Category Archives: Employee Engagement

To Create the Best Employee Survey, Use the Best Survey Questions

As described recently in our May 1 blog article, employee surveys can be an excellent means for assessing and improving employee engagement at your organization.  However, the success of your annual survey initiative depends on a number of important factors, not the least of which is utilization of a survey design measuring a valid model – or as many behavioral statisticians call it, a “construct” – of employee engagement.  As such, the best employee survey makes use of questions proven to get at the very heart of engagement.  The following are just a few of the best survey questions we often recommend our clients utilize:

“I would proudly recommend this organization as a good place to work to a friend or relative.” – Research conducted by Avatar Solutions shows that engaged employees show a far greater willingness to recommend their employer within their close network, whether as an employer or provider of goods/services.  This survey question has a strong positive correlation with engagement and may not only help you to determine whether your employees are engaged, but also whether they exhibit behaviors that give your organization a competitive advantage.

“My job gives me an opportunity to do the things I do best.” – Perhaps more than ever before, employees care deeply about their ability to experience personal and professional self-actualization in the workplace, which makes this one of the best survey questions you can include on your employee survey.  Organizations or teams achieving low scores on this survey question should consider ways they can increase role alignment with employees’ skills, including expanding responsibilities and stretch activities for workers who have shown themselves willing and able to take on more.

“My coworkers are friendly and helpful.” – While it is perhaps easy for managers to dismiss employees’ satisfaction with their coworkers as a consideration demanding less attention than other matters, research has shown that the strength of an employee’s relationship with her colleagues is predictive of her relative willingness to seek career opportunities elsewhere.  All other things being equal, a high-performing employee with friends in the workplace is generally less likely to leave voluntarily than an employee with weaker social bonds adhering them to their team.  As such, this question ranks among the best survey questions.

These are just a few of the questions we often recommend our clients utilize when measuring employee engagement, satisfaction, or the state of a client’s organizational culture.  Items like these appear on Avatar Solutions’ Employee Surveys, each of which, beyond our standard survey questions, includes space for the client to select a number of supplemental questions of their choosing, to ensure their interests and goals for the survey program are being met.  Ultimately, the best employee survey is the one that, accurately measuring employee engagement, correlates strongly with important business outcomes like turnover rates or customer satisfaction.  In this manner, Avatar Solutions’ Employee Surveys provide top value to organizations seeking to improve their workforce and business.

Why Companies Should Survey Employees

What is the easiest way to gather information from someone?  Ask that person questions about what you want to know.  This simple solution is often overlooked by many organizations when attempting to understand employee engagement and staff opinions about their jobs.

More often than they should, organizations rely on overheard gossip, anecdotal stories, or grapevine information when determining workers’ thoughts and perspectives.  Leadership then makes errant conclusions and changes based on hearsay.  Employees are left feeling unheard and confused, which often leads to dissatisfaction and disengagement.

To fully understand how your employees feel, you must ask them directly.  Administering employee surveys will allow your organization to gather more valid and informative data than simply relying on overheard discussions or complaints.  Responses from surveys can deliver valuable knowledge that directly affects your bottom line and fosters positive change in any or all of the following ways:

Benefits of Employee Survey

Understanding why you should survey and what information surveys can provide is the first step toward improving employee engagement at your organization.  You must then design a survey that asks the right questions in order to create effective improvement plans.  Find out next week what types of questions will provide the most actionable data.

Why Build Employee Engagement: The Importance of Engagement in the Workplace

Employee engagement has been all over the HR radar for the past several years, turning the measurement of engagement into a multi-million dollar industry.   But what exactly is employee engagement?  Why is building engagement so important?  How can engaging employees improve your business?

Defining Employee Engagement

Engaged employees share a strong desire to be part of the value that an organization creates.  These employees feel a strong emotional bond to the organization that employs them and choose to exert discretionary effort to provide better outcomes for the customer and the organization.  Engaged employees are committed to improving and have a desire to own and improve their personal engagement.

