What keeps employees giving feedback?

First, let me give you an example.

If I bump in to you in the corridor every day and say “good morning” and you never reply, in the end I will give up and stop greeting you. We won’t strike up a conversation.

The same thing happens with the Celpax device.

Although it’s extremely easy for your employees to give feedback around how they experienced their workday (by pressing the green or the red button answering How was your day?), that small continuous effort needs to be met with “something” from you.

Feedback!

What type of feedback works well?

We have companies that use their monthly newsletter to update their team. Others walk around and talk to their people when there’s a lot of red, some bring it up during all-hands meetings, or use TV-screens to raise awareness and then use weekly sit down meetings to converse about the results.

One HR Director spontaneously reminds coworkers to let the company know how they feel.

She even encourages them to press the red button when they feel it’s needed, showing that it’s OK to have tough days. Oh, and I love that she leaves post-it notes next to the Celpax at the exit door.

Simple but effective.

“I remind my colleagues that we are doing this so you know how you’re doing, and that if you don’t participate we can’t do anything about the negative parts. This is your chance to change something we are doing wrong. Sometimes people forget why they should press. I remind them that we’re listening, that this system is for THEM”.

The results can be used to create a climate where people talk about what is happening in the organization.

In this sense we constantly learn together with our users that get a healthy number of pulses, starting at 20% of people leaving the office on a typical workday.

Our simple approach makes it easy and anonymous to participate.

In all the years we’ve been doing this, we think the fact that there’s no sign in, or password, to let the company know how you feel at work is what helps organizations reaching levels of between 20-60% of employees in the office pressing the device on a normal day, after 6 months of deployment.

This data gives you a good baseline.

Let’s say you’re a company with 100 employees. If you get 500 pulses a month, you can spot a lot of trends. That’s a lot of HR data, a lot of signals to analyze.

If you get less than 10%, well then we wouldn’t consider your Celpax project successful.

Be it a very green results (it makes my day when I see companies with mood bars at 100% green!) or a very red result, coworkers are more into giving you feedback in key moments.

In one company the HR Director saw their number of pulses almost double during a troublesome month, as employees felt a higher need to give feedback in comparison to a ‘typical’ month.

If you listen, your employees will show you the way forward.

”People also really need to feel appreciated!”, says one Swedish manager who consistently gets a high number of employees pressing every day.

“Don’t forget to thank people for participating.”

Well, you can probably keep going for 6 months or so. People do get immediate feedback as the lights on the device show them how their colleagues feel.

What we noticed in the companies where the Celpax wasn’t the right solution for them, is that the number of pulses fall under 10% after half a year when you don’t give feedback.

If you’re not prepared to make a minimum effort to share and do something with the results, well, maybe real-time employee mood isn’t for you.

And hey, that’s OK too :).

One of my favourite moments at work is when I listen to the stories our users share.

How our graphics showing their employee mood generate meaningful conversations.

How HR Directors use data – facts – to get people talking about how you can improve at work.

And how real-time feedback helps leaders have the right conversations at the right time.

We don’t really see one ‘magic recipe’ that works in all company cultures. The usage differs a lot. What we do see is that you have to do something with the results.

Closing the feedback loop is key to getting your coworkers to press on a continuous basis.

The recipe our most successful users apply is Measure, Talk, Improve, Repeat!

 

Measure if your leadership actions are working.

 

Rebecca is a reluctant number lover, co-owner at Celpax, and convinced that a great workplace is everyone’s job. You can find her in the playground when she’s not on Celpax’s web chat in the left corner of your screen. Come say hi!