Posts in category: Rewards & Recognition

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 

HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 

2. Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 

4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 

HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 

2. Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 

4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

Being a team leader can be quite challenging, especially when you want to be effective, there are several times when you have to shuffle between being an assertive taskmaster and maintaining a congenial rapport with your team members. That being said one vital function that you perform as a team leader in evaluating employees and their potential to benefit organizational growth. This is a sensitive responsibility and must be handled carefully. Is that being said it might be a task easily accomplished as one may find it easier to evaluate others, but what about evaluating self? Are you good enough? Are you sure you’re performing to the best of your capabilities? Are you peaking, is your performance stable or inconsistent?

It’s hard when it comes to evaluating ourselves; the pressure of what? Takes a toll on your mind and body (is it a fact?). Being a team leader is not easy and its worst to constantly wonder whether you’re a good one? Too often team leaders’ underrate the importance of constant performance improvement and the time it takes to keep growing and developing your skills. Becoming an effective team leader is a protracted and laborious process. You have to constantly keep learning and updating and growing your knowledge base and expanding your skill sets. It is a process driven by personal intent and takes years to perfect the process.

Here are 10 checkboxes that will help you understand yourself and your effectiveness as a team leader or here are 10 traits of an effective team leader :

1. Impartial: Bosses that encourage motivate and reward while being impartial, having no special treatment for some and being just and fair are the ones admired by all. Such bosses encourage employees better and give them a fair chance of impressing them. Add more points about how being impartial help.

2. Transparent: Bosses that promote transparency are additionally valued – A true leader is one who not only instructs but supports and explains himself or herself, someone who allows the team in on his/her vision while being open to ideas and giving autonomy for making necessary changes. Elaborate further.

3. Accountable: Bosses that don’t blame one but all – When everyone is accountable for failures it not only eradicates the fear of being held responsible but opens doors to various ideas and creative options, bringing in an unrestricted flow of possibilities and subtly ensuring trust and good faith within the employees.

4. Constructive: Bosses that help out when you’re stuck are keepers – When an employee gets stuck or has to face obstacles while giving his/her best shot and all hope seems dead but the boss steps in and helps out as a true leader then he/she is golden in the eyes of his/her employees. It’s easy to dedicate the work and yell when it’s not done but a true leader is one who considers himself a part of the team and chooses to help out.

5. Curious: Bosses that have a genuine interest in you make you want to go an extra mile for them – True engagement is when bosses take a genuine interest in their employees and want to know more about them. Taking an interest and knowing about their dreams and passions builds a bond and makes them want to go an extra mile and impress you further.

6. Concerned: Bosses that Listen – Last but not least is a Boss who listens to the grievances of his employees and ensures to find solutions as early as possible. Bosses that extend themselves while allowing others to approach them are ones that are truly respected and appreciated.

7. Engaged: Bosses that engage – A perfect example of a good boss is one who is himself/herself engaged and engages others. Most might think this is obvious but the truth is there are several bosses who dedicate the work and leave it right there, leaving no effective follow-ups, feedback, etc. When bosses are engaged they set the example for others and subtly provide hints on how they can be even more productive.

8. Approachable: Bosses that encourage work-life balance – Today’s fast-paced life, several firms offer great perks but employees barely have the time to enjoy most of them, in these tough times a boss that encourages work hours to be minimum with maximum productivity is truly a blessing.

9. Inspiring: Bosses that share their Success story – Bosses that share their story make the true difference, when they let people into their lives they create a bond and help people understand the purpose behind the goal and why it means so much to them, as they say, when the why is strong, the how becomes very easy.

10. Empathetic: There’s nothing better than an empathetic boss – When we say empathetic doesn’t mean someone who is always easy going but someone who understands and treats people as humans and spots genuine flaws and provides means to eliminate them. Someone encouraging and having a genuine concern for their employees

You might not always check all the boxes, but if you get some of them right, you probably headed in the right direction! Keep going! But for those of you who haven’t been able to relate much, you need to get a move on your role as a leader. It means you still need to make progress on your journey that should spur you to action, not discourage you. Take responsibility for your actions and soon you will be mastering the necessary imperatives to make a great boss!

More than ever before, many companies are asking their employees to work from home to remain safe and unaffected. As the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to capture headlines in the news and spread rapidly, employees are struggling with finding a sense of calm and stability throughout the ever-changing updates and reality that this virus has become our new normal for the time being. Although working from home has many benefits such as flexibility, increased productivity, zero-commute, and more quality time with your loved ones; on the flip side, working remotely could also make it more difficult to power off and unplug from your workday, ultimately decreasing your work-life balance.  

Work-life balance, especially during uncertain times like COVID-19, is essential to employees’ growth and personal happiness and company retention. When employees are encouraged to find a positive work-life balance, they tend to be more motivated to produce great work. Remote work is a valuable tool as companies try to minimize disruptions and keep operations running as close to normal as possible. However, when people who aren’t used to telecommuting transition from working in the office to working from home, they may cling to habits and norms that don’t translate to working remotely. 

The burnout risk 

As a leader, it’s up to you to support employees and your company culture by creating the conditions for remote work success. There are employees who are working odd hours as opposed to their usual 9-5 working schedule just because time is expendable. But this completely messes with the work-life balance and also might affect health, which is unaffordable in times like these.  

