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6 Tips on How to Upskill Employees Successfully

Today, upward career mobility is a top priority for modern employees, and upskilling is an excellent way to make it happen. Having a thorough and deliberate upskilling program in your workplace that empowers your employees and elevates their professional worth is crucial in any growing organization.

An ideal upskilling program should be in-depth, objective, and customizable to suit different employees. It should cut across the skill spectrum, focusing on everyday office skills such as communication skills and more niched skills like data interpretation.

Below are 6 steps to create a successful upskilling program for your team.

1. Assess Skill Gaps and Priority Areas

Identifying specific skills your company needs now and in the future should be your first course of action. First, conduct a detailed skill gap analysis to angle your upskilling program toward satisfying those individual skill requirements. To complete a skill assessment effectively, you should assess both your current and future needs.

To identify your employees’ current skill gaps, do the following:

  • Review your key performance indicators (KPIs): KPIs help you track your company’s progress and performance in priority areas. Assessing individual KPIs is an indicator of how well employees are performing in their assigned roles, helping you identify skills that might be lacking.
  • Organize skill-mapping workshops: You can hold these workshops in-house (and have your department managers lead them) or partner with learning institutions, talent recruiters, and other relevant associates.
  • Leverage 360-degree reviews: Collect feedback on employee performance from managers, peers, clients, and responsive vendors. Typically, you create employee surveys and request these stakeholders to participate.

To identify the future skills your workforce will need, follow these techniques:

  • Analyze workforce data: Pull industry-specific data from professional recruitment networks and analyze the new skills they’re searching for. Job boards are a good source of unique workforce data because they draw from multiple employers worldwide.
  • Observe industry trends: By observing and predicting disruptive trends in your industry, you can foretell what new skills will be required to run operations in the future.
  • Source insights from industry leaders: Consult your industry’s opinion leaders about future trends and insights.

Conducting a skill gap analysis enables your upskilling program to better cater to your current and future skill needs. A skills gap analysis also helps you pinpoint which areas to channel more training resources into.

2. Create Employee Personal Development Plans

As a manager or business owner, you should know your employees’ short-term, mid-term, and long-term goals. Find out what skills each employee is most interested in learning and how they envision their career progression within your company.

The best way of gathering this information is by creating employee development plans. As the manager, one of your biggest roles is ensuring your employees’ professional goals align with your company’s goals.

Employee development plans give you insight into an employee’s career expectations. This way, you can allocate the right training resources to the right employees. Also, you can give your employees better feedback and empower them to set professional goals with a higher chance of success within your company.

3. Set Aside Time for Learning

You should approach your upskilling program with a collaborative win-win mindset. With this approach, you should allot sufficient learning time to your employees within work hours.
Creating dedicated learning time allows your employees to fully immerse themselves in upskilling and advance their skills without sacrificing too much of their personal time.

Besides allocating time for upskilling, leverage mobile learning techniques to make upskilling easier and more engaging for your employees. Your business will directly benefit from upskilling once an employee masters a gainful skill and puts it into practice.

4. Connect Employees to a Mentor

Ultimately, learned skills can only be perfected through real-life experiences. Including workplace coaching and mentoring in your upskilling program ensures employees apply their newfound skills successfully.

All too often, learning new skills and applying them to real-world situations comes with a steep learning curve, and employees might make mistakes. In this case, more experienced employees can offer guidance and help newly-trained employees avoid costly mistakes.

Mentored employees have more opportunities to polish their skills, grow their networks, and bring more value to the company. Better yet, you can supplement your in-house mentoring program by leveraging mentoring platforms such as ADPList and Mentoring Complete.

5. Create a Post-Training Plan

When one team member attends an upskilling program your company has sponsored, the skills acquired should benefit the entire team. As a result, it’s a good idea to set up a post-training engagement where the trained employee shares their newfound knowledge with the rest of the group.

A post-training program ensures you get a good long-term return on investment because it establishes a clear path of knowledge transfer within your company. This way, even if the trained employee gets better job offers and leaves your company, you’ll still benefit from the upskilling investment.

Additionally, a post-training program helps newly-trained employee better comprehend their acquired skills. For instance, if the employee attends a coding boot camp, sharing what they’ve learned with other team members will allow them to practice their coding skills, making them much better coders.

To make knowledge transfer more effective, let the employees attending training know that they’ll be teaching their peers after the training is complete. Encourage them to take notes too. It makes them extra focused and stimulates them to approach the training program with a learner’s and mentor’s mindset.

6. Match Your Employees to Real-Life Opportunities

You might lose your investment in your employees if you don’t support their career advancement. An employee that’s learned new skills but doesn’t have use for them in their current job could be easily poached by your competitors. That’s why you should ensure that upskilled employees receive assignments allowing them to practice and develop their new skills.

For instance, if an IT staffer completed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software training, you can have your CRM manager assign them roles befitting their new skills. The employee could collaborate with your customer service team to help them navigate the technical aspects of CRM tools, like pooling and analyzing customer data while retaining their duties in IT.

Make Your Upskilling Program Mutually Beneficial

You and your employees are after the same thing — progress. You want to grow your business while your employees want career progression.

Because an upskilling program directly benefits you and your workforce, it pays to put extra effort into getting it right. Thankfully, these six tips will help you make the right investment.

 

Author Bio
Eva Chan is a Career Counselor and Certified Professional Resume Writer (CPRW) at Resume Genius, and has a background in the education management industry. Eva graduated from the University of British Columbia with a bachelor’s degree in English. She’s since coached several professionals with building their resumes and finding fulfilling work.

Guide to select the right Performance Review Software

Investing in performance review software is one of the best decisions your business could make, given how important these applications are for managing an increasingly decentralized work environment. This type of software streamlines work for managers and offers objective ways to measure employee productivity and improve overall management. There’s a huge variety of these performance tools though, and some are quite the investment, so it can be daunting to decide which one you should pick. Don’t worry, we’ll guide you through the entire process of choosing the right performance review software for you.

Step 1: Understand your needs

You need a clear perspective of what you need from a performance review software in terms of HR, finance, and your specific business goals. 

1. Talk to HR

Since HR is responsible for evaluating employee performance and conducting hiring decisions, they will understand your company’s performance needs best. Your organization’s HR department can inform you on what specific features you need from performance evaluation software. They could easily identify how easily such software can be integrated into your company, and whether you should expect a steep learning curve from your employees when they start using it. 

Also Read: 9 Progressive HR Approaches from HR Professionals

2. Budget Constraints 

Professional performance review software is an investment, often a large one, so you need to set a budget range. After having a general idea of what range you can afford to invest in, you need to conduct a cost-benefit analysis of optional features, opting for only the ones you absolutely need. Ideally, you should set your investment range according to your perceived future requirements. If you expect your company to grow massively in the near future or suspect there’s a severe problem with existing performance management, it may be worth spending more. 

3. Organizational Goals

Performance management software is most effective when you already know what you want. It’s not strictly necessary to have a list of exactly everything you need, but it helps to at least have a general idea of what place the system has in your company. 

For instance, if you’re a software development company, you may want your employees to develop new applications quicker, but you also don’t want to compromise on quality. In such a case, you need performance management software that doesn’t just track time but also provides a checklist of project requirements to ensure new applications are developed quicker without loss in quality.

Also Read: 7 Reasons Why Goal Setting Is Important

4. Use a trial or demo version.

Sometimes the best way to see if something works is to just try it out and see what happens. Thankfully, many performance review softwares have trial and demo versions you can test for a short period of time to see if they fit your needs. Usually, you’ll be given access for a week, which is enough time to collect data and conduct analysis to see whether productivity has improved or not. 

Using trial software is also a good idea if you’re not sure of what additional features you want to have. While testing the demo or trial version of the performance review software, you’ll quickly discover additional things you need. For example, if you’re a real estate organization, you might find that one of the most valuable additional features you need from your performance review software is being able to calculate the time spent per unit by a vendor. 

