Boost Morale at work: Use data to verify the impact of activities

Every Friday, the office smells extra good at Avitech Bratislava.

If you stick your head into the kitchen, you will find a small group of colleagues.

They have all volunteered to buy ingredients and bake waffles for their 60 colleagues.

It’s breakfast time!

“Waffle Fridays happen every week. It lets us do something for our coworkers without having any expectations or any kind of reward”, says Branislav Klco, Managing Director.

“It simply makes relations better here in our office.”

 

 

Fun office activities to Boost Morale

 

Waffle Fridays is one of many creative and fun activities to boost morale we’ve heard here at Celpax.

It’s an easy breakfast for a group of employees. A chance to show that your company cares.

But it’s not just about what you do, but also how you do it. And who does it.

What might work at one company, might not fly at another.

Branislav feels that their weekly activity helps improves social texture and boost morale at work.

So together we analyzed their daily employee morale data.

In short, would the data back their statement?

 

 

So do the staff like their Waffle Fridays? Does it boost morale? Let’s look at the data

 

As the coworkers daily press the red or green Celpax button, answering “How was your day?”, Avitech have a baseline showing how people typically feel: 60-70% normally press green.

Lately, their tech workers’ morale has been recovering from some organizational changes.

In the chart below you can see the employee engagement history for each day of the week, during the last 90 days:

This graph shows that Fridays are greener at Avitech.

In fact, the sentiment in the last 90 days is 10% greener on Fridays.

The people analytics seems to suggest that people do like the waffles they get from their colleagues each Friday!

 

 

People Data: How does the sentiment analysis evolve over time?

 

 

It might be a good idea to use people analytics to monitor if the activity is wearing off or not.

At some point the Waffle Friday would have to be improved, complemented, replaced, etc…

The baseline from the people data analytics can show you the way to when it’s time to change to another activity to boost morale:

In this chart we see that the company is quickly recovering from some recent changes:

“I started asking why our staff mood was trending down so quickly”, says Branislav.

“I promised our people that if they proposed feedback and gave indications to management, then we would start investigating. From then it started going up and the employee retention rate got better”, he says.

Nice job!

 

 

But hang on, aren’t people just happier cause its Friday?

Is it the waffles making the Fridays better, or are people just happier because it’s Friday?

Good question!

Maybe people just enjoy the fact that it’s Friday and the staff morale would be greener regardless of the yummy waffle activity?

Branislav cross-checked their people data with the Celpax employee engagement index.

It’s based on offices, where people also usually work Monday to Friday (European index, excluding blue-collar sites).

This is what he found out about how staff feel leaving their workplace on Fridays:

Happy Friday at work?

 

And yes, turns out there is a Friday effect!

People enjoy their Fridays at work more at the other Europea offices too, but the difference seems to be smaller.

Oh, and you’re probably also noticing how the end of the year took a toll on the staff morale in the offices across Europe.

Also, notice how Avitech is on a reversed trend, go Avitech!

 

 

Fridays’ Impact on the Employee Mood KPI

 

The next step was to take the Mood KPI from Fridays at Avitech and subtract the Mood KPI for the other days of the week.

So say goodbye to the data from Monday to Thursday.

This way you can analyze the actual gap between the two datasets, and see the evolution in the people data analytics over time.

Ready?

Here are Avitech’s figures:

 

 

 

OK…

Now let’s have a look at the other offices.

Thus, here’s the Celpax European employee engagement index:

Voila! Say hello to the Waffle Friday effect

 

We can see how Avitech’s Friday impact is much higher (ranging + 5 - 10%) than the impact of Fridays in other European offices (ranging + 0-4%) in the employee satisfaction index.

So the staff morale in European offices is typically 3% higher on Fridays, simply because it’s Friday.

Guess people are excited about hitting the weekend

But at Avitech we’re talking 10 % higher employee sentiment thanks to their Waffle Fridays.

So the office just doesn’t smell good on Fridays. It FEELS good too.

Perhaps so good their talent will add another year to their employee tenure? Or two or three!

DIY: Boost morale at work with Daily Employee Engagement Data

 

Do people like the things you do to boost morale at work? Measure morale with our Celpax survey kiosk and get data-driven decision making (no need to be a Data Analyst

 

 

Hej! I’m Rebecca, co-owner at Celpax. We use simple tech tools and a data-driven approach to measure and boost morale at work. And build a better society while at it!

Can we help your business performance? Let’s talk fun office activities to boost morale on Twitter.