Levels of Engagement in the WorkplaceLevels of Employee Engagement in the Workplace

At Avatar Solutions, we believe there are three levels of employee engagement: Actively Engaged, Ambivalent, and Actively Disengaged.  Actively Engaged employees always go above and beyond in the work they do and are highly committed to the mission, vision, and values of the organization.  Ambivalent employees tend to work just as hard as they need to get by, and are not likely to volunteer for extra assignments or have strong spirit or enthusiasm.  Actively Disengaged employees bring a negative energy to the workplace, do not focus on creating positive outcomes, and can be a drain on their organization.  According to Avatar Solutions’ National Normative Database, comprised of 3.3 million employees from 2,400 organizations, only 29 percent of employees are Actively Engaged, while 59 percent fall into the Ambivalent category and 12 percent can be categorized as Actively Disengaged.

Engagement’s Impact on Customer Satisfaction

Employee engagement has a significant impact on customer satisfaction.   Engaged employees are motivated by an environment that always focuses on creating a positive customer experience, and are 3.5 times more likely to believe employees at their organization genuinely care about the customer.  In fact, there is a correlation between customer satisfaction and employee engagement to the .85 coefficient.  This correlation does not suggest causation, but instead shows that as employee engagement improves, customer satisfaction tends to improve as well, and vice versa.

Employee Engagement and Quality of Work

Engaged employees also tend to work harder and produce higher quality work than disengaged employees.  Avatar Solutions’ research has found that engagement is also positively correlated with performance ratings, meaning that engaged employees tend to receive a higher performance rating.  These high performing employees make up the backbone of any organization they work for.

Improve Employee Retention through Engagement

Turnover is a huge drain on employers and the economy, with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reporting that 1.5 to 2 million employees voluntarily chose to leave their jobs each month. Each employee who resigns tends to cost between 16 to 20 percent of his or her annual salary to replace. By focusing on engagement, organizations are much more likely to retain their top employees and therefore save money.[1]  Engaged employees are 3.5 times more likely to stay with their employer and are four times more satisfied with their jobs.

Building Engagement in Your Organization

Now that we know how important building employee engagement is, how can you build it at your organization?  We will be launching a new blog series on how to increase employee engagement.  Check back soon for tips, best practices, and a focus on the individual key drivers of engagement.

[1] Lucas, Suzanne.  “How much does it cost companies to replace employees?” http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505125_162-57552899/how-much-does-it-cost-companies-to-lose-employees/ (accessed April 11, 2013).

Employees Can’t “Play Ball” without Effective Training

Water cooler chat being what it is, even a baseball ignorant like myself can’t make it very far into spring without knowing a thing or two about what’s going on in the Major League. This year, I’ve looked on as baseball’s preseason has segued into the competitive, regular season, and excitement among my coworkers has grown palpably.

Early into the year, many of my peers had already enjoyed a glut of show-stopping performances and the equally dismal outings comprising Spring Training in Arizona and Florida. The quality of the athletics in demonstration have supported the notion that “Spring Training performances are never as good as they look or as bad as they appear,” a truism recently ascribed by sportswriter Hal Bodley to the Phillies’ late general manager John Quinn (1). Meaning, I gather, that we can’t predict the outcome of a season based on individual training performances – though many among us will try.

But imagine a season without any training or practice at all. What would it look like? Even if you can’t judge a season by its exhibition games, training is without a doubt one of the most important components of a team’s annual crusade for the pennant. The same is true in any workforce, whether your business is manufacturing, healthcare, gaming, or financial services. All employees need practical, ongoing training in order to succeed at what they do. And it’s not just a matter of skills acquisition and knowledge transfer.

Just like in sports, training offers employees an opportunity to get amped up about what they do – to cultivate a mindset in which they can execute with alacrity and enthusiasm. In fact, research by Avatar Solutions has shown that training and professional development is one of the top drivers of employee engagement. And yet responses to Avatar Solutions Employee Surveys show that 21% of employees are not satisfied with the level of training they receive.