5. Note the features you want 

Although every company’s needs are different, there are generally a few functions every company needs, like listing goals, recording data, and exporting information. And, depending on your organization, you may have specific requirements like providing in-app feedback to employees too. 

Basic features

  • Assignments

Effective performance review software has the capacity to assign team and individual goals for your employees, and it should be able to integrate them in a way that makes sense from an overall perspective. Objective and Key Results (OKR) can easily be used on performance review software. 

  • Data Recording

Performance appraisal software should allow you to collect performance-related data from employees such as the number of hours logged, the amount of time taken to complete a task, etc. This raw data should be easily accessible for managers. 

  • Export data

You should be able to export the data stored on the application to external sources for safety, analytical, or managerial reasons. There is no valid reason for not being able to do that. 

  • Basic statistics

At least some basic statistical functions should be present, like calculating averages. These statistics offer meaningful information for managers. 

Also Read: What Is A Performance Management System?

Advanced functions 

These requirements may or may not apply to your specific case, but generally the larger and more complex an organization is, their needs will also be more complex. 

  • Goal adjustment and editability 

Depending on your industry, you may have very complex tasks that you assign to employees. In that case, you need a performance review system that allows managers to collect different types of data flexibly and edit task requirements if needed. 

  • Feedback mechanism 

Being able to give feedback directly through the employee performance management application is a desirable feature for large organizations. 

  • Real-Time Progress Updates 

This feature is especially desirable for companies with large numbers of remote workers. Being able to see everything that each employee is doing at a glance helps managers better understand their employee’s conditions. 

  • Visual Representation of Data 

Some performance software lets you construct basic visual diagrams, like piecharts, bar graphs and histograms, of employee performance. These visual aids can be useful if you want to represent information intuitively. 

  • Compensation Integration 

Being able to dispense salaries from a performance application is a useful feature if your employees frequently work overtime, and you would like to track them easily. 

Step 2: Consider Technical Aspects 

Even if you find a performance review system that aligns with your goals perfectly, you still need to make sure it can be integrated into your existing work systems optimally.

1. Compatibility with existing systems

Larger organizations typically already have databases and systems to record employee performance. If you already have such a setup, make sure you can easily export the existing data to the new software. Also, make sure your current It setup will easily allow you to run the software. 

You could start assessing your needs by consulting your IT department about the best way to introduce the performance evaluation software to your organization. Most performance management applications, especially high-end ones, are designed to be compatible with most systems, but you should still check regardless. 

2. Employee adaptation

Transitioning to a new software might initially be difficult for your employees if they’re not technically literate. You might experience disruption caused by the adjustment period, that’s normal, but it should not be a prolonged problem. It should not take your organization more than a week to adjust to the new system. 

This is why trial periods are crucial. During the trial period of a performance review application, take note of how quickly your employees adjust to the new system. If they take too long, it’s evidence that the specific application isn’t right for you. 

Also Read: 8 Steps To Effective Employee Surveys

3. UI – UX or Interface design

A good performance management application should be easy to use with a friendly, clear, and intuitive user interface (UI). Ideally, your staff should experience minimal confusion while using the application. A good UI will ensure the software performs optimally. 

Conversely, a bad UI will lead to disruptions. Employees may find it difficult to use and will make mistakes, skewing the accuracy of the data recorded. Bad UI also indicates the company that developed the software lacks professionalism. 

4. Hosting 

It’s important to pay attention to whether your performance evaluation software can be hosted locally or on the cloud. Ideally, a performance management application should be hosted on a cloud-dedicated server to maximize safety. This type of infrastructure tends to be the most stable, and you should try to get applications that only run on the cloud. 

Step 3: Consider long-term viability 

Performance management software is a long-term investment, so you should make sure the application you choose benefits you long-term.

1. Customer Support 

Inevitably, you will run into problems with any performance management software you use. When these problems arise, you want to make sure the company you’ve hired has a good customer support system. It will help you quickly diagnose your issues and provide effective support. It would be a good idea to check the customer support reviews of different performance review applications. Steer clear of applications with generally bad customer support reviews since it indicates a lack of professionalism. 

2. Scalability and flexibility

Your organization’s needs will change over time as it grows, expands, and encounters new challenges. The performance review software should, ideally, be able to adapt to the changing needs. Your requirements with 100 employees will be vastly different than they are with 10. So make sure that any software you choose to invest in has the potential to be scaled up to the changing needs. The best options will allow you to change nearly everything about the application long-term.

3. Longevity 

Compatibility with new systems is an important requirement. Ideally, the software you invest in today should be fully compatible with various systems for the next 5 to 10 years at least. You should consult with your application’s provider over how long they intend to offer IT support, including how frequently they intend to release updates. The best performance systems will have guaranteed long-term support for their systems and a dedicated team.

Conclusion

An employee performance management software is a great investment, but like any other purchase, you have to make sure you do it right. You need to choose the software that fulfils your specific requirements best, is the easiest to use, has the most number of desired features, and fits in your budget. 

Want to know about Engagedly’s performance review software? Request a demo from our experts!

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7 Essential Features of a 360 degree feedback tool

Is your organization considering the implementation of a 360-degree feedback process? This transformative approach offers a shift from traditional one-on-one feedback, providing a holistic view of employee performance. However, selecting the right tool is paramount to ensure the process’s success.

Continue reading “7 Essential Features of a 360 degree feedback tool”

Recency Bias- Definition| Examples| Impact

What is Recency Bias?

Recency bias refers to the human tendency to give excessive importance to recent experiences or the latest information when predicting future events. This bias can mislead us into believing that recent events hold more significance in shaping the future. It is quite prevalent in office setups.

Recency Bias Examples

The following are some of the recency bias examples in the workplace:

Daniel has been a consistent contributor to the sales team of xyz organization. In the last year, he has closed great deals with some major corporates. But since January 2022, he has delivered much, and his overall quarterly revenue growth is 70% less than the team’s average. During the performance appraisal process, Daniel’s manager, Sean, overlooked all of his achievements and focused only on the last three months where Daniel’s performance was not as per the company’s expected standards.

Due to this recency effect, Daniel did not get an appraisal, even though his annual average revenue growth was much higher. This led Daniel to face disengagement, decreased productivity, and dissatisfaction with his job.

From the discussed recency bias example, it is quite clear that it can severely impact organizational productivity, engagement, and growth prospects.

Recency Effect in Performance Appraisal

recency bias definition

Good reviews depend on the reviewer objectively reviewing an employee’s performance from the beginning of the year to the end of the year (for a 6 month period, or a 3 month period, etc.).

That means the final review is a summation of all the work that has been done, both the good and the bad, and the in-between as well. This is how a good review works.

With recency bias, however, the scenario is a little different. When reviewers suffer from recency bias, they tend to remember the most recent work the employee has done. And based on the quality of that work, they review their performance.

If a low-performing employee suddenly starts performing better just before the review, then despite their previous low performance, they are going to get a good review.

On the other hand, if an employee performs well throughout the year, but before the review, their performance drops, then despite their previous good performance, they are going to get a bad review.

Recency bias penalises people based on factors outside of their control and rewards people for momentary bursts of effort.

How to Avoid Recency Effect in Performance Appraisals

One way you can prevent recency bias (unless you have an exceptionally good memory, in which case you have already won the jackpot) is to keep a track record of an employee’s performance. That means making notes of an employee’s work, making notes of their skills, keeping a record of feedback given and received, how they work with other people, etc.

You can do this manually, which might be slightly painstaking (or not depending on your view), or you can use a performance management software to do this. Engagedly has two features that can specifically help with tracking performance: employee feedback and private notes. The exclusive features help in eliminating recency bias by providing a holistic view of an employee’s performance.

It’s worth remembering that recency bias cannot be completely eliminated. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t try your best to get rid of it.

Engagedly’s performance module combines performance management with elements of employee engagement. Schedule a quick demo to talk to our experts.

