Employee Engagement Software has taken over the engagement survey marketplace. The software options are wide and varied and each organisation will have a preference for certain approaches. Technology has opened up the effective application of the employee engagement concept and enabled organisations to connect more directly.
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What Your Employee Engagement Software Should Be Doing for You
In the modern business environment your employee engagement software should do much more than just survey. It should not leave the rest up to you. Your software should really ensure you avoid the time lags typically associated with traditional surveys. It should enable employees to see immediate outcomes. We live in demanding times where we have come to expect a lot….and quickly.
Here are some of the benefits your employee engagement software should be providing for your company, beyond the survey:
Real Time Reporting
Real-Time Dashboards
Clients don’t want to wait weeks before they get the survey results. Modern employee engagement software and platforms provide HR and C-Suite immediate feedback through real-time dashboards.
Real Time Historical Reporting
Of course, when using a software solution for your employee engagement surveys, historical reporting can clearly help you track changes achieved, or not, through your engagement strategies and leadership development interventions.
Pulse Surveys
Customisable Pulse Surveys
In keeping with my comments on the problems with sticking to an annual engagement survey, many current employee engagement software providers give clients the opportunity to either customise the survey itself or to run pulse surveys. This is then giving management the opportunity to truly have their ‘finger on the pulse’.
Performance happens every day, not once a year. Engagement is also an on-going process. As a result, feedback (real time) should be a continuous process and pulse surveys make it possible.
Engagement Feedback at Four Levels
Individualised Feedback & Action Planning
Employee engagement is about engaging individual employees. So, employee engagement software needs to provide individual employees with tailored feedback on their own personal engagement drivers. Change can only happen with awareness. By raising awareness, each individual employee can take ownership of his/her engagement levels.
Localised and Team Level Feedback
Most organisations investing in employee engagement surveys and software would really like to identify what is driving engagement in each team, department, and location. Engagement software can provide this break down on real time dashboards, enabling interventions to be specifically designed and targeted.
Manager Feedback
With team level and localized reporting on real-time dashboards, comes increasingly focused manager and leadership feedback. This enables more targeted leadership development interventions. Direct line management is widely recognized and accepted as the key influence on employee engagement, so why generalize the results and actions in this crucial area?
Corporate Feedback
Real time dashboards provide organisations with a detailed overview of engagement across the organisation. Heat maps enable recognition of local engagement issues. The organisation can design specific interventions based on this feedback. This will be more effective than generic interventions delivered across the organisation with no localised focus.
Connectivity, Communication and Localised Culture
Increased Connectivity & Collaboration
With awareness, change is possible. With change being possible, you should provide the tools to enable it. Employee engagement software should provide the opportunities for employees to experience increased connectivity with their team and organisation. It can offer improved communications and opportunities for collaboration. In turn, this increases development opportunities and the chance to truly value employee input, suggestions and opinions.
Well-designed software can help increase the feelings of equality and fairness in how opportunities are presented and provide a sense of clarity on the decision making process. A sense of equality, fairness and clarity are staples of engagement.
Local/Team Culture
Employee engagement does not arise from a survey, or even from whether an organisation uses surveys at all. It arises from skilled leadership creating an environment and culture within which individual employees can belong, contribute and grow.
Employee engagement software should give insight to the environments and cultures that exist throughout the organization.
With every change comes opportunity. This is an exciting time as there is so much more achievable and currently available than just running a survey. Do not throw the survey out. It remains a valuable source of feedback, and all feedback is good. The survey, however, just needs to happen differently and be part of a wider employee engagement strategy. Employee engagement software makes it all possible.