443726_31923700 v2To help employees achieve the high levels of engagement to which many aspire, business leaders can take a page from the Major League Baseball playbook and institute programs of training that occur on an ongoing basis, with meaningful frequency. This doesn’t necessarily call for expensive learning modules and formal classes – although these resources may be the right choice for some organizations.  Rather, organizations can encourage and empower their managers to provide on-the-job training and development opportunities to employees as they perform their regular job functions.  Taking inspiration from America’s national pastime, here are just a few of the ways to build training into your employees’ work week:

Great coaching begets great performance. Coaching is something everybody needs but that few companies do systemically. Yet, when we were children we had coaches in our parents, in Little League we may have had a coach, and in high school and college had access to excellent teachers and academic advisors. So why does the coaching end when the paycheck begins? If an organization does not have an established program or process for providing coaching to employees, facilitate the coaching experience by encouraging your team to seek out a coach among senior staffers. HR can provide assistance by setting an expectation that senior-level employees spend an hour each week mentoring junior staff. The organization can provide senior leaders with a small stipend for coffee with employees, or lunch, and model behaviors by demonstrating effective methods for identifying and communicating with a potential coach, as well as responding to an employee request for mentorship.

Stick to the playbook – most of the time. Checklists and step-by-step process descriptions are useful for all employees, especially those who are new to the job or who perform a given task only occasionally. To assist your team in developing facility within their job functions, create training and how-to documents for performing the important tasks handled by your team. Ask that all stakeholders contribute to and review the checklists, so that the most effective methods for completing an assignment are represented. Reflecting on tasks and participating in the creation of the documents will help solidify employees’ job knowledge, as well as build their confidence in the skills they have acquired. Once checklists have been created and utilized for some time, establish a process for recommending updates to the documents. While it is important to “stick to the playbook” overall, encouraging employees to innovate and develop better methods for completing tasks is vital to their engagement and the success of your team.

Get tenured employees involved in onboarding. When a new pitcher is added to the team roster, they’re often paired off with a seasoned opener or closer as a way to help them develop their skills, gain critical performance feedback, learn methods of dealing with their high-stress position, and acclimate to the team culture. In other industries, this practice is also an absolute grand slam, because it achieves several important ends in support of employee engagement. First, it provides new employees with a robust, supportive onboarding framework while taking some pressure off of the hiring manager. Second, it allows tenured employees to strengthen their own understanding of the functions they perform, as well as providing some leadership experience. Finally, and perhaps most important, it builds crucial interpersonal relationships within the team.

Whether your workplace is the baseball diamond, office suite, or production floor, training is an integral component of any high-performing team. So the next time you cheer on as the local favorite bests their arch rival – or, if you’re like me, the next time you feign interest about it around the water cooler – remember the many hours of practice and careful training that goes into a single swing of the bat. As American as baseball, the lesson is one that has universal application.

(1) http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130321&content_id=43079868&vkey=news_phi&c_id=phi

March Madness Positively Impacts Employee Engagement

MH900305805It’s that time of year again.  March Madness has arrived.  Around this time, many talent management professionals wonder if the tournament causes distraction and lost productivity, especially if emails about bracket competitions are circling the office.  In this post, I want to look at the tournament from a different angle.  Did you know March Madness can actually have a positive impact on the workplace by increasing employee engagement?

Since individuals spend most of their time at their job, they do not necessarily want to work at a location where the policy is all work and no play.  Establishing a company-organized bracket competition provides a perfect opportunity to bring a little fun to the job.  When you create a fun culture, people will enjoy coming to work and have more positive feelings about the organization’s brand.  They will be more engaged and likely to exert extra effort, as well as more willing to positively recommend the organization as a good place to work.  Thus, incorporating fun into the day makes good business sense.

Additionally, the tournament provides a small stress relief or mental break for many employees.  Workers can check scores or discuss the tournament’s progress with coworkers when they find themselves in need of a short break from a project.  They will then be more likely to come back to the task with a renewed vigor and increased attention, ready to complete a high-quality project.

March Madness also encourages employees to connect on a more personal level with their coworkers.  Discussions about March Madness often lead to conversations about where people went to college, why they root for a certain team, or how they choose who will win it all.  Each of these small conversations provides the opportunity for people to foster closer bonds.  Since coworkers are often considered the unsung heroes of retention, it is in management’s best interest for team members to create deeper relationships with each other.  Employees will be more engaged and more likely to remain at your organization when they get to know and like their peers.

