Employee well-being

Employee well-being is not an engagement driver, but just like engagement, it affects an employee experience in the company. If well-being is impaired, then engagement rates are likely to drop in the near future as well. That said, well-being does not necessarily mean high engagement.

Recommendations:

  1. Together with employees analyze the volume and reasons for overtime work in the department. Plan and implement at least three actions to address them at your level. If necessary, escalate the question to the management.

  2. Help new hires adapt by assigning an informal mentor from experienced colleagues to each newcomer. The mentor will help the newcomer to join the team and gain the knowledge necessary for the job.

  3. Satisfy employee requests for vacation if there is no urgent work at the moment that cannot be assigned to others.

  4. Regularly ask employees about how they are doing, including outside of workplace. Provide emotional support and assistance, if needed.

  5. Take a closer look at your employees. Gently offer to take annual vacation to those who have been clearly overloaded/overstressed lately, or who have lost productivity or motivation.

11 Employee satisfaction drivers

Manager

The "Manager" driver is characterized by the degree of loyalty to one's manager and satisfaction with working with them, which depends on their managerial skills: the ability to set goals, provide feedback, take care of the employee's career development and timely share information from the company management.

Recommendations:

  1. Adopt an open-door policy. Be available, be open and try not to "dig in" the unnecessary work. Consider choosing specific hours when you can be contacted if you are frequently on a trip or at meetings.

  2. Regarding all questions, concerning employees personally, please have individual meetings with them. Clearly explain the logic behind your actions and decisions. Make sure the employee understood you correctly.

  3. Develop your own leadership style. Are you encouraging employees' initiative actively enough? Consider the need for additional temporary expenditures on colleagues training, which will allow them to find answers to the questions of interest, gain confidence and strengthen the initiative.

  4. Make sure that you fully understand the information you are communicating to your colleagues/employees. Be ready to explain the ideas of company management and answer related questions and comments. Respond to requests in a timely manner.

  5. Create an atmosphere where people are not afraid to openly talk about mistakes and problems. This will allow you to avoid repeated mistakes and take control of problems in a timely manner.

Team

The "Team" driver reflects the employee's attitude to the atmosphere in their team, as well as to how well it is organized - to how well-coordinated the work in the team is and how responsibility is distributed.

Recommendations:

  1. Ask employees for recommendations on how to improve the department. During regular meetings, give each employee the opportunity to speak out about the effectiveness of their own work and the work of the team. Provide feedback on the proposals received.

  2. Work with your employees to develop rules for team interaction, rules for joint decision-making and achieving goals within the team. Establish a specific procedure for resolving conflicts. Communicate these rules to all team members and make sure that everyone in the team respects the agreements reached.

  3. Make sure your colleagues have a clear understanding of the team's organizational structure and how it fits into the structure of the whole company.

  4. Monitor new information in corporate communication channels: publications on the portal, new rules and procedures, corporate announcements. Draw your employees' attention to new information. Discuss with employees the changes taking place in the company in relation to the current activities of your department.

  5. Establish a tradition for your department - yourself or together with employees. For example, joint leisure activities, shared breakfast or lunch on specific dates or in connection with specific events, awards, initiation of new hires, etc. Be sure to follow it.

Reward and recognition

The "Reward and recognition" driver reflects the employee's understanding that his work is valued and fairly paid for.

Recommendations:

  1. Make the salary calculation system as transparent and understandable for employees as possible. Make sure that the information you provide about salary always corresponds to the real situation.

  2. Form an adequate perception of the bonus process in your colleagues and explain all the details. Make sure employees know their actual income - not just salary, but bonus part as well.

  3. Try to use the full range of corporate perks and benefits to the maximum extent possible, share your experience with employees. Also share negative points with HR to improve the service.

  4. If you make a decision to promote an employee, communicate to the team the information about the employee's achievements that justify this decision.

  5. Carry out joint activities for senior management and high performing employees as incentives. For example, joint business breakfasts.

Empowerment

"Empowerment" is the employee's perception of the degree of freedom that the company gives them in work, the ability to make independent decisions, plan their work, and perform tasks.

Recommendations:

  1. Conduct meetings throughout the year where each employee can speak up about performance.

  2. Encourage employees to be self-reliant in problems solving and goals achievement . When setting a task, give employees the opportunity to independently determine how to solve it, express your wishes as an addition.

  3. Give your subordinates the opportunity to try higher authority (for example, ask them to replace you at a meeting).

  4. Discuss and agree with your employees on the types and list of decisions that they can make on their own.

  5. When discussing any tasks, ask the opinion of all employees, including those who do not express it.

Enablement

"Enablement" that the company creates for an employee is a sufficient amount of resources and tools for the successful fulfillment of their job duties, as well as free access to the necessary information and a streamlined decision-making process.

Recommendations:

  1. Create a register of sources of information, tools and resources that employees need to successfully fulfill their responsibilities. Discuss this list with employees to make sure it is complete and accurate. Distribute resources according to their importance. Identify insufficient resources. Assess the possibility of replenishing/changing/replacing insufficient resources.

  2. Analyze what work resources employees lack, what they really need to work. While doing that, remember that different groups of employees need different resources.

  3. Try to make the procurement system convenient for your employees.

  4. If you make changes to the working conditions of your employees, tell them in detail what it is connected with and what consequences it entails.

  5. When equipping workplaces, make sure that employees feel comfortable at work, and at the same time, the work process is optimal. Ask your employees for suggestions for improving business processes. Take their opinions into consideration while making changes.

Employee development

"Employee development" reflects an employee's attitude to what opportunities for career or professional development the company provides them- whether they see growth opportunities, whether there is access to training, etc.

