the training with a bit of guidance. It is fascinating that none of the candidates who underwent traditional training could perform the same procedure.
According to HR Daily Advisor, 91% of new employees stay in a company for at least one year, while 69% remain at least 3 years – if onboarding process was engaging and well-structured. Gamification in the onboarding process ensures high employee engagement and retention through basic gaming principles incorporated into the training processes, such as progressions through levels, achievements, and advanced feedback.
Gamification offers a fun and engaging onboarding process with a dose of competitiveness, since there are public scoreboards, achievements and goals. Here are a few ways gamification can make the whole onboarding process less stressful and more engaging and fun:
Many people associate onboarding with a paper-heavy and bureaucratic process. It is partially true, but companies are slowly transitioning to a paperless onboarding process. A paperless onboarding process speeds up the whole process, while increasing employee engagement and satisfaction. According to Glassdoor, 82% of employees believe an inclusive and structured onboarding process can increase employee productivity and satisfaction.
Various creative and effective onboarding tools reduce the amount of paperwork, protect sensitive employee data, and speed up the whole process without a bureaucracy burden. Here are the key benefits of turning to a paperless onboarding process:
One of the main goals of the onboarding process is teaching new employees about company culture, values, goals, processes, and services. Having a source of information at hand can speed up the whole onboarding process for new employees, and that’s where knowledge bases come in handy.
The whole process is resource-heavy, so the innovative approach is to invest into building an easy-to-use knowledge base, offering important information about the company. Organize and structure a knowledge base to avoid confusion and time-wasting while searching for information. Encourage current employees to share their experiences and knowledge. Analyze the most common questions or challenges of new employees, and create an easy-to-navigate guide that answers all questions.
The onboarding process is extremely challenging and stressful, mainly due to facing a new environment and handling tons of newly acquired information. Proper and specialized training is a prerequisite for successful employee onboarding and employee retention, and technology can support interactive training.
The most effective way of learning new things, be that upskilling or re-skilling, is by using well-established training/learning protocols, and performing the required actions repeatedly, with a progressional increase in attention to detail – interactive training platforms could boost the amount of acquired information by exposing the trainees to familiar or everyday situations. For instance, you can create an online training platform where employees face real-life situations and act quickly. A dynamic environment that simulates a real-life environment speeds up the whole onboarding process.
Combining knowledge bases and advanced technology, such as virtual reality, could bring benefits to employee training. For instance, creating a quiz with the most common questions and situations is an excellent way to utilize interactivity in learning. Also, you can use virtual reality to simulate the natural environment and problems that require fast decision-making.
Did you know that it takes up to 8 months for new hires to reach the proficiency and productivity of experienced co-workers? Onboarding is an often overlooked aspect of the Human Resources department that could save loads of resources. Tech-powered innovations allow process automation while increasing the overall onboarding process satisfaction, as well as employee productivity and retention.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you manage your employees better? Request a demo today.
Derek is the Head of Partnerships, North America at Deputy, a global workforce management platform for employee scheduling, timesheets, and communication. He helps business owners and leaders to be law compliant, manage labor costs, and build exemplary workplaces. He has over 16 years of experience in delivering data-driven sales and marketing strategies for SaaS companies.
Performance management processes and approaches differ from organization to organization. These processes are intended to be fair and unbiased evaluation of employee performance.
Effective performance management tends to motivate employees and improve organizational productivity, but why do employees dread them? For a few reasons like inaccuracy, being biased and contributing to the decrease of employee morale, employees tend not to like them.
According to the TriNet Perform Survey that was conducted by Wakefield Research, 22% of millennial employees have called in sick because they were anxious about receiving their review.
Many companies today are reinventing their performance management processes in a way that they contribute to an increase in employee productivity and improve employee morale. Do you want to reinvent performance management too? Here are a few tips for you.
It is important for employees to understand the workflow in their organizations. In most organizations, only the information enough to get the job done is shared with employees. This approach not only damages the work culture but also decreases employee engagement and morale. The first step to change this is to encourage open communication throughout the organization. The next is to allow employees to make their own decisions, this improves employee accountability throughout the organization.
One of the most damaging mistakes that managers tend to make during performance reviews is basing the whole review on the employee’s past performance. Change this approach and focus more on the future. Take into account the organizational goals and understand the role of the employees in contributing to these goals. Analyze their pace and style of work based on past work but do not make the review entirely about it. Instead, talk to them about the plans you have for their future at your organization.
It is important for managers to understand the technological and budget requirements of their employees and provide them with necessary resources that contribute to their productivity. Though taking initiative as an employee is an important aspect of performance, you cannot expect employees to do everything by themselves. So, discuss this aspect with your employees and set a budget for their role and provide them with necessary resources.
The approach for performance reviews can be different for different organizations, but one of the most common issues that employees face with reviews in all organizations is that they do not get enough feedback. Frequent employee feedback helps employees gain a clear understanding of what is expected of them and gives them a proper direction. Managers also can utilize frequent employee check-ins and keep track of their employee progress from time to time.
This is one of the most underrated aspects of employee appreciation. When employees are good at their job, they need to know it from their managers. This motivates them to get better and contribute to organizational success. Recognizing and rewarding employee performance goes a long way. This not only motivates the employee being recognized but also the other employees to do their best to be recognized by their managers.
Like said before, it is important to check frequently and validate employee performance. In the same way, it is also important to change goals every quarter so that employees do not get stuck in a rut working for the same goals for one whole year. Quarterly performance goals give both the employees and managers a scope to experiment and implement new approaches to work.
This is one of the mistakes that managers do not even realize making. Some managers tend to make the whole review about what they feel about the employee’s performance and never make it easier for employees to participate in the discussion and give inputs. Always ask employees after review if they feel that the review was fair enough. This gives you a scope for starting a two-way discussion with employees.
Always remember to be open to feedback from employees. Performance review meeting isn’t just for managers to evaluate employee performance but also for employees to discuss what they expect from their managers. Being open to feedback from direct reports is one of the best approaches to improve yourself as a manager.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with Employee Engagement? Then request for a live demo.
There are a lot of dangers associated with micromanaging. Among other things, it causes demotivation and creates a stressful work environment (for both managers and employees).
Micromanaging often leads to higher employee turnover, which results in learned knowledge getting lost to competitors. Moreover, micromanagers may experience burnout with health issues resulting from stress.
Either way, micromanaging is problematic.
That’s why it’s important to learn how to manage without micromanaging. This article will provide you with 6 best practices to help you delegate and demonstrate trust and encouragement among your employees so you can improve morale and build creative, cohesive teams who aren’t afraid to take the initiative.
The term “individual contributor” is a new phrase that is used to describe the role of senior professionals who work without people management responsibilities.
Individual contributors are employees who aren’t on the management track in an organization. Unlike management-track employees, they manage their one-person team on tasks and projects.