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Engagedly Launches Growth Hub to Empower Career Development with Marissa AI

Clients can drive growth and development in the future of work for their employees powered by Marissa AI

ST. LOUIS, May 16, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Engagedly, the leading AI powered cloud-based software for Performance, Learning & Development and Employee Engagement solutions, is excited to announce the launch of Growth Hub powered by Marissa AI™, a powerful new module that empowers employees to take ownership of their career growth, empowering them to develop their skills through skill-based organization. The new module is powered by Marissa AI and provides a customized development plan for each employee based on their individual goals and the needs of the organization.

Integrating 1:1 meetings into the Growth Hub further helps in setting clear expectations for employees and managers and provides ongoing support for employees looking for career progression opportunities. The use of Marissa AI gives employees insight into what competencies and skills are required from each level, helping them build the knowledge needed to advance their careers as well as better aligning individual objectives with organization objectives, benefiting both parties in terms of improved business outcomes.

Growth Hub module include:
Individual Development Plans (IDPs) – enabling employees to put forth their growth aspirations as a development plan with learning objectives and milestones

Integrated Learning Path with LXMS- enabling employees to integrate comprehensive learning journeys through different courses from the Engagedly LMS for themselves.

Skill Library, Competency and Learning Resources: Growth Hub will offer a library of competencies and skills required for different roles across multiple industries, for employees to focus on developing to advance their careers within your organization. In addition, a first of its kind learning resource recommendations provided by Marissa AI.

This enhanced Growth Hub capability empowers each individual to take ownership of their career growth within organizations to quickly level up their growth.

“Employees need to have an agency in their own careers and upskilling and Engagedly’s Growth Hub does precisely that for them,” says Sri Chellappa, Co-founder & CEO at Engagedly. “Our unique offering integrates Learning Management (LMS), Skills, Learning recommendations, all powered by Marissa AI will give people centric organizations an edge.”

Research has shown unambiguously that employees are more likely to stay with a company that supports their career growth and development.

These updates provide Engagedly clients with more powerful tools than ever before for creating an effective nurturing environment that is tailored to each individual so they can level up their workforce.

About Engagedly

Built on best practices and decades of research, Engagedly’s AI powered People+Strategy platform helps organizations build high performance culture. With Engagedly’s Modular Platform, organizations can Execute on their strategy with goals/OKRs, performance appraisals and 360 reviews, Enable their people development with Growth Hub, 1 on 1 feedback, LMS, Mentoring/Coaching, and Engage their people with Recognition and Rewards, Employee Survey and Social Praise.

7 Examples of People Operations OKRs/ HR OKRs

Human resources, also known as people operations, plays a vital role in every organization’s success. This dynamic department encompasses a wide array of functions, ranging from formulating and implementing effective workplace policies and procedures to fostering a strong company culture. Additionally, they handle essential tasks such as performance management, compensation and benefits management, compliance, and training. By aligning with People Operations OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), this strategic team ensures the organization stays on track, driving growth and achieving its goals with efficiency and effectiveness.

Continue reading “7 Examples of People Operations OKRs/ HR OKRs”

Engagedly Introduces Powerful Updates to Learning and Development for the #FutureOfWork

Clients can drive learning in the future of work with Streamlined Automation, Tailored Learning Paths, and Access to Hundreds of Thousands of eLearning Courses

ST. LOUIS, April 10, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Engagedly, the leading AI-powered cloud-based software for Performance, Learning & Developemnet, and Employee Engagement solutions, is excited to announce the launch of new updates to their Learning Management solution. These new features will help organizations provide a more automated, streamlined and engaging approach to learning and development for their employees.

The updates include:
Learning Automation – enabling customers to automate courses as well as their employee’s learning paths.
Learning Path – allowing organizations to create comprehensive journeys through different courses for their employees.
Integrations with Bizlibrary, GoodHabitz, Open Sesame and Go1 – giving customers access to hundreds of thousands of engaging eLearning courses from leading providers.

These updates have been designed to accelerate time-to-competency with easier identification and delivery of content, reduction in required resources and improved accuracy in administering training across multiple users or groups. This enhanced capability empowers organizations to quickly upskill their workforce while providing individualized progression paths that are tailored specifically to each learner’s needs.

“At Engagedly, we understand the importance of providing a comprehensive learning platform that is both user friendly and effective in helping employees reach desired competencies,” says Sri Chellappa, Co-founder & CEO at Engagedly. “The introduction of these product updates will boost productivity while reducing manual effort needed for course creation, putting more focus on actual learning versus administrative tasks.”

Engagedly’s new Learning Management Product updates are designed to bring greater value to customers. The automation feature will allow for more efficient and accurate course delivery, leading to improved employee competency and mastery in their roles. The learning path feature provides organizations with the ability to tailor training paths to individual employees, while still meeting the needs of all users. Additionally, the integrations with Bizlibrary, GoodHabitz, Open Sesame and Go1 give customers access to a wealth of diverse resources so they can find the best content for their employees.

These updates provide Engagedly clients with more powerful tools than ever before for creating an effective learning environment that is tailored to each user’s specific needs – increasing effectiveness and reducing training time required to reach desired competencies.

About Engagedly

Built on best practices and decades of research, Engagedly’s AI powered People+Strategy platform helps organisations build high performance culture. With Engagedly’s Modular Platform, organizations can Execute on their strategy with goals/OKRs, performance appraisals and 360 reviews, Enable their people development with 1 on 1 feedback, LMS, Mentoring/Coaching, and Engage their people with Recognition and Rewards, Employee Survey and Social Praise.

9 Progressive HR Policies From HR Professionals

To help you identify the next best HR approach, we asked HR experts and people managers this question for their best insights. From automating repetitive functions to conducting “stay” interviews, there are several HR approaches your team should consider.

Here are 9 progressive HR approaches from experienced professionals: 

  • Prioritize Flexible Work Policies
  • Automate Repetitive HR Functions
  • Offer Minority Groups More Support
  • Keep Benefits Competitive
  • Think About CYA Squared
  • Continue Leveraging Social Media
  • Make Data-Driven HR Decisions
  • Conduct “Stay” Interviews
  • Cross-Train Team Members
Also Read: How important is feedback in today’s world

Prioritize Flexible Work Policies

Flexible work policies are both a progressive HR approach that we practice and see as a rising trend. Having run a fully remote company for the better part of a decade, we have long offered employees freedom and flexibility in terms of working hours and practices. 

With the mass shift to remote work and the uncertainty and upheaval caused by the pandemic, this approach has become more needed than ever. Many professionals have experienced massive lifestyle changes, such as having to take on supplementary work or an increase in caretaking responsibilities. 

It is important for HR professionals and leaders to be conscious and empathetic about these complications and compromise on scheduling needs rather than forcing employees to adhere to strict working hours solely for the sake of following traditions or asserting authority. Allowing employees to choose their working hours and environments is a best practice in supporting your staff.

– Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding

Automate Repetitive HR Functions

Technology is developing so rapidly that sometimes companies have no time to incorporate it into their work for maximum benefit. Still, more and more businesses are introducing partial or complete HR automation. 

The benefits are incredibly tempting, especially if the company is growing fast. First, it saves a lot of money and reduces the HR budget. It also allows employees to solve their HR issues and get their questions answered 24/7. It is crucial when companies work with flexible working hours. Additionally, it reduces the toll on the HR department and allows them to focus on the things that matter the most instead of doing manual tasks like reviewing sick leave requests and analyzing feedback forms from scratch. 

Also Read: Why do you need a Real Time Performance Management Software

HR automation allows for maximum accuracy, efficiency, and productivity and becomes a great assistant in day-to-day HR operations.

– Ewelina Melon, Tidio

Offer Minority Groups More Support

One progressive HR approach that we are seeing as a rising trend is providing more support for minorities within the organization. As we have seen in the news and through our lives, minorities face numerous challenges that often go overlooked. 

As HR, it is our responsibility to help support these individuals with everything they need to perform their job successfully and feel comfortable in their roles within the company. This is why adding additional support to individuals of color or ethnic differences is so important when growing an organization and promoting diversity and inclusion.

