Organizations are increasingly realizing the need to gain a better understanding of their employee experiences. This realization dawns upon as they bolster the connection between employee satisfaction and revenue growth.
According to HireRight’s 2016 APAC Employment Screening Benchmark Report, nearly two thirds (63%) of companies consider hiring, retaining and developing their talent as one of the most significant business challenges.
While successful employee engagement to meet business objectives isn’t a particularly new narrative, Qualtrics anticipates the dynamics within organizations to evolve in 2017. Here are four trends identified, which will impact workplaces across Asia Pacific in 2017:
Organizations can no longer expect the annual employee engagement surveys to capture all the insights needed to create an exceptional employee experience. This is why collecting feedback and measuring across the entire employee lifecycle (from the time of onboarding employees to their exit) is critical for organizations to gain insights into how they can improve the employee experience and retain top talent.
Organizations should focus on employee lifecycle feedback programs touching upon six key employee touch points – recruitment, onboarding, employee engagement surveys, engagement pulse surveys, developmental 180 and 360 degree surveys, and employee exit surveys to gain true view of an employee’s experience.
In recent years, there has been a significant shift towards more continuous feedback. Pulse surveys are complementary surveys to employee engagement surveys. They let organizations dig deeper into the issues that arise in the annual or bi-annual engagement surveys, or into a particular team/department. They will also allow organizations to monitor trends over time and identify seasonal issues.
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In 2017, we expect to see more organizations realizing the value of annual census surveys and regular pulse surveys as the basis of their employee insights program. This will help managers see a clear direction towards improvement. They can then gain continual feedback and develop strategies to act on the data.
Digital analytics and research has shown that the best way to influence change across all levels of the organization is to enable managers to act on data. In 2017, you will see managers and people leaders given visibility of employee feedback, to understand how to be better leaders, how to listen to their employees, and how to make management decisions that will create better employee experiences.
With technologies that deliver customized real-time dashboards across the entire organization, this shift towards sharing employee feedback across the organization is inevitable and will help organizations pivot around key issues faster.
Before commencing an engagement survey, the organisation must understand the strategy and how it will action the data. The most important part of collecting employee feedback is to initiate action on that feedback, in an appropriate timeframe to show employees that the organisation listens and values their feedback.
Employee engagement is directly linked to improved customer experience, which in turn is directly related to increased revenues. Therefore, it should always be a key focus area for organizations.
One of the best ways to run an employee lifecycle program is through a real-time survey platform that is sophisticated, yet easy-to-use. Though this, it is easy for employees to provide feedback and the organisation can see the feedback in real-time (even before the survey is closed) and they are able to initiate action quickly on the data being collected.
Satisfied employees are the key to organizations’ success. Hence, it is vital for companies to understand their employees through collection of employee insights and act upon issues which may arise from employee dissatisfaction. This can further help companies create a positive organisational culture and in turn, better attract and retain talent.
Author credit: Bill McMurray, Managing Director, Asia Pacific and Japan, Qualtrics, the leading insights platform, allowing organizations to collect, analyse and act on customer, market and employee insights. McMurray is an international technology executive with over 30 years of experience in the Information, Communication and Technology (ICT) industry. A key part of his responsibility is to establish and grow Qualtrics across the APAC and Japan region.