They have developed useful skills in the workplace and are competent at:
In fact, individual contributors can be a valuable asset that define the success of an organization.
One of the major complaints ICs have about their jobs has to do with how much autonomy they think they have in their current role.
The perceived level of independence comes down to how closely their immediate manager or supervisor dictates the production details and nuances of the work employees must complete.
Having said that, managers, HR, and company leaders are sometimes uncomfortable when it comes to giving people so much responsibility without keeping a tight rein on them.
They feel the need to look over the shoulders of individual contributors, and these overzealous tendencies can lead to a lot of problems down the line.
A recent study conducted by AccounTemps shows that over 59% of participants admitted that they have at one time or another worked under a micromanager.
68% of those respondents believed that this management approach had a negative impact on overall team morale, and a high number of the participants reported that it seriously inhibited their work productivity, including that of the company at large.
Micromanagement can result in the loss of an organization’s important talent. It erodes trust, and over time, it can turn a workplace environment toxic.
By consistently looking over the shoulders of your employees, particularly ICs, you make it a lot less likely that they’ll be able to become effective or excel on their own.
Here’s a quick summary of the negative impact of micromanaging ICs:
Now that you know why micromanagement of ICs is bad, let’s take a look at some of the best practices to help individual contributors without micromanaging.
Listed below are 6 tips and strategies to help you stay involved and keep your employees accountable while avoiding micromanagement.
There are many ways you can define measurable goals and track the outcomes of individual contributors.
You can use objectives and key results (OKRs) as a goal-setting framework. This will allow you to manage expectations instead of tasks.
For the most part, managers spend a lot of time trying to communicate to their teams what needs to be done. However, there are times when what needs to be done is different from what is expected.
For leaders to be effective, they need to do their best to ensure that individual contributors know exactly what is expected so that there is no longer a need to micromanage.
When everyone is in sync with the expectations, it becomes about outcomes, instead of activity, and it all starts with letting them create their own goals and OKRs.
It’s possible to offer assistance to individual contributors without looking over their shoulders. You can do this by having an open-door policy. It involves maintaining casual, open lines of communication to help you build rapport with everyone in your internal team.
If you want to foster an environment of employee enjoyment and high-quality work, you shouldn’t only be communicating with your team about how they need to be doing their work in a different or better way. You should also build an atmosphere of openness and transparent communication by chatting to them about their work, and also investing in their personal well-being.
For instance, you might take your team out to lunch or go to a local bar for happy hour, when not on the clock. This will help you build the social side of your relationship.
When your individual contributors know that they can rely on you to listen, they not only feel highly valued, but they are more likely to bring any problems that arise (professional or personal) to your attention to get your advice or assistance.
Make sure you are there to address any challenges they might be facing. Be prompt to respond to all the questions your employee handbook doesn’t cover.
Ultimately, this will help them to be more productive. It is something that probably wouldn’t happen if you were constantly picking apart their work (as micromanagers tend to do).
At times, there will be common issues that need the attention of most, but not all employees. Instead of attempting to gather everyone up together for a conference, you can create unique webinars that employees can watch if they need to.
Using webinar software to create these resources can also save time and money in the long-run because you won’t have to make all your employees stop what they’re doing to attend a conference or company-wide meeting.
Once you’ve made sure that everyone understands their role in your organization, it becomes easier to allow them to develop their own strategies, tactics, and processes to achieve their objectives.
All you have to do is make sure there are clear, well-defined goals where nothing falls through the cracks.
Individual contributors will know their responsibilities, and developing their own systems and strategies makes them more accountable.
The best part is that you’ll have to do less work to manage them since you’ll now be a facilitator as opposed to a taskmaster.
Just remember to build in some flexibility into each role.
Although striking a balance can be difficult, it’s important to take the time to work on this so your independent contributors can have room to be creative. By offering such opportunities, you make it more likely that your ICs will be innovative and still get things done.
As humans, we all love recognition. One of the best ways you can help individual contributors stay on track without crossing the line into micromanagement is by using gamification and non-monetary rewards to recognize their contributions and help them meet their goals and OKRs.
The great part about non-monetary rewards is that they are perceived to be more authentic and decrease variable costs incurred by the business.
You can begin to build a culture of recognition as a way to support ICs by reevaluating how you reward employees.
For instance, for those who are happy to remain ICs, you can replace promotions to management with new opportunities, such as:
… and so on.
So, instead of giving ICs managerial responsibility for other team members, you might give them ownership responsibility for key projects.
As they succeed (and their project succeeds), it gives them visibility across the entire organization, and they have plenty of small wins along the way that are worth celebrating.
Additionally, you can encourage employees to take part in webinars or use online course platforms that can help them learn new tasks or overcome common problems. Not only does this save costs by getting employees engaged without monetary rewards, it can incentivize employees to stay up-to-date with changes in the workplace.
Yet another way to help individual contributors without micromanaging is to provide them with avenues for praise and social engagement.
This means building your skills for managing your culture rather than managing people.
The importance of social engagement in the workplace cannot be overstated. Social media is key to mobilizing and engaging employees at work. It provides great avenues for praise, particularly in larger organizations.
You must be able to create opportunities where you and the rest of your team can engage socially while still being able to communicate with clarity.
Last, but not least, use surveys to understand what your individual contributors need and how to help them.
A lot of micromanagers only do so because of the trust issues they harbor. In their eyes, no one else can do the job as effectively as they would do it.
But, by asking questions to gain a better understanding (instead of constantly criticizing), you’ll be able to find out exactly what ICs need in order to be more productive.
Furthermore, using employee surveys will allow you to offer constructive and actionable feedback on a consistent basis, giving you the opportunity to provide your employees with specific ideas pertaining to how they can perform their jobs better.
In other words, using surveys will allow you to discover what you can do to provide encouragement and opportunities for improvement. It will help you get outstanding results from your ICs – all without having to micromanage any of them.
There is a very thin line between being an involved manager and becoming a micromanager who drives all the individual contributors mad.
Use the tips outlined above to help you give your ICs the support they need without micromanaging them.
Which of the tips outlined above appeals to you the most? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
Author:
Ron Stefanski is an online entrepreneur and marketing professor who has a passion for helping people create and market their own online business. You can learn more from him by visiting OneHourProfessor.com
You can also connect with him on YouTube or Linkedin.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you improve employee experience? Request for a live demo.
Employee experience is something organizations should pay a lot more attention to.
Employee experience is the sum of all the things the employee experience at work. This could encompass a wide variety of factors, such as feedback, performance reviews, frequent communication, opportunity to grow, poor work environment, bad management, etc.
An employee’s experience decides whether they will continue to stay at an organization or move on. It can also determine how many people they are willing to refer to jobs within the organization or whether they warn them away. Therefore, it is important for organizations to create a positive and rewarding employee experience for employees.