– Jeremy Gardner, MadeMan

Keep Benefits Competitive

Organizations are struggling to fill up vacant positions now! The power of negotiation has shifted to the hands of the employees. Before choosing an organization, they evaluate the culture and work environment to find the correct fit.

Previously, interviews were very one-sided. Companies grilled candidates to decide if they were a good fit. A lot of that has reversed; employees are interviewing companies. To stay competitive, employers need to find new ways to stand out beyond offering a “great company culture” or “excellent work-life balance,” especially because that’s what everyone is offering. 

At our company, we lead with empathy and offer personalized perks tailored to each person. People are looking to work for a company that actually cares about them and fulfills their needs. 

Also Read: Employee Rewards and Recognition for an engaged workforce

The one size fits all, Friday pizza party days are over now. People want to be able to choose what works best for them, whether that be a gym membership, daycare stipend or support for continuing education.

– Amy Spurling, Compt

Think About CYA Squared

A simple but progressive approach to HR is what I call “CYA Squared”: cover your a__ and care for your associates. HR, particularly in California, typically swings the pendulum too far to the first CYA due to fear of a lawsuit. This strategy backfires, and we have witnessed it with the “great resignation.”

Employees are demanding to be seen, heard, and cared for in the workplace. Let’s face it, don’t we all want that?

Moving forward, companies will need to be mindful to swing the pendulum too far to the second CYA, causing them to get burned. Too much of anything is not good and ping pong tables and policies aren’t going to cut it.

HR will need to play a significant role in helping businesses find a new balance, creating a psychologically safe and compliant workplace. We’ve already seen what happens without it.

– Dawn Myers, Guided Leadership Solutions

Continue Leveraging Social Media

Recruiters reaching out to talent over social media platforms like LinkedIn will increase as “The Great Resignation” resumes, and many are pumping the brakes on applying for jobs. Now more than ever, recruiters are constantly seeing no-shows for job interviews or employees leaving the company after 20+ years — even some CEOs are taking a step down. 

The current job market is turning into not what a company can do for you, but what an employee can do for them. In today’s day, whichever business will respond to the fastest and offer the best benefits will retain top talent. Recruiters are utilizing their professional circles, such as LinkedIn, to successfully get more people into the office than walking out the door.

– Lance Herrington, UNICO Nutrition

Make Data-Driven HR Decisions

HR reps have to deal with a lot of data on a daily basis. This data can be streamlined to help HR process it more efficiently. HR analytics allows professionals to get deeper insights into the data they receive. 

With these metrics, professionals can find correlations such as voluntary turnover and promotion wait times. Having data-driven HR is a progressive approach that improves workflows. I expect this to be a rising trend.

– Evan Zhao, Revela Health

Conduct “Stay” Interviews

As we continue to navigate our next, I continue to encourage managers to proactively host “stay” interviews with their individual teammates. The changes since 2020 have altered the work equation. It remains a critical time to discuss with your current teams what they would like as they move with you into 2022.  

Ask specific questions about what it will take to keep them on the team as valued members of your organization. Salary, flexibilities, professional development, vacation increases, and new incentive plans are a place to start. 

This will be hard work, but will serve as a foundation of deeper trust if you are genuine in these efforts. This is an important moment to be proactive and take action.

– Diane Fennig, The Gallagher Group

Also Read: 6 step guide to conduct effective stay interviews 

Cross-Train Team Members

I think companies now need to offer more than just training programs for specific jobs. They need to train all people in all areas of business functions — marketing, graphic design, and human resources so they can be more effective at getting their jobs done. 

Too many companies are spending time hiring somebody new, but either never teach them or show them how things work before sending them off on their own. There should be a unified system where you’re not constantly managing your employees but helping them grow professionally and be more like business owners themselves.

– Iryna Kutnyak, Quoleady

We created this article in association with Terkel. It is a community-driven knowledge platform that creates content based on expert insights.

Want to know how Engagedly can simplify your performance management process? Request a demo from our experts!

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Top Performance Review Phrases and Wordings

A performance review is a process of evaluating an employee’s performance on numerous parameters. It outlines various aspects of performance and provides in-depth feedback to employees so they can work productively.

While filling out a form about an employee’s performance is fairly easy, providing additional comments can be a considerable challenge for a manager. Performance review phrases are the words that a manager must use to provide open, actionable, and genuine feedback to an employee. Also known as “performance review comments,” they help in describing and identifying an employee’s behavior in a sensitive and careful way.

Continue reading “Top Performance Review Phrases and Wordings”

How Important is Feedback in Today’s World?

Feedback is a tricky module and we, at Engagedly, have been doing some in-depth research on it. While exploring various perspectives, we also came across The Feedback Fallacy. This research piece of Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall got us thinking about how best we can refine and implement a feedback procedure that will take us one more step closer to our holistic approach of employee fulfillment and people enablement.

About corrective or constructive feedback, the authors state that,

Focusing people on their shortcomings doesn’t enable learning; it impairs it.

Furthermore, they believe that excellence comes easily when we focus only on the positives, and do not dwell on the negatives:

It’s that people contribute their own unique and growing talents to a common good, when that good is ever-evolving, when we are, for all the right reasons, making it up as we go along. Feedback has nothing to offer to that.

While we do not completely agree to this claim, we do believe that constructive feedback, when put forth with tact and wisdom, can help employees and coworkers more than when we do not share any corrective feedback. Though, we do agree with the Harvard Business Review authors that harping only on the negatives can have adverse effects, and it can hamper employee productivity and engagement.

Also read: Getting Started With Real Time Performance Management

So what’s the best way of providing feedback?

It’s a million dollar question! The humans of Engagedly believe in sharing feedback that is constructive and reformative, yet encouraging. Here are some pointers that we like to keep in mind while sharing feedback:

Don’t assume:

While providing feedback, don’t assume what motivation or intention the feedback receiver had behind their actions. Our job is not to build up any stories around anything. It is important to keep aside anything that is not tangible truth and concentrate on articulating what your feelings are around it. You need to approach it from a position of humility, from your own point of view and express your experience and subjective observations.

Express with clarity:

It’s not a happy job to point out flaws in tasks or people. We are not asking you to… because they are not flaws. They are just roadblocks, which once removed, can serve as an impetus for tremendous growth. So when you share feedback with your employees or coworkers, express it with clarity. Let them know that, from your perspective, a slight change can bring about positive outcomes.

Don’t generalize:

Feedback that’s shared with the intent of growth and motivation, cannot focus on general statements and judgements. Because of our subjective opinions and perspectives towards situations, we do not hold the capability to share generalisations or judgements. Target specific behaviours or lack of them, and how that is affecting the output. That’s all should be the content of your feedback. It’s a direct and clearcut way of sharing feedback, without beating around the bush.

Example 1:

Manager: “Robert, your presentation could’ve been more elaborate. I could not get a hang of what you wanted to convey.”

The above example expresses a manager’s concern at not getting a clear picture out of a presentation, but he fails to convey, in which area it lacks clarity. When the same feedback is expressed differently, it can have a very positive impact on Robert.

Example 2:

Manager, “Robert, in my opinion, your presentation was crisp and precise. I loved the insightful information about conversions. But in the sales section, it would have helped me if the information was represented in numbers as well.”

In the above example, the manager is very clear that it’s a subjective feedback, where Robert’s presentation helped him in certain ways, but failed to keep him well-informed with certain other data. There are no generalizations or judgements involved here.

Also read: Why Healthcare Administrators Should Set SMART Goals

Intention matters:

Yes, last but the most important point that we believe in, is intention. Anything you do with the right intention, will always reap the right outcome. So when we share feedback, we keep the intention of positivity and growth in our minds. We always strive to deliver feedback that help individuals detect the roadblocks and turn them into propellers towards success. We let the feedback receivers know that we care for them and wish for them to correct themselves and move towards fulfillment.

Without feedback, we cannot always know or be aware of the little roadblocks that are holding us back from achieving greatness. So it’s important for them to keep coming our way. It’s not the concept of feedback that is wrong, it’s how we share it, that makes the difference.

