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.
Becoming an excellent manager is not just about delegating tasks to your direct reports and telling them what to do, it is more than that. It is a series of actions which you perform and not just the years of experience. The actions may not have an instantaneous effect, but over a period, it affects the team.
Here are five qualities that will help you manage your team better.
The Ability To Make Decisions
Managers don’t work alone, they manage a team and are people leaders in the making. So, as a people’s leader, one of the most important tasks of an effective manager is to make independent decisions. If you showcase yourself as someone who cannot decide or refuses to decide, or, even worse, is ambivalent about everything, you will come across as an indecisive person to your team. This will lead your team members to lose faith in you as a manager and it affects the entire team.
Share Feedback
Employee feedback when given on time not only helps your employees feel appreciated, but also improves employee engagement. Lack of feedback makes your employees feel disengaged and underappreciated, and they ultimately end up leaving the organization. Additionally, timely feedback helps them know when they are doing right or wrong. Feedback helps your team work effectively and efficiently. Frequent feedback sessions like these help improve your bond with your reports.
One of the most common mistakes which many newbie managers make is they end up spoon-feeding their direct reports. Don’t end up doing their task, or do not offer to do it for them because you don’t like it. As a manager, you are not only supposed to manage your team, but also understand and teach them when they are not able to perform. Doing their work once or twice is okay, but if you do it every time you don’t like their work, they won’t be able to learn. Moreover, you end up having no time to complete your own work.
Employees feel discouraged as they feel their work is undervalued and unimportant, and they would not get a chance to improve. They might also become overdependent on you as they know you will fix the work and they need not worry about the issues.
Share Credit When Due
According to research by O.C. Tanner, 79% of employees quit their jobs when they don’t feel appreciated.
We all like getting recognition, but it should not be at the cost of others’ light. It’s a very common mistake that alienates team members instantly, as if you have the plague or something contagious. When your employees do something for you, make sure you acknowledge their contribution or their work. Similarly, when mistakes happen, step up and accept the blame instead of pointing fingers at specific people. As a manager, you are a leader in training. If you do not allow yourself to develop wholly, you will never be able to reach the higher ranks.
We all know that difficult conversations put us in an uneasy spot. But avoiding them only makes the problem worse. As a manager, you need to understand that sometimes, certain conversations must be had, no matter how averse you are to being confrontational. And here’s the thing. A difficult conversation need not be confrontational. All you need is some tact and empathy and of course, the willingness to listen.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you become a better manager? Request a demo today from our experts.
We are all responsible for creating and maintaining a positive work environment and interpersonal relationship between employees. The main responsibility of it, though, falls on the Human Resource department. The HR of any organization has many key responsibilities – starting from the recruitment process, education and training, to off-boarding/termination of employees.
Recent studies have shown that almost 85% of the global labor force is actively disengaging from their work. Productivity and earnings have been affected to a great extent because of it.
There is a way to avoid such a situation. Wondering how? By implementing creative ways to engage your workforce in order to boost productivity. The tools stated below have the potential to increase engagement among employees and help your organization achieve set goals. Let’s go through them together.
Communication Apps
An organization’s success depends on effective internal communication. A business that lacks communication suffers decreased motivation and loses sight of its purpose. As a consequence, productivity plummets to an all-time low. If you are wondering how you can enhance communication among your employees and enhance productivity and engagement levels, say thank you to productivity tools. This whole process becomes more streamlined and simplified by bringing in exactly what your workforce needs.
For example, apps like Slack and Confluence are great for improving communication.
With Slack, you can easily organize your groups, subgroups, departments, or the entire company through various channels. Achieve two-way communication with ease while keeping necessary information organized, stored, and at an easily accessible location.
Confluence is an app intended for bigger organizations in order to receive important information at lightning speed. It’s a versatile application that helps you organize a company’s policy, video tutorials, and transfer crucial messages.
Video Calling Applications
Video calling apps have become widely popular, especially post pandemic. Companies of every industry have used them for meetings, at one point or the other. Given their increased necessity in today’s world, no one wants bad connections,broken links, and unnecessary interruptions.
To make sure everything goes in order, you can employ certain tools. This will ensure engaging meeting spaces that can be an effective way to boost team productivity.
Zoom and Google Hangouts are leading apps for video conferencing. They are free for use and their main purpose is to make video calls, send messages, and join a conversation within a group or just with one person.