One of the things that can greatly influence employee experience is performance reviews. Performance reviews encompass a gamut of factors, such as feedback, career growth, development, praise, etc. These have a direct impact on an employee’s experience.
As such, it is important to create a good performance review culture, especially one that makes employees feel like it is enhancing their time at the organization, instead of making them feel like they need to flee as soon as they can.
Do you have any other performance review tips in mind? Let us know in comments.
Want to know how Engagedly can improve your performance review process? Request for a live demo.
The Impact of Continuous Feedback: Do you wait till the annual reviews to share your feedback with your employees? You might want to reconsider. We are here to talk to you about the value of continuous feedback. But before we take a deep dive into how it can help improve employee performance, let us look at a small example first.
Charles, a recent graduate from college, joined the analytics team of ABC corporation remotely on May 2020. His manager, Robert, trained him over the first few weeks and assigned him to a project. After the completion of the project, Robert came across some errors, but did not highlight it as he wanted to take it up with Charles during the yearly performance reviews. Back to present in March 2021, when Robert highlighted the issues to Charles, he was surprised, and at the same time defiant. Was this avoidable? We would say absolutely yes. A timely feedback would have helped Charles to understand his mistakes in time and take corrective actions immediately.
To avoid any such similar incidents, here are some ways in which feedback can help your employees to improve performance.
The worst thing about traditional annual performance reviews is that they wait till the last minute to let employees know that they have veered off course, have wasted their efforts, or are not doing well. Time is precious in the context of performance and, of course, money as well.
Real-time feedback can help employees course-correct as and when necessary, can help them fix mistakes that were holding them back and, sometimes, it can even help them revamp their goals or increase their targets.
One of feedback’s biggest plus points is that it is instantaneous and does not require much fanfare. As opposed to an annual performance review, which conjures up a much more formal and stiff image. Besides, it’s not easy to share as much feedback during an annual review. Both the manager and employee are conscious of the time spent in the meeting, with the manager being aware that she does not have the luxury of addressing the employee’s performance completely, even if she really wants to.
Feedback, on the other hand,can be as easy as a quick five-minute chat in the cafeteria, or a congratulatory email about a job well done.
When feedback is shared or received throughout the year, it helps managers visualize an accurate image of an employee’s performance. Managers can make a note of significant achievements or issues that are negatively affecting an employee’s performance. They can even record their own reaction to the employee’s performance. And over a period, it can paint an impressive picture of performance.
Source: rawpixel.com
A culture of continuous feedback helps employees to receive inputs from their managers leaders throughout the year instead of waiting till the last minute for performance reviews. It helps employees to plan their career growth well. The process of continuous feedback helps leaders to understand their employees better and helps them plan their career trajectories.
Feedback helps employees stay motivated and engaged continuously. It helps leaders to monitor the performance of their employees continuously and improve it. Also, continuous feedback helps in developing a two-way communication channel between employees and their managers. It helps employees feel that the organization wants to understand their opinions and issues and solve them.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with performance management in your organization? Talk to our experts and request a live demo!
St. Louis, MO, Sep 2, 2021 – Engagedly, a leading provider of employee engagement and performance management software, today announced the availability of Personio on the platform to help its clients with seamless integration. Personio is Europe’s leading HR software for small and medium-sized enterprises.
With this integration, companies will be able to keep their user base on Engagedly up-to-date, completely automatically. It is sure to delight organizations that are looking for an effective, one-stop HR solution.
“We are excited to partner with Personio, a leader in the people management platform. Partnering with Personio will help our joint clients leverage the vast power of Engagedly for employee engagement, people development and business execution, and provide a unified employee experience.” – Says Sri Chellappa, President & CO-founder, Engagedly.
The integration can be activated within the Engagedly platform in just a few clicks, allowing its clients to link with Personio without having to maintain two different HR systems. Once activated, all key details of the employee from Personio can be mapped to the attributes on Engagedly for smooth integration. By automatically transferring data, organizations can ensure their HR processes are more streamlined while preventing errors that may occur during manual processes.
“We are thrilled to onboard Engagedly as a partner on our Personio Marketplace. With more companies now embracing fully remote and hybrid work, engaging employees and maintaining high-performing organisations has never been more critical. This new integration will streamline the employee and HR admin experience for our joint customers.” – Sam Richards, General Manager, UK & Ireland, Personio.
Employee details that will be auto-synced as a result of the integration are: First Name, Last Name, Email, Gender, Status, Job Title, Reporting To, Date of Hire, Departure Date, Block Reason Code, Location, Department, Business Unit, Profile Picture, Birthday, Employee Type, Employee ID, and LinkedIn.
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 into one easy-to-use software solution.
To learn more about Engagedly, visit: https://engagedly.com/
Personio is Europe’s leading HR software for small and medium-sized companies. Based in Munich, Madrid, London and Dublin, Personio’s mission is to make HR processes as transparent and efficient as possible so HR can focus on the most valuable assets in the company: the people. The Personio solution includes human resources, recruiting, and payroll and supports all core HR processes every business needs to do. More than 4,000 customers in over 80 countries use Personio.
The transition throughout the pandemic has not been easy for anyone. Both the employees and the organizations are still struggling to adjust to the new normal. While for some it was easy, but for some it was a major cause of disengagement and distractions. So the question is, are you checking on your employees often and what is the best way to do so.
Employee surveys can be used as an effective way to manage your employees and gauge their engagement.They are designed in such a way that they drive employees to engage more and have a positive impact on them. Once you know how your employees feel, it will be easier to figure out how to better engage them and obtain employee engagement ideas.
Here are eight steps to embrace when you conduct employee surveys.
Determining the objective of a survey is the most important aspect of conducting a survey. Clarify the purpose of the survey by asking yourself why is the survey important to your organization and what you aim to achieve through the survey. A clear objective gives your survey a direction and motivates your employees to take it more enthusiastically.
For instance, you can carry out a survey to gain insights into your employees’ perception of their work or to increase employee engagement. The point is that you need to have an absolutely clear objective before you give your employees a survey. A survey without an objective is pointless and has high chances of failure as you will get responses which you will not be able to do much with.
Once you’ve figured out the objective of the survey, the next thing you need to do make sure that your employees realize this survey is important. And that their participation is necessary. A lot of surveys tend to fail because the people taking them do not take them seriously. In order for your survey to work, you need accurate and honest feedback. You can also use a third-party provider to administer the survey, to assure your employees of anonymity and fairness. Using a third-party provider increases the response rate and provides you with an unbiased end report.
It is important that you select the appropriate survey method. As there are different types of surveys, there are also different methodologies to conduct the surveys. The survey methodology depends on a few factors like the participants of the survey, ease of distributing the questionnaire, ease of receiving the responses, etc. Online questionnaires are widely used now tools such as engagedly you can design and implement a survey rapidly. You can choose one of the two methodologies to conduct an employee survey.