Now that we have shared our thoughts with you on how to share constructive feedback and whether feedback is an important element for success, we would love to know your thoughts on this matter. Feel free to drop in your comments below!

Engagedly is offering a suite of products part of its Remote Work Toolkit free to any organisation, until Sept 30th, 2020. 

The Coronavirus has affected the way we work today and for months to come. Unprecedented events require unprecedented measures. We at Engagedly believe it is our responsibility as socially conscious corporate citizens to help equip organisations with additional tools and resources during this time of crisis.

Do you want to know how Engagedly can help you with seamless Performance Evaluation? Then request for a live demo.

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Engagedly partners with Go1 to unlock the potential of the modern workforce with dynamic, interactive learning courses.

St. Louis, MO, February 17, 2023: Engagedly, an award-winning solution provider of performance management and employee engagement software, announced its new partnership with Go1, the largest curated eLearning library from the world’s top training providers.

Today, retaining the right talent and building high-performance teams are getting increasingly challenging. The skills pool is shrinking day by day and poses a threat to organizations to be successful. It is crucial for businesses to adopt an LMS as a key component in their people strategy.

Engagedly and Go1’s integration lets you access world-class content that will enable your organization to level up and win in the #FutureOfWork. Engagedly has always prioritized employee development and growth which aligns with Go1’s vision. This integration is designed to create an impact that will help organizations scale their workforce.

‘To keep up with the ever-evolving nature of work, employees need to develop their abilities and skills. We are thrilled to partner with Go1 to provide our customers access to the LMS content they need to succeed in the future of work. This partnership will further strengthen our agile LMS and help organizations tackle the skills gap and build a competent workforce’, said Sri Chellappa, President/Co-Founder of Engagedly.

‘We are proud and delighted to be embarking on this partnership with an award-winning provider like Engagedly focused on performance and engagement, two critical issues for today’s organizations. This new alliance will further power Go1’s mission to give learners, teams and organizations access to the world’s best learning content, enabling them to upskill, reskill, engage and optimize their potential’, said Basem Emera, SVP Partnerships and Alliances, Go1.

Key features of the integration include:

  • Seamless integration with Engagedly gives you access to courses from 200+ providers
  • Access 100,000+ engaging digital learning resources for your employees, as and when you need it
  • Facilitates learning across geographies, durations, styles, and levels
  • A diverse range of training, whether it be compliance, technical, or soft skills development
  • Wide range of topics provided by a versatile collection of global, regional, and specialized providers
  • Pre-curated playlists to build learning programs that are relevant to everyone

About Go1:

Go1 makes it easy for organizations to learn, with the world’s most comprehensive online library of learning resources. Go1 pulls the world’s top online learning providers into one place, delivering all the learning an organization needs in a single solution. With over 3.5 million learners – and growing – Go1 is a world leader in online learning.Go1.com has raised over US$280M in total funding from investors including AirTree Ventures, Blue Cloud Ventures, Larsen Ventures, Madrona Venture Group, M12, Our Innovation Fund, Oxford University, Salesforce Ventures, SEEK, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, TEN13, and Y Combinator. To learn more, visit www.go1.com.

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.

To know more about Engagedly, visit https://engagedly.com/.

Engagedly Launches AI Everywhere with Marissa™ your Enablement Coach

St. Louis, MO Feb-16-2023 – Combining the powerful Engagedly’s People+Strategy suite with AI based enablement will usher in a new era of engagement, development and growth for employees. 

Engagedly, the leading People Strategy platform for the #Futureofwork, is thrilled to announce the launch of its revolutionary product – Marissa, your AI enablement coach. This first-of-its-kind technology and approach in talent management utilizes contextual AI to help employees, managers, and people leaders build a highly engaged, high-performance organization.

Marissa’s mission is to enable better conversations between employees and their managers. She will provide users with personalized feedback on how they can become better communicators and leaders through her advanced capabilities such as giving effective feedback, and recognition, developing insights from engagement surveys, sentiment analysis, and more.

“We are excited to introduce Marissa as our new AI enablement coach at Engagedly,” said Sri Chellappa, President and CEO of Engagedly. “We believe that having an AI-powered coach in every organization would lead to a dramatic improvement in engagement levels among employees as well as build more effective teams. Our goal is to make sure that everyone has the tools necessary for People Success within their organizations and Marissa will be the key driver for this initiative.”

Marissa’s innovative features will help both employees and their managers work with each other better. Through her advanced capabilities such as coaching on effective feedback, recognizing achievements and understanding sentiment analysis results from employee surveys; 

For employees, Marissa will provide personalized guidance on how they can become better communicators and leaders within their organizations.

For people leaders and HR, She will help them develop insights from engagement surveys and listening tools within Engagedly, which will be instrumental in helping them understand what areas need improvement or attention within the company.  In the near future, Marissa will also be able to identify high performers, talent risks, opportunities for skill development, and overall employee growth initiatives.

For managers, Marissa will provide them with valuable data points on how they can improve communication with their team members as well as give them actionable steps that they can take towards improving engagement levels within their teams.

The introduction of Marissa as Engagedly’s AI enablement coach marks a major milestone in our journey towards creating enablement tools for a high performance organization for all our clients. 

With Marissa AI we can empower employees, managers and HR alike to achieve greater success within their respective roles.

 

Contact

Jacqueline Martinez,

pr@engagedly.com 

+1-650-485-1642

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.

To know more about Engagedly, visit https://engagedly.com/.

10 Smart Employee Goal Setting Software In 2023

“Setting employee goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible”. Tony Robbins. Employee goal setting and tracking is one of the most crucial aspects of a business. It helps in keeping employees focussed on their tasks and align individual goals with organizational goals. To keep the workforce productive, organizations have started adopting employee goal setting software to automate the cumbersome manual process of tracking every employee’s goals. These tools are loaded with advance technology and offer numerous benefits to the organization such as higher productivity, transparency, and accountability.

In this article, we will discuss about the features of some of the best employee goal tracking software. It will help you in selecting a goal setting tool that is aligned with the needs of your organization.

Continue reading “10 Smart Employee Goal Setting Software In 2023”

Setting OKRs For Success In 2023

Are you aligning your employee goals with your organization goals? If not, 2023 is the right time to start. With your teams mostly functioning remotely or hybrid, OKRs are a great way to keep them focussed towards a common goal and achieve results.

Globally, they have become an indispensable part of performance management in organizations. Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) methodology is one of the most simple and effective ways for goal setting and monitoring at workplaces.

Brief History Of OKRs

OKRs were introduced at Intel in the ’70s by Andy Grove and were made famous by John Doerr when he introduced it in Google in 1999 as a “management methodology that helps to ensure that the company focuses efforts on the same important issues throughout the organization”.

Also Read: How to build a successful upskilling and reskilling program

Now multiple industries across different domains such as Amazon, LinkedIn, GoPro, Salesforce, Target, Duns and Bradstreet have adopted OKRs as their goal-setting framework.

 

goal setting guideCreate Your Goals

The first and most crucial step for setting up OKRs is to create business goals based on the company’s annual strategy. This step involves collaborating and brainstorming with different departments and understanding how the organization collectively will achieve the OKRs.

Remember that your OKRs should answer these two questions:

Objectives–What Do You Want To Achieve?

Key Results–How To Know If You Are Getting Closer To Achieving It?

Example:

Objective: To improve inbound lead processing by 52%

Key Results: 

  • Website enquiries answered within 24 hours
  • 50% sign-ups given product demonstration within first 2 days
  • Minimum questions on landing page to prevent customers from losing interest

Objective: Leverage product feature that is ranked most popular in the market

Key Results: Heat map of the website shows 60% visitors focus on a primary feature of the product and remaining on secondary features. Feedback received from customers indicates the product’s primary feature provides 2x more value.

Also Read: The Essential Guide To OKRs: Your Ultimate Tool To Setting Winning Goals

Introduce OKRs To Your Team

It is important to introduce your team to the OKR methodology and give them an opportunity to familiarize themselves with the whole process. While there are a number of OKR guides out there, why not go to the one that is synonymous with the term OKRs. Google has an OKR guide that will take users through history. It will help them set up and even teach them how to write actionable OKRs.

