Engagement in the workplace is a hot topic…

Atrivity interviewed us about how simple technology is driving engagement in the workplace.

Here’s a recap:

 

Effective HR and operational managers make it their business to gauge how their people are feeling.

With an ongoing “war on talent”, managers need to consider employee happiness while empowering them to reach productivity levels.

Anything short of this would mean unsatisfied workers, decreased productivity, losing the employee and incurring costs in searching and onboarding a new employee.

Today, Rebecca Lundin, co-owner at Celpax shares with us how managers can effectively increase workplace morale with technology that requires the simple gesture of pressing of a button.

Simple technology

Companies are turning to simple technologies that promise reach, scalability and greater efficiencies to connect with their employees.

There are easy ways to measure the level of job satisfaction of employees or as Celpax defines it, measure employee morale.

A number of Celpax clients are learning that change is most effective where conversations are already taking place.

But for many companies this human touch doesn’t come naturally. Hierarchies still run strong in large and traditional organizations.

Rebecca’s proposal steers away from passive methods that often generate more doubts than trust.

 

A simple, discreet device is placed in a visible area for all employees to readily access, always at an exit.

At the center in bold letters, it reads “How was your day?” Nothing more, nothing less.

With this information, HR and frontline managers gather insightful information that some use as their “people metric.”

1. Employees press green OR red smiley feedback button
2. Online dashboard shows the pulse survey results
3. Talking about the green or red results, open conversations to improve employee morale

The Celpax mood meter proposition moves clients from traditional ways of gathering employee feedback to the mere push of a button.

Using simple technology with only two choices, there is no room for misinterpretation. Green or red!

The device presents a straightforward action making participation easy.

With smaller changes, people respond quicker and you get immediate feedback. Dealing with smaller events make information gathering, interpretation, and adjustments easier to implement.

A client introduced an activity called ‘Waffle Fridays’ at the office for their high tech workers.

Every Friday some employees would volunteer to cook waffles for their coworkers, and the 60 people at the office would have breakfast together.

As the company already had a baseline for how their people were feeling at work, they could see the “waffle impact”: Their average Friday was 10% greener than the rest of the weekdays.

But hey, was it all down to the social activity you might ask, perhaps the employee morale is higher just because it’s Friday?

The company compared their HR data to the European office index, and found out that the “Friday effect” at other offices was 3% greener.

So getting 10% higher green on days with their Waffle Fridays, shows that the activity was having the desired effect: it clearly pushes the employee morale KPI upwards and creates engagement in the workplace.

 

Culture change tend to work best when it’s in the shape of a program with an allocated budget.

When you start something new or implement changes the numbers will guide you.

One company implemented SAP, ran into complications and saw their employee morale KPI drop like a stone - it took them a full year to recover.

For other companies it could take just a month to get back up to the same level.

The difference? In the later, regular conversations and acting on the results to improve, means people feel better at work.

It all starts with having honest conversations.

Rebecca shares her tips on how to use simple technologies in the workplace that measure workplace mood:

1. Start with managers who genuinely care about their employees: it’ll be more fun, they can pilot new initiatives and be a model to other departments or offices.
2. Use structures and practices already in place: it’s easier to leverage events that already exist so you avoid the need to adapt to more than one new element
   • all-staff meetings, weekly meetings, departamental meetings
   • instead of waiting for quarterly or annual all hands meeting, use monthly meetings
   • cross check with business activities in progress: communications, health and safety…
3. Maintenance: when the employee morale start to go down you can see it in the data and react to see what’s working. Measure, talk, improve - repeat.
4. Reaction time: communicate immediately and continuously. Remember to repeat when needed.
5. Transparency: if you can’t make adjustments immediately, share the reason whether it be budget, timing, approval or that it doesn’t fit with culture.

 

Head over to Atrivity to read the full post, and check out their mobile trivia game for companies

And if you’re interested in our new simple technology to increase engagement in the workplace, get in touch!