Depending on the survey objective and the target audience, make a list of important topics to be included in the questionnaire. Make sure that any question doesn’t have a negative impact on the relationship of your work staff. Mostly, try to formulate positive questions and avoid typical social norm questions which encourage criticism of their coworkers. You may want to have some questions that can bring out employee engagement ideas you may not have thought about. You might need to make multiple questionnaires and validate them before you can release the final version.
Now that the questionnaire is ready, all you have to do is get your employees to take the survey. To get responses across the board, you might have to promote the survey aggressively. Encourage your employees to participate in the survey. Help them understand how they can benefit from it. Once they are clear about the outcome and benefits of the survey, they will be more eager to be a part of it.
After the survey is conducted, make sure that you communicate the results of the survey to your employees. Don’t suppress them results. In fact, your employees deserve to know what the survey says and what the general consensus is. You can probably have a short presentation about the results of the survey and then discuss the results with your employees.
After presenting the results, make sure that you act on the results as you discussed with your employees during the presentation. Create a plan of action and a set of goals to be achieved. Also, involve your employees in the plan and assign them responsibilities so that they solve the issues themselves and feel empowered.
Carry out employee surveys at regular intervals of time. Any survey is of no use if it is conducted once in a year or once in two years. You will only know how your employees feel if you make it a habit of asking them.
Have you carried out surveys in your organization? Share your experiences with us in the comments section below!
Want to know how Engagedly can help you implement effective employee surveys? Request for a demo from our experts.
St. Louis, MO, Aug 26, 2021—Engagedly Inc., a leader in performance management and employee engagement software, won a bronze in Brandon Hall Group HCM Excellence Awards announced on 19th August 2021. Brandon Hall Technology Awards conducted by Brandon Hall Group, is a leading independent Human Capital Management Research and Analyst firm. Engagedly won Bronze in Best Advance in Creating a Talent Strategy.
“We are honored to win the Brandon Hall award in Talent Strategy implementation for our work with health industry leader HIMSS in helping them realize their vision of one HIMSS across their organization.” said Sri Chellappa, President/Co-Founder. “With the prevalence of hybrid work environment, it is critical that organizations embrace leading collaboration and culture enhancing technologies like ours to improve their employee experience”
“Brandon Hall Group Excellence Awards in 2021 provide much-needed and well-deserved recognition to organizations that went above and beyond to support their stakeholders during the unprecedented disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Brandon Hall Group COO and leader of the HCM Excellence Awards Program Rachel Cooke. “The awards provide validation of best practices in all areas of HCM at a time when they have never been more important to employers, employees and customers.”
A panel of veteran evaluated the entries, including independent senior industry experts, Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives based upon these criteria: fit the need, design of the program, functionality, innovation and overall measurable benefits.
Excellence Award winners are scheduled to be honored at Brandon Hall Group’s HCM Excellence Conference, Feb. 1-3, 2022, at the Hilton West Palm Beach, Florida. Select winners also will serve as presenters in breakout sessions, sharing their leading practices during the conference.
“We added several awards categories this year to specifically address critical needs, including how organizations addressed the new dynamics of work and embedded the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion in their HCM practices,” Brandon Hall Group CEO Mike Cooke said. “Winning organizations in all categories demonstrated a people-centric approach while driving superior business results under challenging and unprecedented conditions. Demonstrating HCM’s impact on the business is what sets our awards apart.
View the complete list of winners here.
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 into one easy-to-use software solution. To learn more about Engagedly, visit: https://engagedly.com/.
Brandon Hall Group operates the largest and longest running awards program in Human Capital Management. As an independent HCM research and analyst firm they conduct studies in Learning and Development, Talent Management, Leadership Development, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Talent Acquisition and HR/Workforce Management. These benchmark studies help organizations by providing strategic insights for executives and practitioners responsible for growth and business results.
Coupling the research studies with the best practice from the awards, Brandon Hall Group has helped more than 10,000 clients globally and more than 28 years of delivering world-class research and advisory. At the core of our offerings is a membership program that combines research, benchmarking and unlimited access to data and analysts. Membership enables executives and practitioners to make the right decisions about people, processes, and systems, coalesced with analyst advisory services which aim to put the research into action in a way that is practical and efficient. Brandon Hall Group has also launched professional certifications for business and human capital management professionals to upskill themselves and gain credentials for career advancement.(http://www.brandonhall.com)
Bias exists in everyday life. It’s a very common human failing, and no one is immune to it.
Bias essentially tend to be preconceived notions which often reflect inaccurate information. In some cases, bias serves to further enforce a stereotype and in others, it creates false perceptions.
Though bias exists in everyday life at the workplace, it hurts employees the most when it crops up in performance reviews. Rater bias can damage to an employee’s career. At best, it allows some of them to coast through without anybody picking up on their lack of performance. At the worst, it prevents others (such as minorities) from moving up the ladder; it prevents hardworking employees from getting their due and it certainly ruins an employee’s chance of growing within an organization.
The task of dismantling rater bias is up to us, the individual. It is important, especially during performance reviews, to approach the review with an impartial state of mind.
Performance, compensation, etc are all factors that should be devoid of bias and instead should focus solely on an employee’s performance, skills and abilities.
Here are 4 ways to prevent rater bias from damaging performance reviews.
Another way to objectively review performance is to establish criteria for what is good or bad performance. This, of course, will vary from department to department and can vary from manager to manager as well. However, it is important to see that these criteria for performance don’t unfairly penalize some and reward others.
Even when applying criteria for reviewing performance, managers should take note of how objective they are being. Are they extending the same treatment to everyone? Or they giving no one special treatment? However, they choose to evaluate performance; it is necessary that everyone get treated the same way (save for extenuating circumstances). Same treatment across the board treatment ensures a lesser chance of bias unless, of course, the manager is one of those who chronically over rates people or underrates them. In which case, they need to rethink their approach to performance evaluation completely.
Maintain documentation throughout the year, be it about your own performance, or be it with regard to someone else’s.
This way, when performance review season rolls around, you are prepared to approach the review with information based on facts, as opposed to your own judgment. Everybody deserves fair and impartial reviews. And while it is impossible to be 100% fair and impartial (it’s a statistical impossibility) we should strive to do as much as we can.
Inequality in the workplace hurts everyone, but it might hurt some subsets of employees more than the others.
Sometimes rater bias isn’t evident to us until we are faced with evidence of it. Undergoing bias training can help us confront some deeply rooted instances of bias and then dismantle those preconceptions. It can also help us evaluate our own performance better since evidence has shown that men tend to overestimate their performance, while women tend to underestimate their performance.