Before moving onto the next step, make sure that your teams understand why OKRs play an important role in the growth of a company and how alignment of goals works internally.

Create and Align Individual OKRs To Team / Business OKRs

Once all your teams are sufficiently familiar with the approach, encourage them to draft their own OKRs. Collaborate with them and help them create their OKRs. This can sometimes lead to conversations that help you understand your teams and their plans better. It allows employees to understand an organization’s expectations of them.

All goals need to be aligned with an organization’s goals. That is the true purpose of achievable goals and objectives. Once your employees have set their individual OKRs, align their goals with company OKRs or business goals of your company.

Also Read: How Performance Management Has Changed In 2021

Monitor Progress and Share Regular Feedback

Now that all your teams understand the purpose of OKR methodology for goal setting and have set their individual OKRs and successfully aligned them with company OKRs, all you need to do is review these OKRs before they start working on them. Review the OKRs of all your teams and make sure that their OKRs align with the company properly.

The next step is to monitor these OKRs. You have to keep track of the progress your employees make on these OKRs in the coming days. Monitor how regularly your teams are checking in on their OKRs and keep track of their progress regularly and modify the OKRs if needed.

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Gender Equality Challenges in Leadership and How to Overcome Them

Gender Equality at work

Did your Director just thrust his hand toward your face while you were speaking in a board meeting? Was this just to get the POV of your male colleague? We have all been there. The humiliation. The sheer unprofessionalism of that one solitary gesture. Yes, you guessed it right. Today, in this blog, we are going to dive head-on to unravel the five major gender equality challenges women leaders face in today’s global economy. We shall also try to find tips and tricks to combat these challenges and triumph!

The prejudice and discrimination, silent and sinister, have created gigantic hurdles for female leaders everywhere. In an idyllic statement, Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook, professed that “In future there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.” But how far are we from that idealistic world? Why is that Utopia, where there are no gender equality challenges, still a distant dream?

Why is there such a blatant gap in employment in the workforce between men and women?

World Population Prospects 2022, the official report from the UN, stated that there are going to be 8 billion people on this planet. And it turned out to be true. Think about it. 8 billion people. But according to the Global Gender Gap Report 2022 published by the World Economic Forum, only 36.9% of women were hired into leadership roles in 2022, a mere 3% increase from 33.3% in 2016. 

Why to this day do such rampant gender equality challenges abound?

The global women leaders summit organized by GIWPS and The Rockefeller Foundation on June 20-23, 2022 addressed the urgent need for action to advance gender equity. One of the signatories, Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, announced that “Women leaders are a catalyst for change.” But this begs the question that why is the percentage of these catalysts so low in the global workforce? 

A report published in 2021 highlighted that the industries with the lowest share of female representation in the overall makeup of the industry were Technology, Agriculture, Energy, Supply Chain and Transportation, Manufacturing, and Infrastructure. 

Why is it that when it comes to hiring women in leadership roles, organizations take a one-step-ahead-and-two-steps-back approach?

 Let’s dive right into the heart of these problems and work our way through the tips to combat the challenges.

Five major gender equality challenges in leadership

The Vicious Loop of Bias-Prejudice-Discrimination

The biggest hurdles many female leaders face are bias, gender stereotypes, and preconceived attitudes about female capabilities. It can also be the manifestation of a socially conditioned brain thinking, “Oh! She’s just a woman. Women can’t lead.”

Prejudice against female employees is fatal in management and leadership spheres. It makes it onerous a task for female leaders to become women who climb to executive levels.

In today’s society, outright bias and discrimination are unethical and disapproved of. Many female leaders daily fight the subconscious judgment prevalent at their workplace. Therefore, they are often less likely to be promoted.

Gender equality challenges at the workplace

How to fight this loop?

Many businesses spend time considering how to bring in a more diverse workforce without having a clear strategy. Culture and organizational paradigms play a role in this. 

More than just laws and hiring procedures, creating an inclusive workplace matters. Everyone should feel respected, heard, and be able to make a difference while advancing their careers.

The single most effective action a company can take to encourage more women leaders is to foster a culture of “Conscious Inclusion” by increasing people’s motivation, awareness, and ability for decision-making. Lead, consider, and take action with the awareness of involving everyone. Business leaders need to walk the talk and lead by example.

Also Read: Building Diversity and Inclusion at Your Workplace!

Glaring Pay Disparity

Women in executive jobs still make between 8% and 25% less than male executives in the same positions, despite the gender pay gap of the 1990s decreasing. In most firms, there are fewer female leaders than male leaders. Even in the C-suite, women are frequently paid less than men.

Even if equal compensation for women executives should be a goal, that alone is not the answer to this problem. We have Chidi King, Director of the Equality Department of the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), stating a fact that women are still getting paid 23% less than men in the same jobs.

Companies must check the availability of promotions. Women are frequently found in lower-paid leadership roles. Because they have less chances to achieve “high-paying” C-suite positions, these female leaders are compensated less. 

Pay disparity in gender

How to bridge the gap?

Samir Modi, Managing Director of Modicare Enterprises, has shared an interesting two cents on this. 

He says, “Women bosses exude positivity and can handle immense responsibilities with great finesse. They also bring in natural leadership attributes such as empathy and display higher emotional quotient, which are absolutely necessary in navigating through the complex business environments that we operate in.” He also goes on to expound that one must practice equality at home to achieve it at the workplace.

The only way to master this hurdle is to make a stand. 

  • Leaders must create a safe work environment where any employee who has put in the effort, doesn’t shy away from reaping the rewards. 
  • People leaders and managers must be trained and groomed to be approachable so that no one hesitates to talk to their immediate supervisors. 
  • Business leaders have a love for data. Leaders should inculcate the culture of data-oriented analysis and discussions throughout the org.

Also Read: What Is Pay Transparency? Pros and Cons

The Arduous Chain of Expectations, Rising Stress Levels, and Burnout

One of the key insights that we have unearthed from Deloitte’s Women at Work 2022 report is that almost half of the women polled report feeling burned out, and 53% report that their stress levels are higher now than they were a year ago. This has, thus, become a major player in the gender equality challenges that we perceive worldwide.

Only 43% of people feel comfortable discussing mental health issues at work. The “always on” culture is still prevalent. Just over one-third of women evaluate their ability to switch off from work as bad or very poor. 42% of that group are concerned that their professional advancement will be hampered if they are not always available.

The question that pops into our mind is a resounding ‘Why?’.

Also Read: How to Foster a Positive Work Environment and Reduce Anxiety!

Why is it that women leaders and workforce are not able to adapt to and adopt this ‘hustle culture’ with aplomb? 

There are multilinear narratives to answer that. The major factors are:

  • There are frequently less demands placed on female leaders than on their male colleagues. Even in senior management roles, women are more likely to report feeling compelled to:

-Balance being liked and respected

-Overcome assumptions

-Deal with gender-related expectations

  • These lead to a constant condition of walking on a tightrope, especially for women leaders.
  • Furthermore, global research continues to show that women often have lesser career advancement opportunities and are less likely to be assigned “authoritative” roles. 

Even brilliant women leaders, thus, feel the need to constantly prove their mettle to survive in the corporate jungle. 

  • While the hybrid method of working offers advantages, such as the ability for many to keep the flexibility that remote working can provide, it also raises the possibility of exclusion for those who are not physically there. Nearly 60% of women who work in hybrid contexts believe they have been left out of significant meetings, and nearly half claim they do not have enough exposure to leaders, a crucial factor in career advancement and sponsorship. 

burnout at workplace

How to break this chain?

The major mantra to combat this chain is ‘Building a positive and nurturing workplace.’ 

  • Companies must set the bar high enough and control unfair demands if they are sincere about supporting a culture that empowers female workers. 
  • Women must be given appropriate tasks and well-deserved promotions to prove their leadership ability. 
  • The best way to promote career advancement for women is to ensure equal access to promotions and new leadership positions. 
  • Mentorship programs and development strategies will be a huge boost to their careers and network.