When thinking about the tournament this year, I encourage you to consider it from a different angle. If you overhear employees discussing their brackets or talking about an upcoming game, do not worry so much about their productivity levels.  Consider that these conversations will actually help your organization in the long run.

For additional March Madness lessons about employee engagement, watch our recent webinar, “March is Here: Have You Filled Out Your Engagement Bracket?”

Guest Post: Confessions of an Office Prankster

Disclaimer: No co-workers or My Little Ponies were harmed in the making of this article.  The shenanigans detailed below are in no way a reflection of the author’s excellent work ethic. 

It’s with a heavy heart that I announce my retirement from the world of office pranks.  This will probably come as a sigh of relief to my coworkers, but I like to think that my pranks will be somewhat missed.

Pranks may seem silly or like a waste of time, but they can actually have a positive impact in the workplace when kept light, fun, and of course, injury-free.  Sure, as a veteran prankster, I’m always looking over my shoulder, paranoid that the numerous coworkers I’ve victimized over the years may lurch towards me like zombies and retaliate together—but that’s the risk I’m willing to take for the benefits.

Amusing pranks can help build a fun workplace culture, which Avatar’s research has found to have a positive correlation with employee engagement.  This means that when levels of fun increase, employee engagement is also likely to increase, leading to positive business outcomes like reduced turnover, increased productivity, and higher revenue.

Pranking can also help facilitate creative thinking, which is extremely important in today’s workplace. There’s something about mixing a stapler and jello crystals into boiling water that brings fresh perspective to a nagging problem. Additionally, pranking can lead to a greater sense of camaraderie, which positively impacts coworker relations, and in turn, employee engagement.

Pranking may also relieve workplace tension. I can prank my nemesis and everyone thinks it’s hilarious and innocent…but my frenemy and I know it’s not.

Me: “Haha, isn’t this sooooo funny, bestie?”

Me (secretly): “You finished all the printer toner so I put glue in your hair!” And then I accidentally cackle out loud.

Just kidding, of course!

Before I go, I wanted to reflect back on my career as a prankster.  Here are some of my favorite pranks from my time at Avatar:

Taken: A Pony Story

A coworker and I kidnapped the office manager’s My Little Pony figures from her desk. We photographed the blindfolded ponies, sent a ransom note and even attempted to frame an innocent bystander for the heinous crime. Our demands for Oreo balls and a bag of glitter were eventually met. The treats were quickly devoured and the glitter was later used to glitter-bomb a departing employee.

  ransomnote

To Pony Owner. We have little pony. Pony is safe. We want Oreo balls and glitter bag. Deliver to mailbox of David W. Miller. No funny business. Call cops, pony die. After delivery, pony will be return.

Deck the Halls with Toilet paper

‘Twas the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and the office was especially quiet because so many employees were on vacation.  Some of us had cabin fever, and so we naturally decided to toilet paper our coworkers’ office.  What a great surprise for them when they returned from vacation! 

toiletpaper

Turning Over a New Leaf

Now that my days of office pranking are over, I will try to recreate the benefits of pranking elsewhere. Maybe I’ll bond with coworkers by engaging in actual conversations about their amazing pet/child/spouse. To facilitate creative thinking, I’ll chain-smoke and wear skinny ties like Don Draper.

dondraper
The vlookup wasn’t working because I forgot to put a bracket at the end! Thanks, skinny tie.

(Photo courtesy of http://www.thefastertimes.com)

Worst of all, I’ll have to make do with sending passive-aggressive emails to my frenemy. “I noticed that the documents you provided are in Arial instead of the standard Calibri. Please revise and resend,” I’ll write.

Or maybe, just maybe this article is the ultimate prank and one day I will strike on my unsuspecting coworkers—I do have half a bag of glitter left.

 

Zehra Kazmi is a Data Analyst at Avatar HR Solutions.