Mentimeter has also proven to be very effective when it comes to video calling. It is a software that employees can use to join video calls via their smartphones. They are able to send messages, vote, answer questions, or generally contribute to a presentation.
If you are looking to host larger-scale meetings which involve presentations, there are a large number of webinar software options to choose from.
The aim of any project is to be a successful one, so it needs to be managed in the right way. Successful project management eliminates ambiguity among employees, respects deadlines, and each project is completed effectively and accurately.
Tools like Trello, Asana, and Hive can help you accomplish those projects with ease. For instance, during your workday, you may be thinking to yourself, ‘How am I going to rewrite my essay quickly and efficiently?’ You will have all the necessary tools for completing the project from start to finish with these apps. Trello has proven to be a great option for the ones who are just starting the project journeys, while Hive will give you the needed analytics reports for tracking the team’s productivity better.
Management of Remote Teams
When we are talking about project management, it is easy to do it with the help of productivity tools. But, the projects are not the only things to be managed. After the pandemic hit, we now know better than that. Many companies have turned to remote work and the work of HR has completely changed. Remote teams had to be managed without adequate support systems and infrastructure. This means that the HR team needs to take care of the employees’ well-being; balance flexibility; reward teams and individuals for their accomplishments; maintain relationships with each employee, and aim to make a genuinely happier work from home environment.
Efficiency increases when teams are provided with productivity tools that facilitate cross-functional collaboration.
This is very important, especially for companies that have departments that work in silos, have remote workers, and employees from multiple locations. This is where collaborative tools can benefit your organization through improved collaboration capabilities.
You have probably heard of Google Drive, as it’s one of the first choices for many companies. This storage-based service will allow you to upload all important documents for free on your secure cloud storage.
Documents, slides, and Google sheets are available, which means you can upload files, pictures, videos, and audio. The documents can be shared and edited by the people who have access to them. This is especially useful for organizations that have a large or growing amount of files that need to be shared with other people, regardless of their location.
Similar to this service, that gives us the same options as Google Drive, is Microsoft’s OneDrive. The only difference is that this software allows you to view and edit files offline, which can be very beneficial at times.
Tools for time management
There are a lot of popular apps like customer data platforms, for tracking the behaviour of your customers. When it comes to employees, that platform is your HR worker. In addition, the time tracking will provide you with valuable insight into your employees’ work. You can know track each task and find out which areas are lacking productivity.
Toggl is a great and simple-to-use time tracking tool. With just a click, you can track the time you spent on each task. You are available to see reports about each project and task you did over the past week. If you forget to start your time, a little bot will send you an alert each time.
RescueTime is another useful tracking tool. You can monitor the apps and websites employees are using during their work time. Besides that, you can even check at which hour the employees are the most or least productive, as well as their days and the weeks.
Virtual Recruiting
Pandemic has triggered a lot of changes in company policies. When it comes to hiring, the whole process of recruiting has become virtual. From planning, selecting, managing, to hiring, everything has become virtual.
The experience that a prospective employee had in their job interview has a great influence on their satisfaction level as well as on the whole company’s reputation. The ones who have had a positive experience will most likely accept the position, thereby becoming your company’s referral.
Summary
Running a business during a pandemic has surely brought about some changes in brand strategies, company policies, and staff support procedures. Since most things are now done in the digital environment, including our communication, there are necessary tools to keep workers engaged, while aiming for the highest performance.
Productivity tools mentioned above can facilitate one’s work and solve key problems. Although, you should avoid complicated and unnecessary tools that can just disrupt workflows and lower productivity levels.
Tools like the ones mentioned above are user-friendly and straightforward. However, you can always experiment, and try to find the ones that suit you and your employees the best.
Introduce them to your workers, allow them time to integrate, and be open to feedback. Only by doing so, can you nurture collaboration and achieve the desired productivity.
Want to know how Engagedly can help your employees perform better? Request a demo today.
Nina Petrov is a content marketing specialist, passionate about graphic design, content marketing, and the new generation of green and social businesses. She starts the day scrolling her digest on new digital trends while sipping a cup of coffee with milk and sugar. Her white little bunny tends to reply to your emails when she is on vacation.
The corporate world has completely changed in comparison to what it was two years ago. Organizations adapted themselves to new methods of working and employees became completely remote due to the pandemic. In the current scenario, while many organizations are shifting to a hybrid model of work, remote work is here to stay.
