Bridging the Gap: Empowering Data-Driven Decisions Through Employee Insights
Let’s start with two points we can all agree on—first, regardless of where you work, the most critical asset to any business is the employees. The doors don’t open, deals aren’t closed and quite literally nothing would ever get done without the people to make the magic happen. Second, data-driven decisions are critical to the long-term success of any business. Organizations rely on sales performance metrics to predict future outcomes, crime statistics to inform security measures and employee engagement data to direct internal initiatives. Using data as the principal variable to inform decision-making is essential to the health and longevity of any organization. In summary—people and data are pretty important.
How can we do both—collect data directly from the people to inform our decisions?
Often when we think of data, we tend to default to transactional, impersonal information. How much revenue has the company made over the last quarter? What is the department’s turnover percentage? How did the store perform during their most recent Operational Audit? What are the cash over/short trends since your last store visit? What is the Cost per Hire within your department? The list of key performance indicators goes on and on, but all these data points are impersonal, collected through some type of indirect reporting conduit. They are a culmination of transactions, actions, or observations made from one date in time to the next. This type of information is invaluable to the organization and can be critical when making certain types of decisions within the workplace. It just happens to be missing one of the key variables we discussed earlier—the people.
How does your organization gather information directly from its employees? The most familiar type of employee driven intel (aka human intelligence), comes from organizations pushing out, “Employee Engagement Surveys”. It’s safe to say that if you have worked for a mid-size to larger employer (public or private sector) for any number of years, you have participated in some type of employee engagement survey. Engagement surveys are conducted to assist in three primary areas:
Help organizations to:
- Identify areas of improvement
- Enhance employee satisfaction and retention
- Improve productivity and performance
Generally, the surveys are gathering intel related to the following:
- Job satisfaction
- Role clarity
- Work-life balance
- Work environment
- Cultural alignment
- Leadership insights
- Leadership effectiveness
- Managerial support
Employee driven data are used by decision makers to direct a wide range of operational and strategic decisions throughout the organization. Developing cultural initiatives, integrating employee wellness programs, creating tailored leadership trainings, implementing recognition programs, enhancing skills development training and improving compensation packages are just a few of the positive outcomes when employers take time to act on the intel provided by their people.
Most of the information provided from these engagement surveys would be impossible to collect otherwise—it needs to come directly from the employees.
Over the years, research overwhelmingly supports the idea that when done correctly, employee engagement survey data can dramatically improve the overall health of the organization.
Alright—so one way we gather intel from our people is through engagement surveys, but what other tools does your team utilize to capture information directly from your workforce? While engagement surveys are useful, they tend to focus on a very specific set of information—leaving a large swath of activity left to the imagination.
What if you wanted to gather scaled intel from your team focused on topics that fall outside of the purview of an engagement survey? Behavioral topics like:
- Bullying in the workplace
- Knowledge of employee theft
- Improper relationships
- Sexual harassment
- Violence in the workplace
- Attitudes around SOP’s
- …etc.
While these topics tend to be sensitive in nature, they also yield critical information regarding what’s really happening within the workplace. Let’s take an example:
You are the Regional HR Manager for a large clothing retailer, responsible for over 100 locations in your market. How do you decide where to focus your time and attention? What factors determine the stores you will visit, the people you will meet with and the topics you will discuss? Imagine if you had a tool where you could collect information directly from your employees that provided you with a window into the behavioral categories mentioned above. Weeks in advance of your store visit, you have the staff complete the questionnaires and the results come back with the following:
- 5 employees state they have “felt uncomfortable” due to inappropriate jokes that have been made in the workplace
- 2 employees state the are aware of a manager who has instructed them to “falsify inventory” numbers prior to posting
- 18% of the front-end staff state they “believe it is acceptable to provide discounts outside of the company SOP to keep a customer happy”
- 4 employees state they “don’t feel safe” when they are at work”
The entire scope of your visit would dramatically shift. You would now be able to directly address the noted areas of concern, providing tailored training (discount SOP review to the front-end team, discuss safety best practices in the store with the whole team), schedule follow-up one-on-one discussions with others (corroborate noted issues regarding inventory and inappropriate jokes) and address the overall pulse of the store with real-time data provided directly from your people.
Traditionally, these issues tend to be dealt with in a reactionary nature (or missed entirely). Waiting for someone to come forward to report wrongdoing via the tipline, catching something during an investigation, or the analyst identifying unusual activity and raising the alarm.
Utilizing this type of technology allows for a proactive approach to these concerns—identifying issues faster, mitigating collateral damage and leaving a positive impression on the collective team.
It’s time to take the concept of gathering human intel in the workplace to the next level and change the way HR, AP, Ops, Legal…etc. can gain access to some of the most challenging topics in the workplace. All in a non-adversarial, approachable, confidential, and efficient manner.
If you’re interested in learning more about how you can gain access to critically important intel, directly from your people—reach out and schedule a call today!
Sources:
Harter, J. K., Schmidt, F. L., & Keyes, C. L. M. (2002). Well-being in the workplace and its relationship to business outcomes: A review of the Gallup studies. Flourishing: The Positive Person and the Good Life, 205-224. https://doi.org/10.1037/10594-009
Kompaso, Solomon & Sridevi, M.. (2010). Employee Engagement: The Key to Improving Performance. International Journal of Business and Management. 5. 10.5539/ijbm.v5n12p89.