Recommendations:

  1. Discuss with employees their expectations from career development, tell them about possible steps for promotion, actions, projects, tasks that are required from an employee for promotion, clearly stipulate the criteria for making a decision on promotion.

  2. Explain employees the metrics needed to advance to the respective positions. During the discussion of career growth in a group, provide specific examples of how work results led to promotions.

  3. Prepare a specific, practical development plan / identify critical competencies based on the current and future roles of each employee. Communicate these competencies to employees to inspire them for career growth, personal development, continuous self-assessment and self-improvement.

  4. Set an example of commitment to development. Share your professional and personal development experience with employees.

  5. Contact HR specialists for advice on internal and external training programs.

Cross-functional collaboration

"Cross-functional collaboration" or cooperation is a relation to the quality of employees' collaboration between different departments of the company.

Recommendations:

  1. Communicate the goals and objectives of your department to the heads of related departments and vice versa. Tell your employees about the goals and objectives of related departments and discuss how your department can contribute to the achievement of goals by colleagues.

  2. Discuss problem areas in cross-department collaboration with your team. Meet with group leaders to come up with suggestions for optimizing team collaboration, find ways to improve collaboration quality, and share work methods.

  3. Identify groups that are difficult to collaborate with for other colleagues, determine the reason for it, and contact the leaders of these groups (if necessary).

  4. Create and maintain cross-functional collaboration between teams in your department in the format of different projects, especially if they depend on each other in work. Help build understanding of processes and tasks between functional groups.

  5. If the work of your department is related to the results of other departments' work, ask your employees to thank colleagues from those departments for the work done. Show them this by your personal example.

Alignment

Alignment is determined by how, in the employee's opinion, their functional role and the company are suitable for them - they clearly understand what is required from them in the current position and they like their tasks, and they also believe in the success of the company they work in.

Recommendations:

  1. Share with the team a vision of the general picture of what is happening. Explain the current strategy and goals of the company and draw parallels with the strategy and goals of your department or team.

  2. Monitor trends in the financial situation in the company as a whole, pay attention to forecasts and communicate this information to your team. Increasing sales inspires employees and ensures more confidence in leaders.

The drop in indicators should be explained in time so that there is no panic and the employees know that the situation is under control.

  1. Encourage discussion of company strategy, key goals and objectives of your company during employee meetings / during general meetings with employees.

  2. Track publications affecting the company's image in internal and external media. Discuss them with employees and analyze the role of your department in improving the company's reputation.

  3. Invite your manager to your meeting with employees. Ask them to talk about the company's strategy, key goals and objectives of your department.

Innovations

The "Innovations" driver reflects employees' perception of the innovation culture in the company - whether they can implement new ideas, whether they use innovative solutions in their work.

Recommendations:

  1. Encourage ideas that employees come up with to improve the department's performance. Provide resources and authority to implement these ideas by employees themselves, if possible. In case of successful implementation of such improvements, communicate about this in the department.

  2. Evalute the level of your openness to new ideas. Try to remember situations when you did not accept employee suggestions. Analyze the reasons for such position. Evaluate the results of such decisions. Imagine what might have happened if you had listened to your colleagues. Determine how much your actions usually inspire your colleagues to work hard or disappoint them. Determine how you could change the decision-making process.

  3. Ask employees what expectations, in their opinion, their leaders did not meet, what obligations they did not fulfill. Is it possible that managers acted within the framework of their obligations, but failed to explain the meaning of their actions to employees? If you don't know the details of a specific obligation, find the information you need.

  4. Regularly inform employees about all changes taking place in the company, about the actions of the management in difficult situations, including crisis periods. Be sure to clarify how these actions will affect employees. Make sure the information reaches the very junior level.

  5. Encourage ideas that employees come up with to improve the department's performance. Provide resources and authority to implement these ideas by employees themselves, if possible. In case of successful implementation of such improvements, communicate about this in the department

Diversity

Assessment of the "Diversity" is based on how fairly the company treats each person, and how freely everyone can express their ideas and opinions.

Recommendations:

  1. Set up a mailbox to collect anonymous messages from employees about specific cases of violation of values and ethics. Talk about these cases during team meetings. Do not try to identity the perpetrators and victims - this will undermine the employee confidence.

  2. Never compare employees to each other, either publicly or in a one-to-one conversation. It humiliates people.

  3. Set a clear direction for the team's work, make sure that all employees have a common understanding of priorities.

  4. Encourage your employees to participate in various activities together, including informal ones. Conduct team-building activities on your own (business games, picnics, etc.).

  5. Conduct short general meetings. This will help to notice negative trends, decreased efficiency, and lack of moving forward as soon as possible.

Customer focus

The "Customer focus" driver shows the employee's attitude to the product the company makes; whether, in his opinion, the company's customers are satisfied, whether they are ready to recommend the product to their friends.

Recommendations:

  1. Identify key customer groups for your department, both external and internal. Use all available resources (customer research, etc.) to develop a clear understanding of the needs, demands of different groups, and ways to manage them. Together with your team develop a plan of cooperation with each group.

  2. Celebrate successes and achievements, but don't focus all attention on them. Focus on a work well done, innovation, internal and external customers and the high quality of customer service.

  3. Introduce an indicator of quality and/or satisfaction levels of internal and/or external customers as a numerical indicator of the team's effectiveness. Based on it, evaluate the work and give informal awards.

  4. Organize a process for collecting feedback from internal/external customers in your direction or area. Share this information with other teams you collaborate with. Work with other managers in your direction to elaborate the best ideas for improving the quality of products and services.

  5. Study customer complaints and discuss them with the appropriate professionals. Distribute them by process and try to establish the cause of the client's dissatisfaction. In cases where individual employees were unaware of potential solutions/tools that would allow them to solve a given problem, remind the whole team of them to avoid repeating this scenario.