Employee engagement is becoming the major focus of many organizations, and there is still a long way to go as 85% of the workforce is still disengaged. Besides, with the influx of advanced technology and tech-savvy millennial workforce, the employees are looking more for growth opportunities and learning. The companies should stop betting on strategies and start trusting their employees. If the employees are dissatisfied with work, they job-hop in search of a company that has a better work culture and takes an interest in the employees’ development. An increase in employee turnover rate affects the profits of an organization. 

How to identify what employees are looking for in an organization? 

Employees whose voices are heard by the management feel 4.6 times more empowered and perform better. Managers and HR personnel reckon that conducting surveys and implementing new engagement strategies can satisfy the employees but it is not true. There is something more to this. If that need is met, the employees will be happy, and the companies can also improve their retention rate.  

What is it?   

“Personalization.” 

The major error that a company makes is considering only the average of the data collected and jumping to conclusions. Employees when they learn that their concerns are not addressed, they would further be disengaged and even despise their corporate life.  

Organizations should form policies and plan strategies to address the concerns of each individual. 

As an HR, you also want to enhance the employee experience at your organization. But, how to do it is the question that haunts every HR. Keep reading, we will provide you the answers. 

Delivering Feedback is a Burdensome Task for Employees as well as Managers. Why? 

Every employee would have definitely come across people who would fill in the feedback form because they were asked to, and they just type a neutral answer. This kind of approach does more harm than benefitting. Also, employees would have loads of work, and so they just complete the form in a hurry and focus on getting back to work. This will prevent the employees from speaking out their concerns. 

Delivering feedback is not every manager’s cup of tea. 

Does that mean that organizations should leave them to be? No. The organizations should provide proper training to the managers to help them master the art. 

Managers do not provide honest feedback because they do not want to be seen in a bad light by their team leaders. Most of the time, halo effect, recency effect, and bias play their roles while delivering feedback. This will not help the employees in any way as the feedback is destructive, not constructive. Imagine an employee, who is a content writer, is good at writing blogs, but not eBooks. The manager should provide constructive feedback highlighting both positives and negatives. If only the positives are listed, there are chances of the employee not improving in other areas.  

When it comes to 360 degree feedback, though it’s anonymous and confidential, if there is no proper action taken by the management, the mechanism loses its purpose. There will be neutral answers, which have no meaning. 

How can we overcome this pain point? 

Trust in the Power of Artificial Intelligence 

“AI is a core, transformative way by which we’re rethinking how we’re doing everything.”  

– Sundar Pichai, Google CEO. 

Artificial Intelligence is invading major sectors such as IT, medicine, engineering and greatly impacts our lives. AI is the most innovative feat of humans, and leveraging its power to the maximum for the good of mankind can bring out great results in the business and healthcare fields. AI is the simulation of human intelligence into machines and they are programmed to think like us. 

How can we utilize this powerful AI in performance management software?  

AI-powered- Sentiment analysis feature!  

What is the Sentiment Analysis? Why Do We Need It? 

Sentiment analysis feature in Performance management software can provide qualitative data through analyzing the text contents of continuous check-ins, performance review feedback, open-ended survey answers, etc. The quantitative data that HR gets has limitations in providing insights. It cannot help HR figure out, what is affecting the organization and the reason for the lower productivity of the workforce. The quantitative data can also be misleading as it cannot communicate the concerns and sentiments of the team members clearly to the top management. 

How can qualitative data or sentiment analysis do that? 

Have you used Grammarly? 

The AI analyzes the text typed and gives out the sentiment in it. For instance, when I type “Dear Sir, I am a product marketer working for Synergita, innovative and effective performance management and engagement software. We’ve introduced an amazing feature in our software. AI-powered sentiment analysis feature. I would like to schedule a call with you and brief you about it. Please let me know what time works best for you.” Let’s see what reaction the Grammarly gives: 

 Did you look at the text and the analysis given by Grammarly? The text sounds formal and admiring. Similarly, the sentiment analysis in the performance management system gives out insights on whether the conversation was negative, neutral, or positive. 

The sentiment analysis technology can be used for continuous check-ins, 360 degree feedback, performance review feedback, and also surveys. 

HANDPICKED RELATED LINKS: 

• You Need 360 Degree Feedback Now More Than Ever 
• Reimagining Employee Engagement After Normalcy Restores 
• Takeaways from Organizations That Made a Difference With Unique Employee Recognition Practices 

What happens when it is used in continuous check-ins? 

As an HR, you can infer a lot from the conversation. The relationship between the manager and the team members can be seen. With the qualitative data, the organization can plan the training programs for both managers and employees – leadership training for managers, and skills training for the employees. The managers will not give neutral feedback anymore and so will the employees. There are two reasons why:  

1. The sentiment analysis feature encourages the employees and managers to give constructive feedback  

2. The concerns of the workforce are heard by the top management, and so the employees will take the feedback process seriously and speak out their problems.  

How does the Sentiment Analysis Feature work? How HR should use the data? 

The sentiment analysis feature leverages Natural Language Processing through Artificial Intelligence. The machine learning algorithms help the feature to identify the emotion or sentiment in the text by analyzing the words. Once the analysis is completed, the feature sends an output based on the conversation. 

Larger organizations, with the huge amounts of qualitative data, can scrutinize the data and identify the units where the employee engagement is low. The HR department can tailor strategies based on the data for particular units. This will make the employees happy and satisfied. When the employees are happy, they make the customers happy. As a result, the organization thrives. Just like how organizations collect feedback from customers and analyze, they should implement the same within the organization too to be successful. 

Point to be noted. If the report from sentiment analysis is positive, that doesn’t mean you need not have face-to-face one-on-one meetings with your employees. Leadership is having the right mix of everything. 

Stay safe and keep your workforce engaged!