This makes it essential for organizations to shift to performance management software from the traditional paper- based processes. While traditional performance management processes were not easy to follow, with the arrival of the pandemic it has become completely impossible.
Performance management has evolved at a quick pace over the last few decades. Earlier, annual performance reviews were the indisputable norm. It was a dreadful affair for both the managers and the employees. But now it is not just a yearly process, it has become flexible, continuous and more comprehensive. This helps employees to stay engaged and on the right track.
Traditional performance processes work fine when organizations are small or have a very simple review process. But once organizations get bigger and job roles get more complex, there’s a need for software to enhance the process, or rather, to ease the process.
Benefits of performance management software for your organization?
Helps Understand Goals Better
A recent study by Gallup indicates that about 50% of employees do not know what is expected of them at their workplace.
Imagine a situation wherein a remote employee is expected to put in his or her 100% effort but is not sure where this is headed or what’s the end result of this. Do you think she or he will be able to put in that much effort? Performance management software enables the company to have clear-cut goals and makes them visible to every employee. Every employee gets to see how their effort can help the company achieve higher-level goals.
When they see how they can make an impact at the individual level, it makes them want to strive harder. Managers can easily keep a track of their team performances remotely and can provide feedback accordingly.
One of performance management software’s biggest advantages is that it can be extremely easy to use, depending on the choice of software. All the things required for a review cycle are in one place, most of the processes are automated, and once the review information has been added, such as start dates, review templates, etc., there’s not much else an HR manager has to do, except oversee the entire process.
Even better, HR managers don’t have to frequently remind employees to complete their reviews. Most software has built-in reminders that will prod employees to complete the review process. The software takes the burden off HR’s shoulders and instead allows them to focus on the outcome of performance reviews, rather than the whole process of it.
Performance Management Software Stores Historical Data
With a performance management software in place, you can access data anytime and it helps to make quick and efficient decisions. They provide old and new data in one place, for you to compare and understand patterns and identify any gaps or bottlenecks. It becomes easy to track the performance level.
Performance management software does not focus solely on the review process alone. Rather, they offer other features as well, such as the ability to share feedback, goals and objectives, an LMS, etc. All these features are often integrated so that when the review process is going on, users can view an employee’s complete profile, such as the feedback they have received, the goals they could complete, to what extent they could complete their goals, or even what new skills they have learned.
Performance management software paints a broad picture of an employee’s performance. It helps everyone make informed decisions during the review process.
Gives Better Insights And Analytics
Performance management software can provide a very illuminating look at an employee’s performance. This is not just related to ratings and feedback they have received over the past years. Rather, many performance management software also offer performance analytics that track employee performance in graphical chart format, calculate leadership potential, etc. This way, you can also track how well an employee is performing remotely compared to when she or he was present in office.
These employee insights can help others make informed review decisions when reviewing performance. And they can also help managers make compensation decisions or even promotion decisions.
Conducting the review process through performance management software offers HR managers much greater control over the entire process. They can control when the cycle starts and when it ends, how many employees should participate in the cycle, etc. HR managers can also restrict review visibility, call back reviews etc, thereby also maintaining a fair and just review process.
As a manager, you have a ton of other responsibilities, other than just tracking your employees’ performance. So if you wish to be more efficient and handle things with ease, a performance management software is your best option.
Want to know more about real-time performance management software? Request us for a quick demo!
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.
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.
1. Utilize virtual reality technologies
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 utilizesVR 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.
2. Gamification in employee training
According toHR 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 andengaging 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:
Higher knowledge retention – scrolling through mundane PowerPoint presentations and getting lost in a sea of information is a thing of the past. Introducing an interactive module, such as a quiz with scores and awards, keeps employees engaged and motivated.
Advanced goal setting – if you’ve ever played a computer game, then you know the importance of small objectives and tasks. Gamification can break down a complex onboarding process into smaller tasks, where employees can track their progress and get awards or certificates for completion.
Automating the process – creating a task checklist can automate parts of the process, since employees can follow the tasks and tick the box after completion. As an employer, you can create the whole process once and then reuse and tweak it.
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 toGlassdoor, 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 apaperless onboarding process:
Protecting sensitive data – Data protection is essential, especially when it comes to sensitive personal information.
Advanced feedback loop – Collecting feedback from employees and continually working on process improvement.
Reusing and automation – For some processes, you can create templates to automate workflows and streamline the whole onboarding process.