The Oppression of Sexual Harassment and Microaggressions

Yes, even after the mega-publicized and still ongoing #metoo movement, there still exists gender-based harassment at every nook and cranny of today’s global economy. 

Women who hold leadership positions are sometimes thought to be less deserving than their male counterparts. This may result in decreased collaboration and unprofessional behavior from people toward female leaders. One explanation for this is that women in positions of authority are more likely to encounter a range of unfavorable situations, such as sexual harassment, discrimination, microaggressions, unconscious bias, etc.

 

According to the Women in the Workplace 2022 report by LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Company, 55% of women in senior leadership positions have experienced sexual harassment at work. 

As women leaders advance toward higher positions in management and leadership, they face the most traumatic hurdle of the gender barriers in the workplace, which is sexual harassment. This demon is like the mythical monster Hydra, with many ugly heads, like:

  • Sexual animosity
  • Undesirable body language or gestures
  • Derogatory statements or innuendos
  • Lewd and salacious intent and attempts

 

The Deloitte report divulges that the majority of women (59%) have experienced harassment (such as unwanted physical advances or repeated disparaging comments) and/or microaggressions (such as being interrupted or talked over, being patronized, and so on) over the past year at work, an increase over the 52% who reported experiencing harassment and/or microaggressions in 2021.

To deal with the harassment, many women are compelled to leave their professions, switch careers, or cut back on their work hours. Such behaviors could compel individuals to pass up important opportunities and further impede their job growth. 

How to battle this?

Business leaders worldwide need to, rather, should be forced to implement anti-harassment training for each and every vertical of their companies. But, people have a tendency to be deaf as a post to the message conveyed in training and workshops. So, conducting sessions won’t do. Leaders need to set an example. 

  • A zero-tolerance policy needs to be prioritized and set.
  • Lenient work culture and attitude toward harassment encourages such lewd advances more. Transgressors should be dealt with utmost severity and punishment.
  • Ignoring the victim’s complaint leads to a betrayal of trust and further shatters the victim’s morale. This should never happen. Every organization must have an anti harassment committee which needs to hear both parties and pass on fair judgment.

The Uphill Climb Toward Becoming a C-Suite Leader

“One of the greatest gender equality challenges that our women leaders face these days is making their way to the sacred C-suite. More and more women are bagging the roles of managers and supervisors, but walking in the hallowed walls of C-suite in the corporate world is still a distant dream for many female leaders today.”, says Aishwarya Khan Bhaduri, the Marketing Manager at Engagedly. 

 

The glaring factors we stumbled upon, while doing a root cause analysis, are: the significant lack of mentorship and preconceived notions. 

Anyone who has held a position in a huge organization is aware of the value of sponsors and mentors in advancing one’s career. Men still outperform women when it comes to creating a strong professional network, though. In certain circumstances, women are over-mentored and under-sponsored. 

 

According to Dr. Konrad, an Ivey Academy professor, research reveals that people are much less inclined to recognize women’s expertise than they do men’s. 

“Decision-makers at the highest levels in the largest, most-powerful business organizations continue to be men,” Dr. Konrad says. “Men prefer to be led by other men, and show a clear anti-female bias in their ratings of leadership effectiveness.”

female business leaders

How to scale up?

  • Leaders should drive toward helping promising female leaders break the proverbial glass ceiling and rise to the executive ranks. 
  • Every vertical in an organization should have advocates, mentors, and sponsors for guidance.
  • Women in the C-suite must not be reluctant to participate in discussions about modifying current procedures and structures in order to foster a more inclusive environment.
  • Each and every leader today should imbibe the mantra of ‘be the change to make the change’ and throw away all preconceived notions of gender bias that have been mentally conditioned since times immemorial.
  • A big no-no to the culture of patronizing the ‘little woman’. Gender equality will then be a predominant truth and not a challenge.
  • Women leaders need to empower themselves and remember that their worst adversary is equivocation. They need to know what they want and take the bull by its horns.

Also Read: Five Inspiring Examples of Coaching and Mentoring at the Workplace!

Final Thoughts

General Motors Chair and CEO Mary Barra shared her encouragement for women in the workplace by pleading with all women employees to “Find your voice. Have a point of view.” “Too often”, she said, “women are discouraged from speaking up, which can close the door to future opportunities.” 

Many businesses are ignorant of the gender equality challenges that women encounter at work. The only effective approach to learn is to evaluate the culture of your company, then figure out how to improve the culture and provide female leaders with the resources they need. 

Leena Nair, CEO, Chanel, equivocates that “to create a balance we need to change the men, the women and the culture.” Before joining Chanel, she was the Chief HR Officer at Unilever where she in her own words, “…feel especially honored in steering Unilever to a more balanced future. 

As a woman who has experienced being in the minority, I have empathy for anyone who feels marginalized. I take it personally.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What are the top five challenges faced by female team members?

Ans. Female team members face quite a few challenges at the workplace. A few them would be:

  • Gender discrimination and prejudice
  • Lack of acknowledgment for hard work
  • Opinions and ideas not being valued
  • Sexual harassment and other types of microaggressions
  • Anxiety

Q2. How does gender inequality affect leadership?

Ans. Women are seriously underrepresented in leadership. Authoritative roles in decision-making and management are, often, not assigned to women leaders.

Q3. What is the best solution for gender inequality?

Ans. Here are the top five solutions to battle gender equality challenges at the workplace:

  • Always assess employees based on skills and data
  • Eradicate the pay gap
  • Emphasize on having a work-life balance
  • Serious punishment for harassment cases
  • Proper mentoring programs

Manager’s Complete Checklist to Employee Check Ins

Checking in on the progress of your direct reports doesn’t need to be a long and stressful process. Employee check ins are an easy way to keep track of the performance of your employees without making it seem like an actual performance review.

Continue reading “Manager’s Complete Checklist to Employee Check Ins”

Performance Review Tips For 2023

Every organization has their own methods and approaches in place for the performance review process. They are intended to be unbiased and fair evaluation of employee performance.

With hybrid and remote work, performance review can be an effective tool to motivate employees and improve their productivity. But often 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.

Also Read: Employee Motivation Is Not About Perks Alone

Many companies today are reinventing their performance review processes in a way that they contribute to an increase in employee productivity and improvement of employee morale at the workplace. Do you want to reinvent performance reviews at your workplace too? Here are a few tips for you.

Conduct Weekly Check-Ins

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 the expectation from 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.

Recognize and Reward Your Employees

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.

Also Read: Recognition At Work:The Virtual Edition

Encourage A Transparent Organizational 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. Not only this, according to Jobvite 46% employees consider organization culture important while applying to companies.

Make The Discussions Future Focussed

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.

Allocate Budget and Resources

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.

Set Short-Term Goals

Like said before, it is important to frequently check 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.

Also Read: Here’s How To Set Effective Goals For Your Employees

Have A Two-Way Communication

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.

Be Ready To Receive Feedback

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.

Want to know how Engagedly can help you with performance reviews? Request a demo today from our experts. 

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Continuous Feedback: What Is It and Its Benefits

Previously, managers would meet their employees once a year for their performance reviews. Or vice versa where the employees meet their managers once a year or half-yearly. But this was not effective in improving employee performance. As a manager, you are most likely to forget what your employee did throughout the year, and your reviews may be clouded by recency bias. Additionally, your employees will not get to know what they did right or what they did wrong. To avoid this, organizations have shifted from traditional performance reviews to a continuous feedback approach.

What is Continuous Feedback?

Continuous feedback is the process of sharing regular feedback with employees. Regular and timely feedback helps in understanding the strengths and weaknesses of employees and provides them with the opportunity to improve their performance. This systematic approach creates feedback culture in the organization.

Also read: 10 Best Employee Feedback Tools To Track Performance

The continuous feedback model can help an organization improve performance in tandem with engagement.