A short video from the CEO of BMW – Late Rudratej Singh  states just how worrisome the work from home culture is becoming: 

https://www.varindia.com/video/rudratej-singh-ceobmw-india-spoke-how-they-have-work-long-hours-during-covid19 

Here are a few ways you can help employees transition to working remotely while avoiding burnout: 

• Make a schedule and start your day productively: To maximize your productivity and your workday while working remotely, it’s imperative to set a cohesive schedule for yourself to guide you through the day. Given that working from home can be more comfortable and a bit relaxing compared to being in the office, imposing a structure on your day will limit the distractions and keep you focused on the tasks at hand. In addition to crafting a specific structure for your day, curating to-do lists are helpful to ensure that you’re being productive and accomplishing what needs to be done in your role. Physically crossing tasks and projects off a to-do list can be gratifying – especially if you are questioning your productivity levels and progress. You can divide and focus your time on 3 big tasks for the day. If you’re constantly putting out fires or working on smaller tasks, you’re not going to ever be able to work on your larger goals. Whether you do this the night before or in the morning, list your three big and most important tasks for the day. These should be at the top of your to-do-list. You should base your schedule around these three tasks and eliminate all distractions.

For example, if you block out from 9 am to 11 am in your calendar to work on your first big task, then turn off your phone and all notifications from email or social media. If you don’t have an office with a door, put on a pair of noise-cancelling headphones. You can follow this technique even post lockdown.  You may also want to work somewhere else like a coffee shop, or a meeting room or any other free space available apart from your regular workstation. 

• Take breaks: Stretch or take a walk to rest your eyes often from your computer screen in 10-15 minute intervals. To not get bogged down or overwhelmed with your workday, take some time to get up, stretch, and move around your home. Taking a break from staring at your computer screen will help you maintain productivity in the long run. The world’s most productive persons — plan their work schedules around when they’re most productive. That means if you’re a night owl, then waking up at dawn may be counterproductive. However, since most people are more productive in the morning, specifically a couple of hours after they’ve woken up, it’s not a bad idea to take the middle of the day. Evan Williams, the co-founder of Twitter and Medium, workouts out during the middle of the day. He explains that his focus is usually great, first thing in the morning so going to the gym first is a trade-off of very productive time. Once you recognize your most productive hours, it is easy to plan your time and take breaks accordingly so you don’t end up wasting your most productive time of the day. Thanks to our natural circadian rhythm, we all tend to experience afternoon brain fog. This is a  good time to take a break and check-in with yourself on the day’s progress. You can also spend time on soft tasks like returning calls and attending meetings. Also make it a  point that you do not multitask as it taxes your brain and divulges your focus, making your brain work in overdrive. 

You can also try the 52-17 rule 52 minutes of work followed by 17 minutes of rest. Even if you don’t work for 52 minutes exactly, the idea is that you need breaks to recharge, refocus, and avoid burnout.

• Plan your free time: The idea of scheduling free time may seem to contradict the very nature of “free time”, but trust us, it’s an idea worth exploring! Especially during the lockdown to avoid burning out. We seem to run from one thing to another: from work to dinner prep, to folding the washed clothes, to haranguing the kids into bed, to falling asleep. If you don’t plan your free time while working from home, you run the risk of filling your spare hours with endless tasks or wasting the time on things you have little interest in. This will eventually make you feel like you did nothing and burnout becomes inevitable. It is easy to waste time if you don’t have a plan.  In this case, you might find yourself spending blank hours mouldering away on a couch watching a television show you don’t really like. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying couch time, as long as that is how you want to spend your free time, rather than just what you do because you can’t think of anything else. If the latter is the case, couch time can sap you of energy and leave you feeling slightly cheated. Having a plan for activities (relaxing, stimulating or productive) you want to do in your free time can help you enjoy your work-free hours more thoroughly. With the current work situation, weekends and weekdays seem to mesh in nature! Having a block of free time on the weekdays too and a plan for how you will spend it will give you something to look forward to when your day gets stressful. The beauty of working from home is it truly is what you make of it. Get creative during your free time. Dedicate your time to self-care or a light stretch, yoga exercise, eating something healthy, a call with your therapist or a close friend, or guided breathing. 

• Prioritize wellness: Social distancing measures put in place due to the COVID-19 outbreak, mean that many of us are suddenly working from home for an indefinite amount of time. This can be a difficult adjustment that could impact our work productivity as well as our health and wellness. That’s why it is now more important than ever to prioritize our physical, mental and emotional health by practicing healthy habits at home. 

Working from home will naturally make some employees go stir crazy. Understandably, overall anxiety is also currently at a high for many people. Encourage employees to make time for their health: 

• Simply taking a walk can help employees feel healthier and happier. 
• You might also suggest they build time into their schedules for a fitness class or workout during their day. 
• You could also find ways to incentivize mental health activities during this stressful and uncertain time.  
• Indulge employees in fitness activities and wellness programs for their employees as a wellness initiative and incentivize the winners. 

Consider this 5-2-1-0 Healthy Choices Count – Wellness Challenge. It is centered around the common message of 5-2-1-0: 

• 5 or more fruits or vegetables 
• 2 hours or less of recreational screen time 
• 1 hour or more of physical activity 

• 0 sugary drinks – drink more water! 

Offices and workplaces all over the world are taking wellness very seriously. At Great Place to Work every employee gets a pop up in their calendars every Wednesday afternoon. It’s a reminder for everyone to get up from their desk to move, whether by walking, running or dancing. 

• Create a workspace that works: Creating an effective workspace is essential if you want to stay on track and get things done. Make it a place where you’ll enjoy spending time. However, you also need to be clear that it’s a place of work. A few “office” touches might encourage you to be more productive – but you can still personalize your workspace, with fun posters or family photos. Check that you can sit comfortably. If not, you’ll likely find plenty of excuses to get up and go somewhere else! The other important piece of equipment is a door that you can close! It’s almost impossible to work effectively at home if there are other people nearby. So, if you have the available space, be assertive and shut out potential distractions. At the very least, arrange your work area so that distractions aren’t in your line of view – including any partner who’s also working from home!

