New research by Gallup shows that a five per cent improvement in employee engagement can lead to a three per cent increase in sales. Keeping employees engaged can have such a significant impact on the top line; organisations should seek employee lifecycle feedback to ensure employees remain engaged, according to Qualtrics.

engaged-workforce

Companies with engaged employees outperform those that don’t. Collecting feedback from employees at every stage of their interaction with the business – from onboarding through to exit – can give the organisation insight into how they can improve the employee experience and retain top talent.”

Qualtrics recommends organisations focus employee lifecycle feedback programs on six key employee touchpoints:

Recruitment

Candidates should be evaluated throughout the pre-hire process to give the organisation insights before employees are onboarded. Recruiting surveys help the organisation make better hiring decisions and identify changes that need to be made to the recruitment, assessment and selection process, and improve acceptance rates.

Organisations should solicit feedback from both successful and unsuccessful candidates to get a broader range of perspectives on the recruitment process.”

Onboarding

Onboarding feedback measures how new employees rate their early experiences with the organisation, including training and orientation. These surveys are also valuable as they can show whether employees have the knowledge needed to be successful in their jobs.

Organisations make a significant investment in new employees. By improving the onboarding process, the ramp time to value can be reduced, thereby accelerating the ROI from the new hire investment.”

Employee engagement survey

Employee engagement surveys gauge the levels and key drivers of engagement. This helps the organisation to benchmark engagement across all departments and employees. The feedback then allows action plans to be developed to address any highlighted areas for improvement.

Engagement pulse surveys

Pulse surveys are complementary surveys to employee engagement surveys. They let organisations dig deeper into the issues that arise in the annual or bi-annual engagement surveys, or into a particular team/department. They also allow organisations to monitor trends over time and identify seasonal issues.

Pulse surveys are most effective when implemented throughout a year to determine the effectiveness of action plans that were developed based on the engagement survey feedback. Smaller samples of employees, that are statistically representative (e.g. 10 to 25 percent), can help to avoid survey fatigue and ensure higher response rates.

Developmental 180 and 360 surveys

Organisations are increasingly abandoning performance reviews and moving towards 180 and 360-degree assessment reviews. This means that rather than just receiving performance feedback from their manager, employees also get feedback from peers and other departments to build a holistic performance review.

To be effective, organisations should base these assessments on the employee’s core competency model and distribute the reports within 24 hours of collecting the data so it’s still relevant.

Employee exits

Exit surveys are important to help an organisation identify the reasons employees leave so changes can be made where needed to reduce the expensive turnover process.
Quantifying the reasons for leaving, by not just relying on open text responses, can help produce insights that the organisation can act on. Automated surveys also help to produce honest feedback, which is often harder to obtain in face-to-face exit interviews.

Employee engagement is directly linked to improved Customer Experience, which in turn is directly related to increased revenues so it should always be a key focus area for organisations. One of the best ways to run an employee lifecycle program is through a real-time survey platform that is sophisticated, yet easy-to-use. This way it is easy for employees to provide feedback and the organisation can see the feedback in real-time (even before the survey has closed) and they are able to take action quickly on the data being collected.