On 12th May 2022 I had the pleasure of attending the 8th annual ‘Employee Engagement Summit’ organised by Engage business media.
The day started with an opening address by Jo Moffatt from Woodreed & Engage for Success, and it quickly became clear that there was a buzz in the room with people reaffirming friendships and making new alliances in a post COVID world.
Jo was followed by 3 speakers who set the tone for the day.
The first was Kate Richardson-Walsh, Olympic gold medallist and former captain of Team GB Hockey. You may wonder what similarities there are from the hockey field to the field of work, but actually there are lots. Kate shared a very personal account of the highs & lows of being part of the #31 – how values & behaviours need to lead to meaningful actions and being able to challenge yourself and others.
Kate spoke about identifying people’s super strengths (but not a batman cape was in sight). Think about asking your team members:
- What lights them up?
- What do people value in the team?
- What gives us energy?
I am certainly going to give that a go at my next team strategy meeting.
Next came Peter Wilde from Tivian (formerly Questback) who share insights from their latest research in employee experience – a stark picture indeed. Of those surveyed the feeling was that:
- Feedback gathered is not being used effectively
- Employees do not feel they have influence
- The listening experience is not personalised enough
- There is a failure to take a holistic approach to feedback
Peter spoke about how many companies have moved away from annual feedback cycles, With over 80% asking for more frequent feedback (Daily – Quarterly basis). Some of you may well be wondering now about survey fatigue – but interestingly, the research showed that 82% of those surveyed said they prefer to provide ongoing feedback – some food for thought….
The last speaker in the morning was Nicole Linger who spoke about the Edelman trust barometer 2022.
This barometer looks at the relationship with the public across 4 different areas:
- Business
- NGO
- Government
- Media
When the pandemic hit, trust in the government was the highest at 65%, but in the recent poll this has reduced to 52% with trust in the business now being the highest.
To have a trusted employer-employee contract an organisation needs to:
- Be employee centric – meeting high expectations brings advocacy and loyalty. Employers who don’t, meet risk disruptive activism and higher turnover.
- Power up internal communications – embed technology channels and listening tools to drive two-way conversation, listening and crowdsourcing.
- Take a stand on social issues – centre your business strategy and employer brand around commitments on critical social issues such as the environment and DEI.
- Elevate EVP and Employer brand – Review and refresh the EVP and employer brand. EVPs from 18 months ago will no longer support talent attraction and retention needs.
The rest of the day was filled with focus group conversations; listening to case studies from organisations talk about how they have listened to employees to improve employee experience and networking with like minded people.
The biggest takeaways of the day for me when wondering where to begin in understanding your EX-journey is to:
- Prove that you are listening – if you collect feedback, ensure that you close the loop in an effective way to demonstrate employee voice
- Think like a marketeer – sending an email or an intranet article will not make someone feel valued. Utilise drip feed comms to enable people to create a sense of belonging with the organisation.
- Personalise engagement programmes – collecting survey data and then segmenting the results will give you an indication but it may not be wholly representative – you need to go out, get curious and ask people about their experience in order to tailor the response to the individual. One size does not fit all
Take advantage of specialised software platforms – you don’t have to do all this work alone; there are lots of tools to help you understand your people better. You could use automation to create a sense of belonging, capture employee voice in real time to tackle the moments that matter and develop a listening strategy that make every moment count.
@Karen