This might be especially helpful for organizations who are discovering that their work culture needs a bit of a rethink or an overhaul.
Sometimes, the problem is not in the person, rather it is in the process. In such cases, it is worth revisiting your performance review process and seeing what needs to change to get rid of bias. For example, subjective questions in a performance review process only increase the occurrence of rater bias, because there is no measure of accountability. Or there are stack rankings, a damaging practice that pits employees against each other and further increases bias.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help with the performance review process? Request for a demo with us.
St. Louis, MO, Aug 17, 2021: Engagedly, a leading provider of SaaS solutions for performance management, has been named one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, as recognized by its debut in the 2021 Inc. 5000. Ranked at #843, Engagedly is among the top .07% of companies in the country, in terms of growth.
The annual Inc. 5000 list represents a unique look at the most successful companies within the US economy’s most dynamic segment — independent businesses. Companies such as Dell, Pandora, GoPro, Facebook, LinkedIn, Yelp, Zillow, and many other well-known names gained their first national exposure as top 500 exclusive honorees on the Inc. 5000.
“Making the Inc. 5000 list is a rite of passage for successful companies and a huge milestone for Engagedly,” says Sri Chellappa, Engagedly’s co-founder and president. “It is a testament to the continued value we provide in aligning people processes to business strategy for our clients, and we are looking forward to another great year as organizations seek and implement technologies to help them adapt to the changing landscape of the hybrid workforce.”
Engagedly helps organizations create effective, engaged workforces by digitizing performance management and improving employee engagement. Engagedly’s cloud platform is built to engage, motivate, develop, and drive performance. Unlike disparate, disconnected approaches to business execution, Engagedly offers an easy-to-use, integrated, and comprehensive set of features to ensure employee performance and development is effective and easy, enabling teams to stay engaged and productive.
The 2021 Inc. 5000 companies have been ranked according to revenue percentage growth over a three-year-period from 2017 to 2020. To qualify for the process, companies must have founded and generated revenue by March 31, 2017. Companies applying for the process must be U.S. based, profit generating and privately held, and should not be subsidiaries or divisions of other companies—as of December 31, 2020. The minimum revenue required for 2017 is $100,000; the minimum for 2020 is $2 million. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons.
View the complete list here: https://www.inc.com/inc5000/2021
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 into one easy-to-use software solution. To learn more about Engagedly, visit: https://engagedly.com/
Founded in 1979 and acquired in 2005 by Mansueto Ventures LLC, Inc. is the only major brand dedicated exclusively to owners and managers of growing private companies, with the aim to deliver real solutions for todays’ innovative company builders. The total monthly audience reach for the brand has been growing significantly, from 2,000,000 in 2010 to more than 18,000,000 today. For more information, visit www.inc.com. In 1982 the Inc. 500 was started to highlight the fastest growing companies in the US. In 2007 the list was expanded to Inc. 5000 to help everyone get a deeper understanding of the entrepreneurial landscape.
“Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success.” — Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company.
Putting together a high-performing team isn’t just about tossing together a bunch of fantastic individual contributors and then hoping for the best.
You might as well throw together a few sticks of dynamite, pour oil on it, and then light it. The end result is an explosion. Good or bad, is anyone’s guess.
High performing teams are rare for a reason. They are composed of a number of good qualities, all of which work well together. Like the cogs in a well-oiled machine. High-performing teams require little outside interference and instead set their own team dynamics. When managers chance upon high-performing teams, it’s important to continue to nurture them, without overstepping boundaries, but also without giving them full reign.
Here are 6 traits of high performing teams that distinguish them from normal teams.
Remember, a high-performance team will not just possess one of these characteristics. Rather, they possess of these characteristics and maybe even more, though those may be specific to the field they are working in!
Let us know if you have any other points in mind.
Want to know Engagedly can help you build high-performing teams? Request a live demo from our experts to know more!
Before we go into the details of stay interviews, let us consider a simple scenario. Rob, your Chief Technical Architect, informed you today that he has decided to quit and move to a different organization. He was the head of the technical team and was there since the inception. Can you hire someone in his place? Yes, you can. But will the new hire be able to deliver at the same level? How quickly can she or he learn? Highly subjective in nature, this will depend upon the individual’s capacity. But the real question is, could Rob have been retained? Yes! Stay interviews could have helped you do that.
Employee retention has been a topic of discussion for those in HR and people service for a very long time, even before the pandemic hit. After the pandemic and the work from home policies, the topic of employee retention has gained even more relevancy. Stay interviews can help you improve retention and reduce turnover and attrition rate.
Stay interviews are informal one-on-ones between the manager and their employees. They help employers to understand how employees feel about the company and their managers, and most importantly, how long do they intend to stay and work with them. They are crucial to retain your best employees.
Be it an exit interview or any other surveys conducted by the HR Executives of an organisation, they are different from stay interviews. When an exit interview is conducted, the employee is already leaving, and it’s too late to recognise and solve any problems. What you can well is identify the issues and make it better for the next person.
You might say that an employee satisfaction survey might do the trick. But no. It neither involves any two-way conversation, nor is there any chance of probing into a matter or having a follow-up session.
Stay interviews, on the other hand, are conducted while the valued employees are still working in the company. So, there remains a chance to identify how the organisation can improve and retain its workers.
Here are some tips that will make your stay interviews fruitful.
If you wish to conduct stay interviews, you need to first understand how feasible it is in the current scenario. If your company is not very supportive of open discussions and lacks the sense of trust towards the employees, conducting stay interviews can be a waste, or worse, can lead to adverse situations. It is important to conduct trust building activities first. On the other hand, if your organisation thrives on trust and open communication, stay interviews can really help in enhancing retention and employee engagement.
There is no use in conducting stay interviews if you will not do anything about it afterward. Once you have conducted the interviews, whenever you bring about the changes, let the employees know about it. It will further instil trust among the employees that the company takes their words seriously.
It is advisable to schedule the stay interviews well in advance, keeping all the parties informed. But that does not mean they are formal like the exit interview or the performance reviews. Its best if the conversations are spontaneous. The main idea is to make your employees feel comfortable enough to open up, so that they can speak what’s in their mind. So, it’s important to build a sense of trust before the interview and through it.
Forming the right questions is very important for stay interviews to have the right effect. Ask very clear, probing questions which fetch valuable answers without putting the employees in an uncomfortable spot. That’s where you need to be very tactful. Not all employees are comfortable opening up so easily. So, as their manager, you need to understand when you should not push any further and try approaching the topic from a different angle. Here’s a probable list of questions:
A lot of insights are revealed through these stay interviews. Make sure you document all the important information, so that you can collate all the data later on for further discussions with the HR and your superiors.
Once the interviews are over, the managers should be given an opportunity to discuss the data they have collated, so that they can discover patterns across the organisation. That way you can narrow down on what changes are required at an organisational level as well as what’s required to change at department levels.