5 Tips for Beating the Winter Blues at Work

You get up.  It’s cold and dark.  You leave for work.  It’s cold and dark.  You get home from work.  It’s somehow colder and darker.  Repeat.

January can be a really tough month for employees.  Without the holiday season to look forward to, all of the gloomy weather can really affect your mood.  In fact, the lack of natural sunlight can actually cause people to develop Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a type of depression that can cause fatigue, lack of interest, and trouble concentrating.  About five percent of the population tends to suffer from SAD each year, with up to twenty percent of people experiencing at least one symptom. [1]

If you believe your mood and job performance are being affected by the winter blues, there are several ways to alleviate your symptoms, both inside and outside of the workplace.  Below are five tips for beating the winter blues at work:

 

1.                   Change up your Environment

Sometimes the problem can stem from your work environment itself.  Is there any natural light in your workspace?  If not, consider purchasing a sunlamp – or, if your blinds are closed, open them!  Natural lighting can have a major impact on your mood.  If these aren’t options for you, try to use your breaks to go outside and get some fresh air at least once a day.

2.                   Set a Goal – And Reach It!

According to Avatar HR Solutions’ National Normative Database, 72 percent of employees agree that their job gives them an opportunity to learn new skills.  Are you taking advantage of that opportunity?  Setting a goal to learn a new skill in the workplace can help to make your work day more interesting as well as improve your focus.  Set a goal that is actually attainable and figure out how you can reach it.  Completing a goal can boost your self-esteem, which should further decrease the winter blues.

3.                   Take Care of Your Body and Mind

You know all of those resolutions people made at the beginning of the month to be healthier?  Exercising and eating right can not only help your body become healthier, but also keep your mind healthy as well.  Exercise releases endorphins, which improve mood, as well as increase blood flow, which can impact concentration.  Low on time?  Try taking a brisk walk during your lunch break or using the stairs instead of the elevator at work.  Every little bit helps!

4.                   Bring Fun into the Workplace

You’ve probably heard it said that laughter is the best medicine.  This is especially true for people suffering from SAD, since laughter causes the brain to release endorphins and improve mood.  Bringing laughter and fun into the workplace can have a major impact on employee wellness and productivity, yet according to Avatar HR Solutions’ National Normative Database, only 62 percent of employees believe their organization makes an effort to create a fun work environment for employees.   Looking for ways to make work fun?  Consider hosting an employee appreciation event such as a pot-luck lunch, a board game party, or have a movie day in the conference room.  These are inexpensive ways to insert fun into the day without taking away much time from the work day.

5.                   Find Something to Look Forward To

Part of the problem with these long winter months is that there isn’t anything exciting on the horizon.  The holiday season is over and the summer months are still so far away.  Planning a trip or even just to take a day or two off of work can really help to improve your mood because they give you something to look forward to.  Dreaming about a Spring Break trip may be just the trick to beat the winter blues.

 

Until the sun comes back for good, I hope these tips help you to make the most of the remainder of winter.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go for a jog, buy some new lighting for my office, and plan my next vacation!

[1] What is Seasonal Affective Disorder, http://www.medicinenet.com/seasonal_affective_disorder_sad/article.htm (accessed January 16, 2013).

Employee Engagement by the Numbers

According to Avatar HR Solutions’ data, only 29 percent of employees are engaged in the work they do.  Engaged employees feel a strong emotional tie to their jobs and exert discretionary effort to provide better business outcomes.  Engaged individuals are committed to the success of their organization.

The holidays are a perfect time to reflect on the factors that impact employee engagement and re-commit to engaging your workers year round.  The following infographic provides some tips for engaging your workers this season.

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Even if the weather hasn’t started cooperating yet, the holiday season is clearly in full swing.  Homes and stores are decorated to the nines, there’s a festive mood in the air, and, like it or not, holiday music seems to be playing no matter where you go.  For many people, the holidays don’t just mean presents and parties.  The “most wonderful time of the year” is often thought of as a time to give back to the community.