Business values can heavily influence your brand identity and how outsiders view your company. It is therefore imperative that a company has very firm values and the same is embodied in all aspects of their business.  

Let’s begin with a quick recap of what we know about values. Values are individual belief systems that motivate people to act one way or another. They serve as a guide for human behaviour. Generally, people are predisposed to adopt the values that they are raised with. Ethical decision-making often involves weighing values against each other and choosing which values to elevate. Conflicts can result when people have different values, leading to a clash of preferences and priorities. Some values have intrinsic worth, such as love, truth, and freedom. Other values, such as ambition, responsibility, and courage, describe traits or behaviours that are instrumental as a means to an end.  

As an individual, values essentially serve as a guide to growth and development. They help us create the future we want to experience. Much like individuals, organizations also need values directed towards a specific purpose, be it growth, development or business success. These cannot be attained in the absence of a strong value-based organizational culture that embodies it’s core values. 

Strong value-based work culture is a precursor to business success 

Organisations are involved in making hundreds of decisions every day. The decisions they make are a reflection of their values and beliefs, and they are always directed towards a specific purpose. That purpose is the satisfaction of organizational needs. Organizational values reflect how your organization operates in the business world. Successful organizations develop and follow their organizational values. 

For instance – Walt Disney; it is not just among the most recognizable brands in the world, they also are the kindest community on the planet. A brand which is almost synonymous with magic, Disney extends the magical experience even to its employees as a part of the company’s culture. (quoted from surveysparrow blog-7 Fabulous Organizational Culture Examples You Can Learn From!) 

What Sets Them Apart: Unparalleled heritage, pride and culture, wonderful community, amazing growth opportunity, and a creative atmosphere sets them apart, says a Disney employee.  Disney only hires people who align with what their brand stands for. The organizational benefits of being a Disney employee include access to Mickey’s Retreat (an exclusive area accessible only to Cast Members and their families), generous discounts on Disney parks, hotels and merchandise, incentive schemes and private healthcare. Takeaway:  Disney strives to make every place the happiest place to work and is compassionate towards each other. People can tell when their company cares for them and in Disney’s case, employees care back! 

It was Peter Drucker who famously said that Culture eats strategy for breakfast’. No kidding. A work culture can absolutely be the deal-breaker or decisive factor when it comes to defining a company’s success. Great company culture just doesn’t happen on its own. It’s more than mere fun and games. It’s beyond the inspirational quotes and artwork chalked onto the pillar, glowing customer recommendations lining the walls, and bean bags littered across the floor. All that is nice and makes life more pleasant, but it does not change the core of who you are as a company. Great organizational work culture is more than paychecks, fun, and perks. 

HOW TO CREATE A CULTURE AROUND YOUR CORE VALUES 

Company culture is a difficult concept to put into words but it is synonymous with your business environment. Good company culture takes years to develop, but there are some steps that you can take today to get this plan in motion: 

1. Pin Down your core values:

Alright! First things first, you need strong core values to set up the base for your company’s culture. Your core values need to be established and ingrained in your company if you are to have a successful company culture. If your core values are not defined, there will be no culture. In the absence of a defined culture, organizations usually form their own culture, which is not based on values and best practices. This can be detrimental to the business image in the long run.

“When I began my startup, I did not have any set values. Personally yes, I had a set of values I operated upon, but however, it didn’t seem necessary to establish company values at such an early stage. Eventually, my business grew and so did my team. I now started seeing the challenge of encouraging the team to make decisions, based on the values I personally embody as guidelines. This became an even bigger challenge with employees who operated remotely. I finally realized the importance of having set company values. However, I kept putting it off since I didn’t know where to begin. But once I sat to actually pen down Moneyjar’s values, it didn’t take more than 15 mins” – Rohan Agarwal (Co-Founder Moneyjar) 

 To create your business values, think about your personal values, business objectives and align them to match it with your workforce potential. See which value-based decisions have kept you on your growth track and which have helped your employees perform better. Keep the ones that serve your indicators of success and match the goals you have chalked out for your business. A quick search on google with also reveals a great set of values you can imbibe.  Go ahead if that suits you, however, remember your values must be tailor-made and should not be more than 3-4 in number. 

2. Identify behaviours that demonstrate these values:

Once you have nailed down your core values, you must bring it into action. Sometimes organizations may be operating under unspoken core values, communicate them formally to the workforce and practise it daily. Daily reinforcement is the best way to form a habit. Identify touchpoints to remind them of these values. Everyday things like setting business hours, determining employee benefits and internal communication with employees, reflects your culture. So, ingrain your values in these decisions from the start. 

Establish Key Behavioural Indicators that demonstrate your core values. For instance, If you are a customer service based company which has adopted “Going the extra mile to achieve customer satisfaction” as a core value, your employees must embody the same value and must be willing to go that extra mile whenever the opportune moment surfaces. 

For example, you have probably heard of the Ritz-Carlton, a hotel chain known for their great customer service. On one particular visit, a mother together with her two children had spent a few days there on vacation, and when they got back home, her son discovered that his beloved stuffed giraffe, Joshie, had gone missing. The boy was devastated, so his parents decided to tell him that “Joshie is just taking an extra-long vacation at the resort.” This conversation was overheard an attendant at the front desk and he took it upon himself to ensure they leave happy. That very same night, the Ritz-Carlton called to tell them that they found Joshie. The relieved parents asked if the staff would mind taking a picture of the giraffe at the hotel to authenticate a fabricated “long vacation” story. After a couple of days, the parents received a package with Joshie and a bunch of pictures that proved Joshie’s prolonged holiday. (quoted from Brand24 blog) (once again keep the formatting same across sections and while quoting another blog also add the link) 

Organizational culture depends largely upon the behaviour of its employees. So you must ensure that employees behave in a fashion that resonates your core values. Not just existing employees, but even new hires should be done keeping in mind the core values, so it becomes easier to integrate them into the organizational setup. Many companies have started carrying out an interview with a culture fitment angle to ensure the right candidate is hired.
 