Visualizing the process – It is easier to visualize and review the onboarding process, marking redundant steps and optimizing the entire process for increasing employee satisfaction, engagement, and retention.
4. Build a knowledge base and community
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.
Technology increases onboarding satisfaction and employee retention
Did you know that it takes up to 8 monthsfor 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.
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.
Build A Transparent Work Culture
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.
Support Your Employees
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.
Make Check-ins A Priority
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.
Set Goals For The Quarter
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.
Encourage Employees To Participate In The Review
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.
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.
What are Individual Contributors?
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:
Listening effectively;
Developing rapport with others; and
Making relationships work.
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.
Dangers of Micromanaging Individual Contributors
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:
Destroys Trust: Constant micromanagement destroys trust and undermines the initiative and autonomy of employees over time
Creates Bottlenecks: Micromanaging creates bottlenecks in decision-making and response time when employees won’t do anything without a superior’s explicit approval.
Fosters Dependency: Micromanagement also leads to dependent employees who will start to depend on you instead of having the confidence to complete tasks on their own.
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.
Best Practices for Helping ICs Without Micromanaging
Listed below are 6 tips and strategies to help you stay involved and keep your employees accountable while avoiding micromanagement.
1. Allow Them to Create Their Own Goals and OKRs
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.
2. Offer Assistance with an Open-Door Policy
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.
3. Let Them Develop Their Own Systems and Strategies
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:
Opportunities for gaining recognition
Opportunities for taking on new responsibility
Opportunities for sharing their expertise
… 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.
5. Provide Avenues for Social Engagement and Praise
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.
Conclusion
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 visitingOneHourProfessor.com
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.
This infographic gives 5 performance review tips that can help improve employee experience.
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.
Feedback Guides Employees
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.
Instantaneous And Simple
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.
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!
Engagedly announces partnership with Europe’s leading HR software, Personio, to help its clients with seamless integration
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.
About Engagedly
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.
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.
1. Identify The Objective Of The Survey
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.
2. Communicate To Your Team
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.
4. Ask The Right Questions
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.
6. Make The Outcome Of The Survey Public
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.
8. Conduct Surveys Often
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.
Brandon Hall Tech Awards recognizes Engagedly Inc.’s contribution to talent management
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.
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/.
About Brandon Hall Group, Inc.:
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.
Establish A Benchmark
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.
Train your Leaders And Managers
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.
Engagedly Inc. ranks #843 on Inc. 5000’s Annual List of America’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies
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.
Methodology
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.
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/
About Inc.
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.
Understand Your Workplace
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.
Be Ready To Transform And Change
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.
Make A List Of Questions
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:
What excites you about your job on a daily basis?
Which aspect about the job makes you want to not come to work?
What drives your passion?
What’s your dream job?
If you had a change of role, what would you miss about the current role?
If you won the lottery and didn’t have to work, what would you miss?
What did you love in your last position that you’re not doing now?
Describe your perfect day at work.
If you had a chance, what are the things you would change about your work, role and responsibilities?
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.
Post The Stay Interviews
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.
Utilize OKRs
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:
Phase 1: OKR Training and Launch Educate the leadership on how to use OKRs and align them with business strategy.
Phase 2: Coaching Redefine leadership OKRs after the initial training workshops and 1:1 coaching.
Phase 3: Ongoing Feedback Continuously set effective and challenging OKRs and refine them continuously with ongoing feedback from OKR coach.
Visualize The End Users Needs
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.
Check Legacy Technology
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.
Engagedly Announces the HR Influencers List for 2021
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.
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.
But how to select the best one?
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!
SaaS based or Installed Application
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.
User Friendliness
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.
Supports Flexibility and Customization
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.
Easy Integration With Existing System
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.
Performance Management Software Should Be Cost Effective
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?
Optimized Pricing
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.
1. Embrace Change and Be Agile
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.
2. Have A Learning Mindset
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.
3. Focusing On Reskilling and Upskilling Existing Workforce
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.
4. More Importance To Employee Wellbeing and Experience
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:
Promote two way communication and feedback using employee feedback software such as Engagedly
Promote the importance of mental health
Use video platforms such as Zoom or Google Hangouts to conduct virtual yoga or gym sessions
Don’t forget to reward or recognize your employees.
Have virtual lunches and dinners
Celebrate birthdays and work anniversaries virtually
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.
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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.
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