To help employees celebrate the spirit of giving, why not create volunteering or charitable opportunities through the workplace?  Giving back to the community is important to many employees, and they tend to want to work for organizations that care about the outside world.  In fact, some members of younger generations actually factor in the presence of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programs when deciding on whether or not to work for an organization.  These programs show that an organization cares about more than just profitability.  In addition, CSR programs also help contribute to positive employee engagement levels.

There are many opportunities for employees to volunteer throughout the holiday season.  For example, many food banks need additional help during the holidays to organize and distribute all of the donations they receive.  Employees can volunteer to work together, which also acts as a team-building activity.  Alternately, your organization could hold a food or coat drive and encourage employees to make donations.  At Avatar HR Solutions, we are currently participating collecting food for the Greater Chicago Food Depository.  Employees have donated numerous items since before Thanksgiving and are continuing to give.

Another way to give is through monetary donations to charities.  A matching gift program, where the organization agrees to match any donation employees make, is a great way to encourage employee participation.  Unsure of which organization to donate to?  A best practice is to have employees make the call.  If their donations are going to a cause they care about, employees are more likely to be positively impacted by the experience.

To make a bigger impact on the bottom line, CSR initiatives could be chosen that relate to that organization directly.  For example, Intel Corporation, a technology firm, participates in initiatives that help to reduce the impact of their products on the environment as well as sponsors outreach programs that will help to educate the next generation of technology employees.1 By linking CSR programs to the organization’s future, as Intel did, you are able to provide an ROI on the programs and are more likely to gain support from management.

Coordinating charitable activities this holiday season require little effort on an organization’s end, but will achieve significant results including improved reputation and employee engagement levels.  Will your organization be getting into the spirit and giving back this holiday season?

 

1Sheridan, Kevin, The Virtual Manager, Pompton Plains, NJ.: Career Press, 2012.

A Thanksgiving Story

For many, Thanksgiving marks the start of the winter holiday season, when everywhere you look, hands grip red paper cups of pumpkin or choco-peppermint latte, malls seethe with panicky shoppers, and waistlines beg futilely for quarter.

But everyone knows that Thanksgiving isn’t just a raucous glut giving onto the biggest retail shopping day of the year.  In our frenetic, modern lives where cities never sleep and so much is taken for granted, Thanksgiving is foremost a time for stepping back, slowing down, and taking an inventory of the things that make our lives beautiful.

This is perhaps made more important by our tendency only to become truly aware of our good fortune when we take the time to articulate it.

I became aware of this tendency in myself about a year ago, just as Thanksgiving was rolling around – my first holiday season at Avatar HR Solutions.  I’d been at the firm for just two months, and was really only beginning to observe and internalize the culture here.

That’s when an email was sent around requesting we participate in a fun Thanksgiving project.  In the kitchen were markers and leaf-shape cutouts on construction paper.  We were encouraged to write down something we were grateful for at work and post it on the wall.

Photo courtesy of http://www.psdgraphics.com

Perhaps you’ll think I’m awful when I tell you that reading the email, I balked.  I did!  I loved my new position at Avatar HR Solutions and admired the creative, collegial, inclusive culture.  But gratitude for something at work, a place where our efforts are numeric variables in a cool economic transaction?  It had never occurred to me to be grateful for work before.  What’s worse, I confess that I say this as a young professional who worked through the Great Recession.But then something remarkable happened.  In the kitchen one afternoon, I picked up a marker and considered the things I love about working at Avatar HR Solutions.  They were and still are: being able to write and tell stories (about people, about organizations, about products); being challenged and solving problems; my coworkers, who are so unique and talented; our sense of community; and yes, being fairly paid, so I can put food on the table and have a roof over my head.Marker in hand, I realized that day that I was grateful for a LOT of things at work.  By giving voice to gratitude, I had allowed myself to be grateful for an immense blessing in my life.  And though my leaf is no longer up in the kitchen – we couldn’t keep them up ALL year! – seldom is there a day when I don’t come in to work remembering exactly what it is I love about Avatar HR Solutions.

So I encourage you to take a moment to share your gratitude with your family, friends, and coworkers.  If you’re anything like me, you’ll realize you have a lot more to be thankful for than you thought: lattes, malls, waistline, and all.