3. Induct all employees into the values: 

When bringing on new employees or when you update your company values, don’t skip onboarding and training. These are great opportunities for you to set the tone. Talking about your core values periodically can also help you to implement them in your corporate culture. You can send out monthly newsletters that showcase employees who are successful in following your business’s values. Also, you can bring up core values in goals meetings and determine whether you are reaching goals., You can discuss core values during employee performance reviews. Don’t let them get cosy in the corner of your small business. Frame them and hang them on the wall for employees and customers to see. Post them on your website, on your social media pages, and on any other digital front, you can. Many companies proudly display their core values on video walls or television screens in the frontal view of the office, to ensure both employees and customers understand them. Customers/ employees can get an idea of what the organization’s culture will be like basis the values displayed and take decisions accordingly. 

4. Reward employees when they act as per the desired behaviour:

So the values are set, the employees are inducted and business is great! It’s no wonder these thoroughly thought out core values worked like a charm. If you’re thinking you’ve created your business Utopia, think again! Is it enough to just establish a successful culture? Employee Recognition plays an important role when it comes to building a company culture. Once the values are set and let’s say employees strive to adhere to them, then as an organization, it becomes your responsibility to recognize these efforts and reward these behaviours. These values help gauge the performance of employees and recognize their efforts in order to keep them engaged. Acknowledging and rewarding value-based behaviour encourages the employee to perpetuate this behaviour throughout his/her tenure with the organization. When these behaviours are rewarded it creates an emotional connection between the employee and company and they achieve a state of synergy and eventually attain employee engagement.  

 In today’s day and time, employee recognition can be also done digitally which also allows business owners to track individual performance and measure it against core values and reward employees. Such unique platforms provide superior employee engagement, not just among superiors and subordinates but also enhance peer-to-peer engagement. For instance, Let’s Buzzz platform allows peer-to-peer employee appreciation model, where employees across departments and ranks appreciate and recognize fellow employees for demonstrating certain behaviours by buzzing about it and thereby creating a chain reaction of acknowledgement and occasionally nudging whenever a core value is displayed, which in turn leads to driving a value-based culture. Core values are beliefs your business must follow in all aspects of its operations, be it marketing, human resources, administration and finance. They guide decision-making and define what your business stands for. But, if you and your employees fail to uphold your core values, you could face bemused or disappointed customers.  

The day may come when a key employee will tell you that they plan to leave the company. This situation is typical, however knowing this in advance and taking precautions beforehand to retain your best employee would be extraordinary. Right?

Want to know how? With data analytics!

Today, every modern business is data-driven, and the vital role of data is to empower business leaders and help them make decisions based on trends, facts, and statistical numbers. With comprehensive data now available, leaders must shift through the noise and focus on the right information to help them make the best decisions related to strategy and growth.

Data has become the core of every business decision and different departments utilize data in different ways. A Sales department uses past data to analyze and set goals, understand customers’ lifetime value, get the pricing right, etc. A marketing department is zooming in on market segmentation data to find out the right market, correct audience, what drives consumers to take action, etc.

Likewise, over the past few years, Human Resource Management (HRM) has also adopted a data-driven & strategic approach from an operational one. One of the best advantages of using people analytics is that you don’t rely on gut feeling anymore. It helps the HR test the effectiveness of the policies, employee engagement, and different interventions.

How HR can simplify their tasks with Analytics

People analytics analyzes employee-related data using metrics and tools to learn employee patterns, evaluate their behavior, find least engaged employees, evaluate workplace culture adoption, accumulate feedback, and also indicate signs that could lead to employee turnover. For example, an unwanted and measurable behavior like high absenteeism where an employee is absent for unnecessary reasons calls for some evaluation.

Dr. Mark Huselid, a distinguished Professor of Workforce Analytics, highlights that the real goal of HR analytics activities is to understand, quantify, manage, and improve the strategy and value creation. It demands data collection from various internal and external sources, processing it, storing and analyzing it to get valuable insights related to employees whose commitment helps bring out the organization’s performance. This data allows a manager to make informed decisions about various aspects of the employee lifecycle like training, performance evaluation, compensation, and growth.

There are various tools available to capture data that can help HR. One such platform is Buzzz, an employee engagement and recognition platform that works as a catalyst in increasing engagement and empowering businesses to drive meaningful change in the culture and the bottom-line business metrics.

Buzzz captures these three parameters to help HR predict employee behavior and take actions proactively:

1. Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is a driving factor to attract and retain talent. It acts as a direct link with corporate performance. It is the emotional connection that employees experience which leads to a willingness to use discretion at work. Employee engagement must be part of a corporate strategy that focuses on finding dedicated employees and then engaging them throughout the working relationship.

Four common ways of measuring employee engagement are:

1. Annual engagement surveys: A traditional yet popular way of gauging employee engagement, these annual surveys are conducted once a year. HR can use these surveys to understand and hold as a benchmark to measure employee engagement. As these surveys are distributed only once, it tends to be lengthy as HR asks all the questions in one survey. However, this annual survey can be misleading as the feedback over a vast span of time cannot be accurate and might be driven by an employees’ mood for the day or biased based on a recent incident.
2. Pulse surveys: Compared to annual surveys, these surveys are distributed more frequently to track the employees’ real-time views and opinions. These are conducted on a quarterly, monthly, or even weekly basis. HR leaders compare the pulse surveys data to their annual surveys data to gauge their progress in detail.
3. Stay interviews: Alternative to exit interviews, HR leaders and managers schedule one-on-meetings with highly valued employees to take their feedback and find out about their big career goals, what they enjoy about their work, things they wish to change at the workplace, etc. This helps in customizing growth plans for high performing individuals and provides great insight for making futuristic manpower plans.
4. Turnover rate: It measures the number of employees leaving the organization over a defined period. A high turnover rate highlights a low level of engagement.

