Employee engagement is not a project

What would you think if the Finance Director would look at the P&L only once a year? Or if the Sales Manager would refer to last year’s numbers all year long? Unfortunately, this is still how many organizations report and take action on employee engagement. The outcome of one yearly survey is all you get. Fortunately, the landscape of the world of employee engagement is changing… rapidly.

Synergy between generations

There are many solutions on the market that are capable of disrupting how we management employee engagement. Lots of new companies offer short cycled survey tools that provide information on your staff’s engagement and wellbeing on monthly, weekly or even daily basis. When comparing to the traditional yearly survey model, the short time between measurements makes it that much easier to relate specific causes to specific effects. And perhaps even more importantly, to track the impact of recent actions so that you learn what works well for your organization.

So should you get rid of your yearly employee satisfaction survey? I don’t think so. There is a lot of value and understanding to be gained from having a comprehensive snapshot of your organization. Instead, we advise to do both and make use of the synergy. A yearly survey for the full view and a pulse survey to track the impact of your actions to improve employee engagement. This way you leverage your investment in the traditional employee satisfaction survey by keeping track of employee experience while you address the topics most important to you and your staff.

What’s next?

So what about these new solutions? Is The Next Big Thing among them? Maybe yes, but the name has not been made. In a recent article by Josh Bersin – People analytics market growth: 10 things you need to know, as well as this comprehensive brandscape by The Starr Conspiracy – Employee Engagement: A new technology category emerges, it seems the unicorn has not yet showed itself. There are many interesting and impactful solutions out there, but I feel there is something important still missing. They all, to some extend, manage to change employee engagement from a project to something that blends into business as usual.

The problem is most of them seem to aim for digitizing employee engagement, happiness and wellbeing. The point that is being missed, is that the impact of attention and action to improve engagement takes place between people. There is no immediate impact from a report that shows an engagement index. What teams need, is to have the right conversation. A tool that shows what is important, what the effect has been of recent actions and developments in the organization, and good conversation starter that makes sure that the topics that are most important to the employee experience are being addressed.

So what is it we do at 2daysmood?

Well it won’t be a surprise, but yes that is what we do. We have created a pulse survey that provides a comprehensive insight in the development of employee engagement and happiness in your organization, as well as a weekly one-page-conversation-starter for managers and team leaders that fits right into your team meeting or huddle.

It is our goal to help organizations become a great (or even greater) place to work and we are welcoming new customers and users every week. Interested in taking your employee engagement program to the next level as well? Then visit www.2daysmood.com or send me an email via [email protected] to find out everything about our #employeeengagement solution.

By Menno Wielhouwer
Co-founder at 2daysmood