Keeping a finger on the pulse of Employee Engagement

"Using Confirmit gave us the flexibility we need to run monthly surveys of thousands of employees cost efficiently with a much faster turnaround time"
- Global People Intelligence Lead

For several years a global consulting and technology services provider had been running annual employee engagement surveys, which provided invaluable insight into levels of employee engagement across the workforce. Over time, the HR team behind the survey was able to run analyses and identify the key drivers that correlated most prominently with high levels of employee engagement. By focusing on these drivers, the HR action planning teams were able to build and implement programs designed to target specific areas of employee concern across a range of business entities.

While the annual survey offered an excellent point from which to start these programs, it did not provide the teams with an opportunity to monitor progress or staff reaction to the programs. The Global People Intelligence Lead explains, "We needed to get a sense of what was going on between our annual surveys. We needed the opportunity to make twists and tweaks throughout the year."

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10% of employees surveyed each month

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40% response rate

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Over 100 people accessing and manipulating results

A flexible solution
The team decided to start running monthly pulse surveys to provide the incremental insight they needed. By using a sample of five percent of all employees, they could monitor how their plans were progressing, without requiring responses from all employees.

The company outsourced the annual employee engagement survey and, while this worked well for an annual survey, it didn't provide the flexibility or speed required for a monthly survey. Such surveys require the ability to make changes regularly and to have reports made available quickly. As a result, the team brought the process in-house and implemented Enterprise Feedback Management platform Confirmit. This allowed them not only to follow up on the employee engagement programs they were running, but also to include ad-hoc questions when required, such as measuring attitudes during periods of organizational change.

"Implementing Confirmit means that, with a little training, we are able to adjust the surveys as needed," explains The Global People Intelligence Lead. "This flexibility allows us to make changes 'on the fly.'"

This flexibility has also allowed the HR teams to open the survey to other groups across the business who need feedback from employees, including Training, Knowledge Management, Ethics and Diversity and many others. In some cases, these groups require feedback on a quarterly basis, and using Confirmit means that they can easily add questions or remove them, according to demand.

The survey itself comprises three 3 sections. The first is outcome metrics, such as how engaged employees feel with the business and their intention to stay. The second section looks at drivers such as career ladder, compensation and work/life balance. The final section contains ad-hoc questions. Including such questions within the existing monthly survey prevents bombarding employees with random ad-hoc surveys, which would distract them and ultimately reduce response rates for all surveys.

With demand for feedback coming from across the organization, and requirements for high levels of data accuracy, the team has now increased the number of employees receiving the survey each month from five percent to 10 percent. Employees are sent an email inviting them to participate, and this is followed up by a reminder. Response rates run at a consistent 40 percent, despite the length of time the survey has been running and the increased length of the survey itself.

Taking action
The results from the survey are viewed widely, not just amongst the HR teams. The executive leadership team, including the CEO, receives reports based on the feedback. However, there is more to the results than simply summarizing the information.

The Global People Intelligence Lead explains: "To provide real value, we act on the monthly trends survey, usually at a business group or country level, but we can act on a global level when required. During a period of organizational change, when cuts were being made to people programs, the monthly trends survey showed they were having a negative effect on employee engagement. We were able to reverse some of these cuts quickly before the impact was too great - something we couldn't have done if we had relied on the annual survey."

As well as allowing action to be taken quickly, using Confirmit has also allowed more people to gain access to the information they need. The range of stakeholders requiring different cuts of data meant the HR team had to reconsider the way in which results were disseminated. The team has now implemented Confirmit Reportal, Confirmit's reporting platform to help.

The Global People Intelligence Lead comments: "We have always produced high level PowerPoint reports from the survey results, but demand for more detail meant that this wasn't enough. Now, as well as the high level slides, more than 100 stakeholders have access to Confirmit Reportal. This way they can access the results and slice and dice the data to get to the information they need. This has eased our workload significantly."

Key Benefits
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Using Confirmit is much more flexible and cost-effective than relying on an external agency.

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Monthly surveys allow changes to be made to programs to increase their chances of success.

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Using Confirmit Reportal ensures that all stakeholders can access the information they require while reducing the HR team’s workload.

- Combining regular and ad-hoc surveys prevents oversurveying
employees and keeps response rates high.
Summary
Using the Confirmit platform has allowed this global organization to monitor and improve employee engagement. As both a tracking tool and an early warning indicator, it provides a flexible way for the HR team to gather, disseminate and act quickly on feedback received. Confirmit Reportal's advanced functionality ensures that all stakeholders can get the data they require without compiling a number of huge, complex reports.

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