Though every way mentioned above has some advantages, today, it is becoming crucial to conduct a daily survey that is more accurate and useful. With Buzzz, organizations can track their staff’s daily engagement on the platform that captures their everyday mood, a recognition given and received, interaction on the platform, certificates earned, and more. Refer to the image 1.1 below.

Image 1.1

In image 1.2, the daily/weekly/monthly summary offers HR leaders an overview of the engagement trend and statistics. Leaders can view the data for all departments together or track each department individually.

Image 1.2

Image 1.3

The above image 1.3 represents the data of employees of all departments with their happiness index and engagement index. Organizations can draw a benchmark for every data and take actions when it reaches below the desired performance level.

2. Organizational Behaviour

Every Organization has certain behaviors that they want to cascade amongst its employees. For example, going the extra mile, collaboration, teamwork, being professional, etc.

Consider, an organization with 4-5 behaviors that they want their employees to reflect. Still, nearly everyone displays only one kind of behavior, then there is a clear disconnect and mismatch of expectations between the employees and the organization.

Image 2.1

With Buzzz, managers can socially recognize their teams for displaying a particular behavior as you can see in the image 2.1 above. With this data, HR’s and management can track the organization pulse and see how many employees are blending well into the company culture. It can be a great input for the organization training and development strategy.

3. Happiness index

How you are feeling on the inside can have a significant impact on your day at work. Wouldn’t you agree? Research also confirms that our feelings have a huge influence on our decision-making, and yet often, at that moment, we aren’t aware of how we’re feeling or how those feelings are influencing our behaviors.

The Buzzz Mood-o- Meter is designed to help employees learn to recognize emotions. By way of simple worlds, it provides the employees with a “language” to talk about their feelings.

If you want to build an organization powered by winning work culture, it is essential to understand how your employees feel.

Buzzz allows the organization to conduct a survey and offers reports and dashboard that can be broken down department wise and can be narrowed down to individual employee level. One of the most significant advantages of Buzzz Mood-o-Meter survey is that the platform asks employees about ‘how’ their mood is for the day and also asks them ‘why’ their mood is the way it is today. Employees can fill in the survey and choose to be Anonymous while submitting their feedback, which gives employees the freedom, to be honest without revealing their names. Through the dashboard, HR can track the various reasons indicated by employees about their moods, enabling HR to proactively develop strategies to counter low employee morale.

Image 3.1

As seen in the image 3.1 above, 22.6% of employees said they are sad due to work-life balance. HR and team leaders can look at such data and arrive at simple solutions or policy changes to create a happy workplace. Likewise, they can work in each area, which displays their employees are sad and unhappy.

With these reports, HR leaders can analyze the various reasons and also choose to conduct one-on-one sessions with the least engaged employees. The bottom line is, today, listening to employees directly and taking quick actions can positively impact employee productivity and reduce employee turnover.

Organization decision-makers, being the management and HR, need to consider both the available data and contextual facts before planning and implementing any action plan. While making a decision, gut and context must be combined with data to improve corporate performance. Remember that humans can create the best machines, but it cannot control the great humans. Therefore, instincts hold the same amount of significance as data and can make a massive difference between success and failure. Consequently, having data to support your instincts can go a long way in making timely decisions.

The Coronavirus is accelerating one of the biggest business transformations in decades. In a recent pulse study of over 30 organizations and data from a new study just completed by Willis Towers Watson, shows clearly that businesses are bending over backwards to take care of their employees.

The world is different today than it was a few months ago. COVID-19 has swept across our world and nation. Uncertainty is at an all-time high, as we experience a complete disruption in our homes and workplaces. There’s no quick fix. There’s no silver bullet. The best thing we as leaders can do is lean in. Listen to your employees, empathize with their greatest concerns, communicate frequently and confidently, and be flexible and supportive to meet their needs.

Josh Bersin an expert on corporate talent, Learning and HR technology stated that employee engagement is a problem that plagues more than two-thirds of companies year after year! But in the current context, the world is looking at employee engagement differently! Agreed, it’s a health crisis but for most companies, it’s also an incredible opportunity to transform. Why?

The CHRO of one of the world’s largest insurance companies globally stated that “the crisis has created a level of transparency and trust in our workforce we haven’t seen in decades.” The Willis research found that 90% of companies believe their culture has improved, 83% believe their employee experience is better, and 84% believe employee engagement has gone up.

• Companies are protecting workers. It’s clear from our data that the #1 thing on the minds of most employees today is personal financial security. Yes, they’re worried about their health, but above that, they’re worried about their jobs, the viability of the company, and their ability to take care of their children, families, and parents. And for Millennials and younger workers, they are now worried about their careers.

• There is a huge increased focus on personal productivity, wellbeing, and personal resilience. As more than 90% of companies started their work at home program, the first issue they deal with is getting computers, internet access, security, and tools into people’s homes. And this wasn’t easy. In India, for example, people live in very small spaces so companies had to buy equipment, ship it, and work through government providers to get it into peoples’ homes. And since the internet is spotty, companies like Service Now gave employees generous allowances for Mi-Fi devices and just said: “go out and buy what you need, don’t worry about the expense forms.”

Business and HR leaders are spending more and more time on ensuring that their employees feel safe, supported, or emotionally secure, otherwise, they simply cannot do their jobs.