Try not to get defensive with the answers you receive. Stay interviews might be able to help your organisation get precious insights into what keeps employees engaged and what drives them to quit.
Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with employee engagement? Then request for a live demo.
The use of technologies by companies has become more common and important than ever. One of the most important softwares used by many modern companies focuses on setting goals. The Chief Information Officers must make sure that the technologies used by their company are implemented and managed across the entire organization. There are many factors to consider when choosing the right goal setting software and how it will be implemented.
OKRs are “Objectives and Key Results”. OKRs help managers utilize goal setting software to align and connect individual goals with larger company goals. Good OKRs align employee goals with their team goals, and each team goals with organizational goals. Setting OKRs in the goal setting software will help employees see how they contribute to larger goals and impact other employees / departments. This will improve employee engagement. Using OKRs in the goal setting software will also bring transparency for expectations and deadlines of different teams.
Engagedly offers a customized consulting service program for OKR launch and coaching. Working with a coach is a proven best practice to help drive business outcomes and implement your OKR strategy. There are three phases:
When considering what you want in your goal setting software, consider the needs of your employees and other end users of the software. CIOs should study the processes used by your employees in the goal setting software and see if repetitive tasks can be automated. Goal setting software is great for fostering cross-functional leadership. Leaders of each business unit need to work together to recognize dependencies of different teams and how that will affect tracking in the goal setting software.
Forbes shares that good CIOs know how to pull your future goals into the present moment. First talk to each department head and determine the future outcome they want. Work all the way backwards until you define what you can do today to progress towards that future. Make a schedule of important tasks and consult the employee on how much time they estimate will be needed for each. It is a good idea to make stretch goals that will take the employee out of their comfort zone. If you are achieving every goal in your goal setting software, you are not setting goals high enough. Communicate with your employees that it is normal to not achieve every goal. By working towards goals that seem unachievable, we can use goal setting softwares to measure the real capacity of the organization.
Legacy technology is when a company continues to use an old or outdated system. Because a CIO might have put a lot of money or effort into a software in the past, they might overlook the higher cost of keeping the software. This is true with goal setting softwares. If you are struggling to set goals and make changes in your current software, you should consider changing to a newer option. Don’t blindly stick to a goal setting software that worked in the past but no longer is best fit.
One of the most common and impactful problems of outdated goal setting softwares is limited integration. If teams rely heavily on another application or platform, then a different and newer software may integrate better. Mike Loukides, VP of emerging tech content at O’Reilly Media says CIOs must ask “What do I want to do now that I can’t do, or only with great difficulty?” when examining a goal setting software. If your legacy technology is not flexible enough to satisfy the needs of you and your employees, it is time to upgrade.
Want to know how Engagedly can improve your Goal Setting? Request for a live Demo!
St. Louis, MO, July 30, 2021 – Engagedly is excited to announce its fifth annual list of “Top 100 HR Influencers of 2021”.
This annual list recognizes Human Resources and People Services disruptors and leaders from across all domains who are making tremendous strides in innovation, growth and technology to impact the people practice.
The nominees were selected through extensive research and open nominations announced on their website, social media, and press releases. The nominations were then scored on the basis of recency, frequency, innovation, follower breadth of Twitter and LinkedIn, and finally the amount of speaking engagements and publications. Engagedly’s industry research team narrowed the list down to a 100, from nearly 400 nominations.
Engagedly’s President and Co-Founder, Srikant Chellappa, explains the intention behind this recognition in his own words, “Every year we honor the champions of people practice. The last year has challenged people leaders like never before, with a rapid transition to remote work environments while maintaining a positive culture. This year’s honorees are special as they led us through these challenging times and we thank them for their leadership.”
Engagedly emphasizes that this list is not in any specific rank or order. Individuals have been categorized based on the type of work they have most notably been involved with, like HR Tech, Analytics and Strategy, Leadership and Development, Talent Acquisition, Organizational Development, Total Rewards, and Diversity and Inclusion. These categories are in no way intended to minimize the entirety of these influencers’ accomplishments. HR is an industry that is growing in all directions, and it is difficult to perfectly formulate a process that will recognize all HR professionals that are doing incredible work.
Check their complete list of winners here.
Also check the winners of 2020.
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 into one easy-to-use software solution. To learn more about Engagedly, visit: https://engagedly.com/
Since the March 2020, the world has been struggling with the deadly COVID virus, which created a pandemic. It forced organizations to change their style of work and go predominantly remote. The pandemic has yet to pass, but in many countries, employees are resuming work from their physical locations, with all precautions.
While organizations have become vigilant about the safety measures for their employees’ return to offices, many are yet to be inclusive of those with special needs. It is usually not intentional, rather an unconscious bias that most of us experience. If you are not a disability-friendly workplace, then it is the right time to be one.
As an employer, it is your primary responsibility to ensure that employees feel comfortable in the workplace. And that includes all employees, be they abled or disabled. Many people with disabilities face problems landing in their dream jobs because of a lack of basic facilities at most workplaces. Not only are disability-friendly workplaces are more inclusive, but they also create diversity in an organization.
A company’s culture should be inclusive of everyone, even for people with disabilities. However, when you do not know how to achieve that, it can be an intimidating prospect. This infographic shows you to build an all-inclusive culture and make your workplace disability-friendly as well.
Building a disability-friendly workplace is not a one day activity and takes time and effort. But it is surely worth it. It will help in creating a workplace where everyone feels welcomed and valued.
Do you have any other points to mention? Let us know in the comments.
Want to know how Engagedly can make employee management simpler? Then request for a live demo.
In today’s remote workplace, the need for a performance management software has become unquestionable. It has made managing remote teams easy and effortless. Even small to midsize businesses who were using traditional processes before COVID have shifted or are considering the shift to using a performance management software.
This is a good question to ask yourself before you embark on the hunt for performance management software.
Performance management is not just about reviews. In fact, performance reviews make up a very small portion of the entire process. Good performance management includes continuous feedback, consistent goals and objectives, gamification, frequent communication and learning and development. The software you are looking for should have these modules and additionally, should support integration with each other.
Here are our tips for choosing the right one for your organization!
Choosing a cloud-based application or software that must be installed manually does make a difference when it comes to performance management software. Cloud-based software applications do not need any set-up. All they need is a device and a connection to the internet for users to access them. On the other hand, software applications which need to be installed require a set-up process that can be short or lengthy depending on the size of the application. We recommend using a cloud-based software application.
We cannot stress how important it is that you pick a performance management software that is easy to use. The main problem with traditional performance management processes is that they can get tedious and cumbersome. When you begin using a software and find it even more tedious than your previous process, you’ve already lost the battle. Do not just request demos and download brochures and decide. Do your homework and request a free trial. And if you have the option of doing so, take the application for a test run with a pilot group.
