Employee engagement tools by HR Magazine

 

 

HR Magazine took a look at the hottest Employee engagement tools:

Forget the yearly engagement survey… New technologies means that employee engagement can be a daily, not yearly, occurrence.

Continuous Employee Engagement Levels

Measuring engagement levels used to mean annual staff surveys and the ability of individual managers to assess how their teams were feeling about the organisation and their roles.

But now employers can add a range of technology-based tools to their armoury.

Using apps and devices to capture emotions, or social recognition and reward platforms, employee engagement levels can be continuously assessed in real time.

 

Monitor employee engagement

Availability of real-time data is already proving valuable for customer insight so it’s no surprise that some of this technology is also being used to monitor employee engagement.

“Customer and employee data can and should be sourced with similar tools,” says Dave Ulrich, professor at the University of Michigan.

Ulrich cautions it is easy to become more enamoured with the technology “than the impact the information will have”.

“The [tool] should help provide better information and access to delivering better business results,” he adds. HR magazine presents some of the hottest tools around.

 

Emotion monitoring devices

What do they do?

These simple devices provide an alternative and even quicker way of tapping into the mood of the workforce than online surveys. They can take the form of an app or a dedicated device.

Here, employees will typically touch icons such as a smiley, sad or angry face, coloured buttons or a slider to indicate how they are feeling.

This technology also provides analytical and reporting tools.

Examples: Celpax; emooter; Morale.me

How do they increase employee engagement?

By providing an instant snapshot of the workforce’s mood, employers can quickly address any issues before they escalate.

Rebecca Lundin, co-owner of Celpax, which has sign-ups from 60 countries for its device, thinks “continuous” employee mood insights “fill the missing link” between HR and business operations.

“Leaders have fact-based conversations around what needs to be fixed in their company culture,” she says.

“People find out things every day that help them improve at work.” Examples of this have included the discovery that dirty company cars “enrage” colleagues, reports Lundin.

She adds:

“HR helped factory managers readjust their SAP rollout due to the impact on the employee mood. Management can perform quick and agile A/B testing and see which employee engagement initiatives are most effective.”

The technology tool in action

Among Celpax’s UK users is Glasgow based Solutions Driven, which reports a rise in engagement levels after using the product over the past four months.

The international recruitment company shares data trends at its monthly employee meetings and requests feedback on areas that could be improved.

“It is giving our team evidence that we do genuinely care about their mood and feedback and are taking an active interest in improving the internal mood when applicable,” explains its HR leader.

“We can also show a direct correlation between mood level and performance level.” McGuckin points to a recently held internal fun day where the mood level on the run-up to the day and afterwards was extremely positive.

Read the full HR Magazine article.

If you like the idea of improving employee engagement with a new tool, grab a Celpax device.

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