Organizations have to make a lot of adjustments to their business plans and their way of work during the COVID-19 outbreak. They need engaged employees more than ever to get through this challenging period. They need to be prepared for a marathon, not a sprint. This global pandemic isn’t likely to just disappear overnight. Employees might struggle with feelings of uncertainty, isolation, not being in the know, and more. Thus driving the need for employers to care about employee engagement. While remuneration is always a good incentive to engage workers, it isn’t the be-all and end-all for driving employee engagement.

So then, How can you drive employee engagement in these challenging times?

Make Transparency The Backbone of Your Organization

Your employees might feel uncertain about the ongoing situation – 55% of employees are concerned about job security. Only about ⅓ believe that their organization “has the resilience to handle these circumstances”. Keeping people in the loop is an incredibly effective way to drive employee engagement. So be transparent with your employees about your plans and activities in this period. Try to be positive in your communication but don’t over-promise. For example, if you say that everyone will be able to keep their jobs, make sure you can make that happen. And even when not everything is going so well, don’t keep your employees in the dark – feeling side-lined is a sure-fire way to allow distrust to take root among your workforce.

If employees don’t understand where the company is standing financially in times of COVID-19, it makes them feel insecure, unmotivated and even disengaged.

It’s Time To Focus On Your Core Values:

During a crisis, don’t forget about your core values and your company culture. Let your core values serve as a guide for you. These are the heart of your company after all, and now more than ever they are what you should be striving to uphold.

Your core values will likely be what attracted employees to you in the first place, so show them that you’re focused on upholding your values – promote them to your employees and remind them of what you stand for. Use buzz to translate core values into actionable behaviours and appreciate people and even leaders and managers for demonstrating those core values when the situation arises.

Make room for continuous feedback

Employees need to receive constructive feedback to be productive, especially in challenging circumstances such as fast transitions to working from home (WFH). Be sure to have a structure in place to provide this feedback, for example, through regular virtual 1-on-1 meetings and facilitating open conversations within and across teams.

However, be ready to receive feedback as well – because feedback should always be a two-way street.

Use simple tools like surveys and questionnaires, most available freely on google to gather insight and feedback. Design your surveys and questionnaires to allow your workforce to provide honest feedback about the issues affecting them at the grassroots level.

• Ask them questions on a sliding scale between 1-5.
• Ask them open-ended questions so that they can be thorough in their reply.
• Ask them multiple-choice questions so they don’t feel like the onus is on them to provide the answers.

Your survey results won’t give you the gold-plated solution for improving employee engagement, but it should show you where you need to focus your efforts.

Celebrate (small) victories and reward genuine efforts

Your employees are doing their best and especially in times of uncertainty, it is important to recognize it. Celebrate small victories to drive employee engagement – for example, make announcements of new deals made, organic traffic exceeding expectations, work done quickly and efficiently, etc.

Perhaps consider rewarding your top performers – small prizes that they can use when the crisis is over: a day off, a paid meal delivered at their doorstep using swiggy or zomato, whatever makes sense for your organization and doesn’t burn a hole in the finances.

Don’t just celebrate the victories within the teams, praise employees and teams across the board – use your internal mediums like lets Buzzz to socially recognize employees and engage, motivate and reward them for their efforts. Encourage your employees to praise and acknowledge one another. Being appreciated by the management is one thing, being appreciated by your peers makes you feel a part of the team.

Recognition of small wins and efforts goes a long way in driving employee engagement in a regular setting but also in challenging times.

Focus on everyday experiences

Understand that the majority of employees put considerable effort into trying to maintain a work-life balance at the best of times. And during these challenging ones, when everything is confusing, doing what you can to reduce your employees’ stress levels will boost their engagement levels. Find out what your employees are struggling with daily and seek to provide a solution.

Make sure that the engagement efforts are continuous and not one-off attempts or just a social demonstration. Don’t forget to focus on inclusion. Employees working under inclusive leaders are 39% more likely to be engaged. Make sure that everyone’s voice is heard. For example, some of your employees might not feel comfortable asking their questions or sharing their concerns in front of everyone. Allow them to submit questions or offer a one on one private communication over any comfortable medium or even anonymously. So that you can address everyone’s issues can be addressed. 

Enable Teamwork and Collaboration

Having the right tools is one thing. Having a culture of collaboration is another. Foster teamwork and collaboration even under challenging circumstances, be there for each other. For example, encourage regular team check-ins. For example, teams can bring their daily blurps into the virtual environment to be aware of what everyone is working on and how the team members can help each other. Add a short end of day or week meeting to see how everyone did and if they need assistance from their team members.

Recognize that your current WFH situation won’t suit every team member – everyone has their preferred learning and working style and that for some, they’ll need more support during these challenging times.

It’s also important to have the right tools in place to encourage easy collaboration. Having a distributed workforce can have a huge impact on the levels of employee engagement – you’ll have to work even harder to make remote working or WFH employees feel as if they’re a part of your company culture. To enable them to work collaboratively, you need to ensure the availability of right resources, such as:

• An internal chat platform such as Slack.
• A video conferencing tool like Zoom.
• Cloud-based collaborative applications like Google docs and sheets.
• Web-based project management or process tool such as Trello, to ensure that all employees are aware of what is happening at all times.
• Engagement platforms like Buzzz

Employee Engagement is top of mind for leadership teams, and companies are willing to find ways to keep their employees engaged and motivated as time and again it is proved to lead to employee productivity. 

How many times an employee participates in any group activity alone doesn’t signify the employee’s engagement (EE) at the workplace. It is related to the employee’s commitment to the company. And this is one of the driving factors for the success of the business. 