If your software of choice causes more confusion, you know you need to look for something different.
When choosing performance management software, it is absolutely vital to have a software that aligns with your own expectations about performance management. It helps if you have a list of what you would like to change in your performance management process or what you want to introduce to it.
If your list of requirements includes, a flexible and customizable performance module, integration with other secondary modules, a goals module, then you should look for software that fits those needs to a T. Because it is absolutely possible for software applications to be great in every which way and yet be completely unsuitable for your own organization and performance management culture.
For a software to be useful, you need to be able to customize it to serve the needs of the end users. Performance management software that lends themselves to flexibility and customization is what you should look for. Because software makes it easier for organizations to enact change when it comes to the review process. If they can be tweaked to suit your needs, that’s how you know the software is going to be a good fit.
Before choosing a performance management software, make sure it integrates seamlessly and is compatible with any existing system in place. It should sync easily, provide data security, and is compatible with other employee management software. Otherwise, it will require too much IT support and effort before being put to use.
The software is only effective when besides being the right match for your organization; you also receive excellent customer support from the vendor. Good software providers are willing to meet organizations halfway and ease the transition process. Though it might be explicitly stated, take the liberty to check with service providers if they are willing to help you with on-boarding, support, technical issues etc and to what extent do they provide customer support?
We cannot stress this enough but do not blow your budget on software you cannot afford or vice versa. The beauty of the performance management software market is that there is something suitable for everyone in it. Enterprise class software may not be the best fit for you, if you are a small-sized business. Similarly, a simple one may not suit the needs of an organization that has some very specific needs and requirements.
Want to know about Engagedly’s real time performance management software? Connect with our experts!
In the past couple of months, organizations saw a drastic change in the way they function. The COVID-19 pandemic forced the workforce to go remote and made organizations resilient, agile, adaptive, and open to changes at the same time. This is what helped most C-Suite employees navigate their businesses successfully amidst a global pandemic.
While now many organizations are opening their doors and resuming their work from physical locations, the post-pandemic world is not the same. According to a KPMG study, globally almost 45% of the CEOs don’t expect things to return to normal until sometime in 2022. For leaders, to sustain the success of their organizations, they need to realign their strategies.
Here are five key areas for the C-Suite and leadership to focus on in the post-pandemic era.
Since the pandemic hit, things have changed around us arbitrarily. Not only it affected the lives of individuals, but it hit the global economy too. Businesses saw new ways of working and also saw many unprecedented changes. While we can say that the way businesses used to function is normalizing a bit; but the only way they can sustain it in the future is by embracing change and being agile. When CXOs (or the CEOs) are agile and ready to accept change easily, it will help organizations to cope with uncertainty better.
Whole of 2020 and the year till now have been a continuous learning experience for the CEOs. Learning and unlearning have become common along with the volatile and uncertain nature of businesses. For them to thrive in the post-pandemic era, they need to adopt an open and learning mindset. As there is no specific rulebook to survive, having a learning mindset will help them embrace change easily and make agile decisions whenever needed.
Replacing an employee is costly! Gallup estimates the cost to be somewhere around 1.5 to 2 times that of an individual’s salary. Consequently, reskilling and upskilling employees have been the focus of business for a long time now. But as a CEO, if you are not already doing it, then this is the right time to do so. This will not only help businesses to avoid unnecessary costs but also utilize existing resources to fill the ever-increasing skill gap accelerated by the pandemic. Additionally, it will help improve employee retention and engagement.
Understand your employee’s professional and personal goals to help align them with the organization’s goals. Provide them with access to online training academies, such as edX, Coursera, Udemy.
Mental health and consequently physical health have taken an impact since the time employees started working from home. Employees reporting stress and anxiety have increased. Over time, the number of hours spent in front of screens has increased, which has led to many employees complaining of frequent headaches and eye problems too. Moreover, most employees now have become used to erratic routines and non-ergonomic ways of working. So now more than ever, as CEOs and leaders of organizations you need to look after employee wellbeing and experience. But often, with employees working remotely, it becomes difficult. Nevertheless, we have listed how organizations can focus on employee wellbeing and improve the experience:
People first culture, a phrase with which we all have been synonymous, it’s time to put it to practice.
Remote working has created a sense of alienation and isolation among employees. They have become disconnected from the organization over time. As a result, disengagement has become common and employees have become counterproductive.
Focus on people-centric leadership approaches to make employees feel more connected and important. Ensure that employee voices are heard, give them a platform to share their opinions freely. Involve them in the decision-making process, and listen and empathize with them. Employees value their organizations and their leaders when they feel valued and important.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you improve employee experience? Request for a live demo.
Deciding which performance appraisal software to integrate into your business is an important decision. You may be overwhelmed with how many options are on the market. Can you buy and use pre-made performance appraisal software, or will you need to build a new system? Many managers are struggling to understand the different types and features of each when they want to make a decision. A new generation of low-code and no-code software for performance appraisals has hit the market in recent years, and it is a game changer. Gartner estimates that by 2024, 65% or more of software creation will be using low-code.
Low-code and no-code development is a platform where the development is made so simple that anyone can make software or app, even if they have little or no coding skills. This is a visual software development tactic that uses block icons with pre-installed code inside them. Users can drag and drop these blocks to develop and customize the application elements.
Both low-code and no-code development used to be known as rapid application development (RAD). They both shorten the development time of applications by easily allowing developers to use duplicate and repetitive code. The difference between these two is that no-code only lets developers use the pre-set blocks of code, while low-code still has some flexibility for developers to make additions or modifications with written code. In short, no-code and low-code can help digitize and automate performance appraisal software development.
No-code development is perfect for businesses without any IT team or specialists. Using no code to develop performance appraisal software takes a fraction of the time and cost it would take to hire a development team and create one from scratch. Many companies only need the basic requirements of performance appraisal software without the extra effort of customization.
Small businesses with a small number of employees and different departments will find no-code performance appraisal software the easiest and fastest. This software will come pre-packaged with the most common and helpful applications. If you need something fast, that is ready to use right out of the box, your company should look into no-code.
As your company grows and expands, you may find that the no-code software you have been using is missing many important features that your team now needs. Low-code has many of the same benefits as no-code but is less limited. A programmer can create those extra features and customizations you need. This still allows the programmer to utilize pre-set code blocks for most of the performance appraisal software and focus more time on perfecting the custom additions you want.
As the name implies, some coding knowledge is still needed for low-code development. Many companies have integrated an AI assistant to make this part even easier and faster. The AI assistant can help amateur coders navigate how to make changes to the software. It also might be necessary to use low-code instead of no-code development if your company already uses many different platforms or software, and you want these fully integrated into your performance appraisal software.