Improved engagement

Straight away, one of the biggest improvements that can be seen with a culture of continuous feedback is an increase in engagement. There are plenty of statistics that point towards employees being unhappy with the amount of feedback they are receiving. And when they do receive meaningful feedback, they do agree that it helps them work better. Have a gander at a few statistics with regards to feedback:

  • 27% strongly agree the feedback they receive helps them do their work better.
  • Gallup found that only 21% of millennials and 18% of non-millennials meet with their manager on a weekly basis. The majority of employees say they meet with their manager as infrequently as less than once a month (56% of millennials and 53% of non-millennials).

We all would like to be valued at work. Meaningful and continuous feedback fulfills that desire. Employees believe the work they are doing aligns with the organization or, they will ensure their work aligns with the organization’s end goals and objectives.

Continuous feedback benefits for employees

Feedback at a regular interval isn’t something that is just reserved for a certain breed of employees. Constructive feedback is for everyone. It can help struggling employees improve, it can help good employees become better and it might even help struggling employees figure out they are suited for different job roles.

The idea behind this type of feedback is to consistently suggest improvements and refinements that help the employee. They need not always have to be criticisms or praise. They just need to offer the employee food for thought as they continue working on their project. And with the work that we do always being dynamic, there’s always something to share in terms of feedback. Mind you, this principle cannot be applied to all kinds of work. For example, automatic machine work has already been refined to the highest level possible.

Also read: 10 Best Employee Feedback Tools To Track Performance

Decreases attrition

When employees receive insufficient feedback, what happens? They leave. A lack of constructive feedback is reason enough for employees to change job. It is also important to note the difference between feedback and constructive and meaningful feedback. Feedback can mean anything, even noise. On the other hand, constructive feedback not only takes into account the person receiving the feedback, but also their skills and competency and the work they are doing.

Increased productivity

When there’s consistent feedback to rely on, there’s always room for improvement. There’s also the desire to improve not only upon performance but also productivity. Continuous feedback motivates us in more ways than one. Sometimes, feedback is the push most of us need to try a new approach or to keep going on what is a difficult path. Feedback eases the way because then employees are secure in the knowledge that their manager is paying attention to their work and is invested in what they do.

Provides an accurate account of employee performance

Do you which factor can have a marked impact on performance reviews? Documented feedback. It helps in identifying trajectory of performance and acts as a reference. That is, it provides a representation of an employee’s work over a period of time. It is possible to see where an employee faltered, or where they improved or alternatively, where they stagnated, thereby needing a new challenge. Regular feedback makes the performance review process a whole lot easier. Even if you were to only have an annual review, continuous feedback makes it easy to make performance-related decisions.

Also read: Here’s Why Your Employee Rewards and Recognition Fails

Continuous feedback performance management is revolutionizing the business world. It provides a holistic approach to keeping tabs on employee productivity and offers actionable insights to overcome challenges. We hope this article has helped you learn about the importance of continuous feedback. Tell us in the comments, how your organization is utilizing Continuous feedback performance management in the current business environment.

 

continuous feedback performance management

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. How does continuous feedback help?

Ans. Continuous feedback helps in the following way:

  • Improves employee morale
  • Enhances employee productivity
  • Improves employee engagement
  • Drives employee growth

Q2. How do you give continuous feedback?

Ans. The following methods can be used in providing continuous feedback:

  • Effective goal setting
  • Regular check-ins
  • 360 Degree feedback

Q3. What are the benefits of continuous feedback to employees?

Ans. Continuous feedback helps employees in the following ways:

  • Provides opportunities for learning and development
  • Improves employee efficiency
  • Drives career growth

 

5 OKR Software Features To Look For

The key result has to be measurable. But in the end, you can look, and without any arguments: Did I do that or did I not do it? Yes? No? Simple. No judgments in it. 

– Andy Grove

When it comes to setting goals and being successful, the one organization that comes to our mind is Google. Google’s OKRs are legendary and a lot of the company’s success can be attributed to their OKRs.

As a result, it’s no secret that everyone wants to emulate Google’s goal setting method and perhaps their meteoric success as well.

OKRs stand for ‘Objectives And Key Results’. OKRs are a popular approach for goal-setting which allows employees to execute individual as well as company objectives.

OBJECTIVES are something that you want to achieve, and KEY RESULTS are a measurable way to keep track of how close you are to achieve your goals.

OKR software helps employees with task management and to track the progress of their goal easily. But with too many options available in the market, it becomes a difficult job for an organization to select one.

OKR: goal setting guide

OKR Software Features To Look For

The section below highlights the best OKR software features to look for before you invest in a tool.

OKR software features1. Easy And Simple to Use By Everyone

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Leonardo da Vinci.

The OKR software should be user-friendly and easy to use. Users should be able to understand how the software works with little or no training. The user interface should be clean and not cluttered with useless information. The simpler the software, the easier it would be for everyone to use. Understanding and managing the software should not be a new project in itself for all the employees. Additionally, it should support easy integration with other tools or processes. The adoption rate of a software depends on its user friendliness and simplicity of use.

Also Read: Why OKRs Are Crucial When Onboarding New Employees

2. Flexible and Customizable

OKR software should be flexible and support easy customization. OKRs/Goals check-ins can be in the form of a percentage, quantity, or milestone. The software should give users the flexibility to check-in on their okrs/goals as per their needs. Flexible and customizable software will be useful for the organization in the long run.

3. Allows Comment

OKRs have a shelf-life and are generally set on a quarterly basis. The ability to comment on OKRs allows managers and employees to discuss it on a regular basis. OKR platform with comment functionality promotes two-way communication and helps in setting a culture of regular feedback and healthy work culture.

Also Read: Have You Set Effective OKRs For Your Customer Success Team?

4. Cascade and Align

OKR software should possess the basic functionality to align and cascade okrs/goals. OKRs and goals are often a shared responsibility. Cascading goals will allow sharing goals from one level of the organization to the next. For example, a manager can cascade his goals down to his direct reports.

Goal Alignment on the other hand helps everyone visualize the bigger picture. It allows individuals in goal alignment and goal management. For example, if one of the organization’s main goals is breaking into an as yet untapped market, the ability to align goals shows an employee how exactly they are contributing to this specific goal.

5. Dashboards and Insights

OKR software tools should present actionable dashboards and insights. It should be easy to understand and analyze so that it is actionable. Moreover, it should highlight the number of goals, the percentage of completion, goal alignment, and their status. It will help employees know whether any goal will be a bottleneck and needs attention. Moreover, an OKR software with an actionable dashboard and insights will help employees stay aligned and focussed.

OKR software features demo

Engagedly Inc. makes it to Inc. 5000’s Fastest-Growing Private Companies Second Time in a Row

St. Louis, MO, Aug 22, 2022: Engagedly, a leading provider of SaaS solution for People Strategy, has been named as one of the fastest-growing private companies in the United States, second time in a row.

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.

“We are thrilled to make it to the Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies for the second time in a row,” says Sri Chellappa, President and Co-Founder of Engagedly.  ” We will continue to focus on providing value to our clients and help them align people processes and business strategy, to help people and organizations thrive in the future of work”.

Engagedly helps organizations create effective, engaged workforces by progressive performance management, employee development and improving employee engagement for the hybrid workforce. Engagedly’s cloud platform is built to engage, motivate, develop, and drive performance. They offer 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.

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. 

To know more about Engagedly, visit https://engagedly.com/ or follow us on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter.

More about Inc. and the Inc. 5000 process

Methodology

Companies on the 2022 Inc. 5000 are ranked according to percentage revenue growth from 2018 to 2021. As always, Inc. reserves the right to decline applicants for subjective reasons. Growth rates used to determine company rankings were calculated to four decimal places. The top 500 companies on the Inc. 5000 are featured in Inc. magazine’s September issue. The entire Inc. 5000 can be found at http://www.inc.com/inc5000.

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.

Press Contact:

Abhishek Ghosh, Brand Marketing
Engagedly Inc.
+1-650-4851642
pr@engagedly.com

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