Employee Experience (EX) on the other hand is a total of all the touchpoints an employee has with the company – be it cultural, physical or tech-enabled interactions with the workplace or work environment. It begins from the day the employee becomes a candidate in the organization until they become an alumnus. 

Employee engagement is the byproduct of employee experience; hence, the company needs to actively shift its focus to employee experience which will eventually lead to higher engagement. 

How technology is changing the future of work

Technology is shaping the future of work in every little segment at the workplace be it Robo advisory in finance, client relationship management (CRM) and cloud software in Sales or Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) in Marketing and e-Commerce,  and in the more recent years the role of AI in different areas of human resource. 

Advancement in technology at the workplace is not just about reducing human dependency and speeding up the work but also making work systematic and error-free. Though AI is taking over human dependency it does not mean that it is taking away the job. Employees will have to shift their focus to value-added activities to get a better result and improve productivity; while technology takes over the repetitive and mundane tasks. 

We at Buzzz agree that 2020 is the rise of the digital workplace and there is no looking back. Where physically the world has come to a standstill, the digital world has helped to keep things going and helped everyone to stay connected. 

Role of HR in employee experience and employee engagement

Hiring, firing, recruiting and training employees have been the most prominent role of Human Resource and is often known only for these responsibilities, but a silent and more important role of HR has always been to enhance employee experience at every stage of the employee’s work-life. This leads to employee engagement and therefore builds a strong workplace culture. 

Culture is built by understanding the needs of employees, learning about the values of employees, supporting them to reach their corporate goals, rewarding them for their efforts that help the organization achieve their mission, and ensuring all the resources are available for employees to enable them to have an extraordinary experience. 

Here are 5 ways in which AI can positively help you boost employee engagement and experience:

While some organizations use certain metrics to gauge employee engagement, companies will have to understand that one metric won’t fit or apply to every employee. 

AI helps organizations to make rational decisions and change the way a company approaches engagement at the workplace. It also supports companies’ work towards providing a great employee experience  with user-friendly software.

-Improve internal communication

Interpersonal communication at the workplace plays an important role to define our relationship with our colleagues. 

Artificial Intelligence has the power to evaluate each employee’s strength, weakness, style. With the help of AI, organizations can track the relation and coordination between employees and get key insights about how each employee interacts with each other. Organizations can use it to their advantage by pairing employees together who make a great pair for a particular project based on the SWOT analysis. 

Chatbot at the workplace can make employee communication more interactive and collaborative. One of the most common examples of chatbot cases is Starbucks who uses Facebook Messengers in their order and delivery process. (Source: SHRM)

-Monitor mental health

A machine to track or monitor the behaviour of your employees that help organizations learn about their mental health and raise an alarm before it’s too late will be one of the top finds of technology. There is research underway that could monitor an employee’s enunciation and tone of voice to detect stress and predict depression. Monitor the typing speed, detect the spike in heart rate and also analyse facial expression, but then again this is the future. 

Companies like Sephora and Pinterest offer a chatting platform to their employees that instantly offers them direct counselling service. The employee types a word based on their feeling and the platform uses the word to understand their situation and recommends the best approach to coach employees. (Source: Roboticsbiz)

Similar to this, the Mood-o-Meter, an AI-based tool helps to track the mood of employees and calculate their happiness index. Our feelings influence our behaviour and that has a big impact on our day at work. The Buzzz Mood-o-Meter is designed to help an employee learn to recognize their emotions and develop strategies for managing these emotions. Likewise, organizations can analyse the daily mood of their employees and also find reasons behind their mood. 

For example, if the majority of employees feel unhappy highlighting one particular reason prompts HR and organization to immediately take some action to find a gap in their work culture. 

-Recruitment & onboarding

From saving valuable time to finding the right candidate, AI can simplify the recruiting and onboarding process for HR.  AI pre-screening of the candidates before inviting them for interviews is a common practise at large multinational companies who hire thousands of employees each year and unsurprisingly attracts millions of applicants. 

AI in recruiting helps access candidates before they are invited for the interview where they are tested and assessed on their cognitive and emotional features while avoiding demographics like race, gender and socio-economic status. 

Multinational brand Unilever uses a chatbot that uses natural language processing to answer employee’s queries and questions in a simple, human language. 

-On-the-job training

Well, learning doesn’t stop after you are placed in the organization. In fact, it begins from there where employees can learn new things that will help them in work. AI plays a part in the ongoing training of the new hires as well as for the existing employees in future. 

One of the engineering giants developed a tool which takes advantage of augmented and virtual reality along with AI to record the experience of work and lessons from existing or old employees which can be passed on to new joiners. This captures the correct and valuable information that can be used anytime and gives a top-notch experience to employees. 

-Improving remote work

Earlier where remote working was mainly associated with tech jobs where coders and engineers would work on projects from home or other areas without coming to office every day or never. Now, remote working has become a new normal for a majority of white-collar jobs globally. It can also be framed as displaced working where managers struggle to monitor and encourage employee productivity. AI is applying data power to streamline operations, enhance communications and improve services. 

Under remote working, AI amalgamates legacy systems like CRM and AI planner helps employees significantly improve data handling, planning and customer retention.

One very recent example is a collaboration of Otter with Zoom where otter automatically transcribes your zoom meetings as they happen. The notes it generates can include text, audio, video or key phrases which can be searched later. It also includes the speaker ID of all the participants involved in the meeting to see who said what. This saves the time of noting down the meeting notes. Accenture also uses this AI-backed tool at their workplace. 

Conclusion:

HR and AI are joining forces to understand employees better and transforming the employee experience at work at different levels. The idea is not just to minimize manual work but also to enhance employee experience that leads to an increase in productivity and efficiency. 

