Workplace Communication Tools: Top 5 Questions to Ask Your Employees
Communication In the Workplace can be complicated
Whether it’s trying to be open and honest with a manager or employee, or trying to find the time to sit down and put happiness first, workplace communication can be complicated.
And complex!
This is why it’s great to have communication tools, like our 5 questions, to help you jump-start your way to improving workplace satisfaction.
If you’ve read any of our Celpax articles, you know how we pass on the message from our users to encourage open workplace communication.
They keep telling us that it’s the fastest way to drive up participation and your Employee Mood KPI.
Connecting one on one with an employee lets them know that you’re there.
That you’re listening.
And that you’re putting value on workplace satisfaction to make it a better place to be.
However, one thing we hear managers struggle with is asking the right questions.
That’s why we’ve developed these top questions to help you begin your conversations.
Think of this list as your communication tool belt:
1. What makes you press the green button?
We ask a simple question with the employee mood tracker: “How was your day?”.
Just as it’s important to know why an employee presses red, it’s important to know why they are pressing the green button.
It’s great that employees seem to be happy.
But do you know why they are?
It’s imperative to establish what makes employees press the green button so you can sustain a stable, high Mood KPI.
This way you can do more of what makes employees happy.
It can also help you work your way through any turbulent times in the company.
One user highlights how the Employee Mood KPI can so easily change:
“We started with a very high percentage of green.”
“We got a drop a few months back as the heating system broke down and it was almost impossible to work, causing a lot of dissatisfaction in the day-to-day!”
“This was clearly reflected in the employee mood graph.”
2. What makes you press the red button?
Our users talk with their people to pinpoint moments that lead to staff pressing red.
Identifying what makes employees unhappy at work can help you to solve these issues.
It can also help you avoid even larger issues that can develop over time from smaller unresolved ones.
Scott, from Zerorez, told this story:
“One guy came up and told me that his day in the field was green until he came back to the office and found trash buried in his truck, left by the driver from the day before – that changed his day from green to red”.
It doesn’t seem like a big deal.
But over time, having to deal with a mess day after day, can lead to frustration and disengagement.
Employees might be thinking,
“If others don’t care, why should I?
3. Is there something we can do to help you press more green on a consistent basis?
As a manager, you may need to take ownership of projects or initiatives in the workplace that increases employee mood.
Some of our users can feel nervous about asking this question for this reason.
It’s not always easy to solve workplace issues concerning happiness or mood!
‘We were aware that it takes a lot of energy to improve, however, it takes even more energy to ignore it.”
Using the simplicity of the 1-pager, you can break the ice and open up workplace communication.
Start small.
Use a continuous approach, and divide the problem into smaller parts.
So you can’t raise salaries due to budget cuts.
But perhaps you can offer greater flexibility so Theo can go see his daughter’s school play next Friday?
4. Is there something that you can do to help yourself have greener days?
The Celpax device is not just a management tool, it’s for all employees, manager or not.
Employees make a statement by pressing either the Green or the Red button; “I had a good day” or “I had a bad day”.
By starting a habit to give feedback upon how their day went, many employees automatically start reflecting over things that might lead to an improved work situation.
This can allow employees to reflect on what’s in their power to change.
What can they do?
A great workplace is everybody’s job. So it’s not just on the shift manager or the HR department to help make a better workplace.
It’s the employee’s job as well.
For instance, an employee needs to provide honest feedback. And be open to communication.
Without it, how can anyone start improving in the workplace?
It is, however, the managers who have a greater responsibility to make sure that work improvements actually happen.
5. What do employees want to see happen in the workplace with the mood results?
What is your ideal workplace environment?
What would make you happiest in the workplace?
Of course, the ideal workplace might not exactly be feasible.
I mean, if it were up to me, my ideal workplace would have a free all you can eat buffet.
There would be gourmet foods and nap rooms for when I got sleepy (after my huge lunches of course).
However, this could be a jumping-off point to explore new initiatives to improve happiness.
One of our users, Levi from Potash Corp asked this question to his team.
This is what happened, “The ability to work remotely was highly requested so we decided to take it upon ourselves to make this happen,” says Levi.
“More employees have been working from home and we correlated the effects of this with our Celpax results to see that it made employees happier.”
In fact, their Mood KPI went up 20%!
These questions will help initiate open workplace communication.
But it’s up to you to have these conversations.
Just like the Celpax survey kiosk, these are workplace communication tools.
But like one of our users said, “It’s the conversations as much as the smiley buttons. These conversations wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”
Hey there! I’m Alex, marketing specialist at Celpax and I love helping to create workplaces people love. We’re a social company helping workplaces improve employee morale and workplace communication with simple tech tools. Be sure to follow Celpax on Twitter, ‘Like’ us on Facebook or follow us on LinkedIn.