Low code is commonly used for task automation. With low code, it is easy to set up custom, automated tasks in the software. In your performance appraisal software, quickly set up an automated email to send out to employees when they miss an important deadline. You can set up rewards to automatically go out when an employee or team accomplishes a company goal in the system. These benefits of Low-code have made it the most productive option for performance appraisal software development. Forbes found that companies are 15 – 20% more productive when they use low-code platforms. This is because low-code platforms have higher speeds and scale than what manual code reviews and alterations can accomplish.
Low-code is more flexible than no-code platforms, but both will have limitations as a tradeoff for easy development. Low-code platforms can limit the integration to other third-party platforms or tools smoothly. No-code and low-code software often work best for smaller companies. The larger your company, the larger variety of data that needs to be processed differently inside the platform. Larger companies will likely need something more customizable than low-code to effectively categorize, filter, group, or label data. The pre-set code blocks in no-code and low-code software are targeted toward most standard business requirements in performance appraisal software. The more unique business your company and employees do, the less likely a low-code software will have all the features needed to properly measure employee performance.
Want to know how Engagedly can make your performance management process flexible? Request for a live Demo!
From the leader’s desk on the importance of ‘crucial conversations‘ by Engagedly’s Director of Human Resources Preeti Mathur.
Jerry and Vilina were having an argument while on a zoom call. As participants tried to calm them down, they were becoming more and more unmanageable. The host decided to discontinue the meeting abruptly and the agenda remained incomplete.
Haven’t we come across such scenarios in our day-to-day interactions? Be it professional or personal, many times simple conversations seem to take an ugly turn. This in turn has our relationships impacted negatively, some for a short period of time, while others to last forever! How can we then have conversations that still make sense, despite a difference in opinion? When stakes are high, can we still remain calm and think positively?
One such book that answers all these questions is Crucial Conversations by authors Patterson, Granny, McMillan & Switzler. The approach to handling such sensitive conversations with utmost presence of mind, yet keeping it simple and more grounded with facts, is the essence of the book.
Engagedly’s book club members read the book and shared their thoughts from their practical experiences. The discussion felt like a journey, interesting to the ears as well as rich in learning. Managers could relate to the tough and sensitive conversations they’ve had with their team members. Team members, on the other hand, could recollect a few past conversations that went into an emotional loop or even strained relationships. One thing that emerged common as an outcome to handling such conversation was the art of ‘keeping cool and still staying alert to what your mind wants to speak’.
Most crucial conversations fail because one or both the parties weren’t able to have any control over their temper. Even if they did, their egos were too hurt as an aftermath of the conversation, and reconciliation was never undertaken as an option.
To be able to handle a crucial conversation well, it’s important to first understand what it is.
As a choice on facing a conversation, we can choose to do either of the three things –
(a) Avoid the conversation, (b) Face the conversation and handle it poorly, or (c) Face the conversation and handle it well.
It is ultimately tuning your mind on how you want to approach a crucial conversation.
The book talks about an interesting way to handle such crucial conversations. ‘Start from your heart’. As much as others may need to change, as much as you may want them to change, the only person you can continually inspire, prod, and shape is YOURSELF. Hence, we individually need to take charge of our brain and decide how ‘I’, as a person, want to react during a crucial conversation. An overwhelming urge to win or prove “I am right” or refraining from discussing an issue in the hope to remain “safe” will only lead to building a weaker me.
The answer is by targeting the mutual purpose. Ask yourself, ‘Does the other person know that I care about his/her/their needs?’ If your objective is to simply get your way, then you won’t achieve the mutual purpose. You will genuinely have to strive to ensure that the needs of both sides are met.
Let’s assume you had the motives right, but how do you tackle emotions arising amidst crucial conversations? You and I play emotional story cards that claim we’re either victims, villains or just helpless. It is crucial to judge these behaviours early in the conversation and separate such stories from facts. Gather your facts right and communicate them clearly and respectfully. Ask for what the other person / people have to say. Listen to oppositions patiently and curiously watch behaviours before you respond further. Provide assurance where you agree and respectfully describe where & why you may want to differ. Don’t forget that you are still bound by results that are mutually binding / impacting. Hence, speak in the interest of the larger good.
Lastly, a focus on how we get to the final outcome / action is crucial too. You can arrive at a decision using either of the methods like command, consult, vote or consensus. The path you choose will depend on the power of authority and what level of ‘people buy-in’ you are looking for.
Having understood what a crucial conversation is about and the components that affect its success or failure, we come to the question that most of us have in our minds even after having read the book.
Despite coming into a conversation with an open & positive mind, some of us weren’t able to have control over our temper, emotions, & anger. Some of us have tried telling ourselves several times that ‘I will not mess this up, I will stay calm and I will be a good listener too’. But we still fail and really are clueless on how to get this right. These behaviours sometimes do not allow us to come across as a mature person and leave us with strained relationships. Our climbing up the career ladder is impacted and sometimes we completely lose out a race and get into our hiding shell, not wanting to face a few people again.
While there are many suggestions around what you could do, it is best suggested that you pick your top three (low hanging fruits, that is easier to practice and achieve) of the laundry list and diligently practice these in the smallest of any crucial conversation. With persistence and consistency, you will gradually begin to see results emerging.
The indicator to watch out for is the change in your own behaviour. Traits like patience, better listening skills, your connection with the larger need/goal, the mutual buy-in factor and respect for the other party will get fine-tuned and you become more approachable. If you’ve been able to get this right, your emotional self will automatically take a back seat and you will come across as someone who makes sense and has a good sense of judgement. This will enhance the power you will wield from how much people will want to hear from you or know what you think.
What is the formula then to have meaningful crucial conversations? That’s simple.
Personal & professional relationships improve if we can speak openly and effectively rather than using threats or silent fuming. Be alert for times when you can apply the content and skills. The more opportunities you miss, the more likely you will revert to your old habits.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you with employee engagement? Request for a demo!
Employee turnover is a constant problem in companies all over the world. Every company does its best to retain existing talents and at the same time attract new ones. When an employee leaves the organization, it affects the organization in more ways than one. It not only affects the performance of the team which the employee leaves but also affects the organization overall. As a result, whenever a new employee joins the organization, there are costs involved. Interviewing, background checks, selection, onboarding, and training, each step till the time a new employee joins, has cost involved in terms of time and money. A recent study by Gallup shows that the cost of replacing an individual employee can range from one-half to two times their annual salary.
The sudden rise in the number of goodbye lunches could be a great concern to the human resources team. We will help you identify six reasons why your employees leave. Managers and leaders often tend to ignore them as probable causes of employee attrition. But they are often the actual cause behind employees leaving the organization.
Do you have any other reason in mind? Let us know in the comments.
Want to know how Engagedly can make employee management simpler? Then request for a live demo.
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