AI also finds the gap where employees are struggling or are unable to connect with the company and underline the area for management to take immediate actions ensuring that employees are engaged throughout their professional journey with the organization.   

Start-up founders, first-time bosses and CEOs that have been in the corporate world for a long time have already witnessed that they have a huge role to play in Employee Engagement. The direct managers have learned the importance and are constantly in search of ways to increase it, HR leaders are taking more initiatives than before and senior management is changing their approach as they are well aware of the benefits it brings to the organization.  

HR is not solely responsible for the success and failure of employee engagement anymore. 

 We now see CEOs taking an interest in the engagement but still fail to be an active part of it. The question is why? Where are they going wrong? Where are they lacking? Perhaps a good starting point might be to first understand what impact do CEOs have on employee engagement?  

Why CEOs must take a closer look at the workplace culture? 

 According to McKinsey & Company, around 67% of new CEOs stated, wish they had moved faster to change the culture at their workplace. But they were still unclear on what to change as they were new to this position. Also, it is difficult to identify the cultural elements that are affecting their best talents.  

 Having said that, they also know that the best idea is to take constant action to fix the work culture before it impacts and spoils the employee relations; and therefore the overall employee engagement. 

How the CEO can play an important role in Employee Engagement 

 It is given that CEOs main focus has been on financials and high-level strategy and they tend to leave the employee engagement in the capable hands of HR and senior management. However, this often results in poor knowledge about the on-ground people related challenges and oftentimes leads to loss of trust and confidence in the higher management. All the initiatives and hard work put in by HR gets unrecognized as what is missing is the inspiration factor. It has been observed that CEOs who inspire their workforce displays these three qualities: 

1. Establish a personal connection with employees
2. Listen to employees intently 
3. Communicate the goals and vision of the organization with ease and clarity

Let’s take a look at how CEOs can avoid these 5 mistakes and turn their engagement game: 

1. Communication is the key

 Communication has always been an important factor that can make or break a relation whether personal or professional. It is observed that the message from management has been communicated via HR or the line managers to the employees, but they need to come directly from the CEO. Maybe not every time but once in a month or some of the important announcements or messages can be recorded and shared with everyone. This not only builds up a trust factor but also boosts employee morale.  

 Problem: One biggest mistake made by CEOs when communicating any message is that they focus more on numbers and statistics. The role of a CEO or any leader is to communicate a story that motivates and inspires their people to achieve the goal.  

 Action required from CEO: Cast a vision and start influencing. 

2. The power of leadership recognition

 Remember the saying- What gets recognized, gets repeated.  

 CEOs are constantly juggling to dictate their work culture, so they find it easier to delegate employee recognition to HR. However, it’s easier to promote the culture by performing or showcasing that culture in your day-to-day behavior.  

 Recognition is one such behavior that can be cascaded amongst your employees simply by appreciating people for their efforts either by walking up to their desk and putting a thank you card on their desk and appreciating how happy you are to have them in your organization or if your organization has a modern tool like social recognition platform then you can write a message on the platform for everyone to see and engage with it.  

According to a recent study, when employees were asked how organizations can better support them through the Covid-19 pandemic, 35% of employees said they were looking for more recognition. Every CEO could have taken this situation as an opportunity to thank and recognize their employees who managed work even during this difficult time.  

When recognition is done right and given on time, it is nothing less than a leadership superpower.  

 Problem: Often, CEOs do not give out recognitions directly and appear to be making a passive participation in motivating and appreciating their employees.  

 Action required from CEO: Ensure to stay in the loop about those employees who have gone the extra mile and appreciate them personally. This will motivate the non-achievers to achieve more.   

3. Encourage employee voice

 The workforce wants to be heard- are you there to listen to their feedback and take active action to bring positive results? If the HR and CEOs neglect this, they are damaging their entire organization. Around 10% of employees do not care much about it but 90% of employees are likely to move if their voice is not heard.   

 Having a forum and platforms alone won’t help if you are not taking any action on it.  

 Problem: HR ask employee through surveys but there are not constant follow up or action is taken. 

 Solution: CEOs can pick up some interesting opinions, suggestions or complaints and talk about it openly and assure the employees you will personally ensure that it is solved.  

4. Individualize employee rewards and make them instant

 Employee rewards system should reflect your organization’s culture. Having a reward system in place that is aligned and rewards that are valued by your employees should be of utmost importance. Deloitte found out that 23% of respondents reported that they didn’t know what kind of rewards their employees value. 

 The CEO must understand what motivates their employee and accordingly plan out their reward system. Another important factor after the value is distribution. A reward delayed is a reward denied. Do not let your employees wait for too long as it will take away the motivation and happiness.  

 Problem: CEOs do not pay much attention to the reward system and are only concerned about the presence of rewards in the workplace. 

 Solution: CEOs can introduce a point-based reward system that is transparent and also, give an option to employees to select a reward of their choice. With digital rewards, employees can receive their rewards instantly.  

5. Work towards the well-being of workers

 Every business is established to earn profits. Some are also aiming to change lives. Being the change-maker by doing something great for the environment, community, or even for the employees is a great initiative. 

 Problem: CEOs focus majorly on making profits and forget to take care of their people. 

 Solution: Focus on keeping your employee happy.  

Being a CEO makes you responsible for everything. 

Building a workplace that is motivated doesn’t happen overnight. It is the job of the CEO to ensure that their employees are engaged and motivated. If you take the responsibility for the errors and actively participate in encouraging your people it will add as an example and make your employees build trust and confidence in you and your company. The above mistakes have been repeated by almost every CEO and it has led to the failure of engagement and weaken workplace culture as well as even resulted in the failure of the business as a whole.  

 We recommend every CEO to take active participation in employee engagement either alone or by teaming up with the HR leaders and drive a motivated workforce.