Focus Employee Engagement: From tool assessment to implementation in 3 simple steps

I am currently working with a client to implement an employee engagement and survey tool and I realise that companies often still use gForms. They see it as an easy and cost effective way to check in with their employees once or twice a year or even more. This is definitely true, but at a certain employee size, this often takes a lot of time out of the day for the person who prepares and aggregates the data. These are costs that are often not considered, aside from the depth of the analysis. Some analyses require in-depth social behavioural science to make the appropriate predictions and assumptions.

Implementing and using an employee engagement tool that includes employee survey capabilities can increase this quality of analysis while saving time. This time can then be used to dig deeper into the actual engagement drivers or challenges, and to better focus on action. Another big benefit is that results can directly be connected to Objective Key Results (also read The power of OKR's).

But how do you get started and find the right tool in a jungle of vendors?

Below I'll outline how to find and implement the right tool in 3 simple steps.

From tool assessment to implementation in 3 simple steps

The Why: The purpose of implementing an employee engagement & survey tool

Of course, we mentioned the time saved and potentially higher quality of engagement analysis. But that is not the real purpose. These could be considered improvements to the how.

The purpose of measuring employee engagement can be different for every company, as their reality is also very individual. In general, however, it can be said that you are trying to understand what (de-)motivates employees, how they actually feel and what they would see as areas for improvement or current challenges within the company.

Why is this important? It gives you indicators of engagement that are linked to retention. At the end of the day, you want to ensure that your employees have the right resources, skills and tools to do their jobs well. Losing strong employees is costly, and finding new ones is even more so.

By measuring employee engagement and gaining deeper insight into what drives it, you enable your organisation to act and anticipate, rather than react and lag behind.

Find the right tool

This is one of the most important points: It is important to keep in mind the reality of your company and its challenges. Think about the employees and managers, their daily routines, their challenges, and also their level of seniority (especially for managers). In order to choose the right tool and find the right approach to measuring employee engagement, you need to understand what would be easiest for your end users to use and implement. The key is to be user-centric!

Tool assessment criteria

With this in mind, you can begin to create a tool evaluation sheet, variables to consider could be:

1. Budget: Make sure you get buy-in from top management to avoid wasting your time and to understand the overall budget available for this project.

   
   

2. Integrations with current systems: Speaking of user-centricity, you don't need to have thousands of tools for different purposes, try to make it as lean as possible and check with IT to get their perspective on this as well. Make sure you have the broad HR IT landscape in mind.

   
   

3. Company size & projected growth: Tools will vary in terms of appropriate organisation sizes. Make sure you choose a tool that provides all the functionality you need for your organisation size. Keep growth in mind and how it would affect the scalability of the tool.

   
   

4. Features & analytics: What features and reporting are most important to solving your why? Make sure you do a thorough evaluation of available tools based on this.

   
   

5. Localisation: If you operate internationally, make sure tools are available in the languages you need and accessible from your various locations.

This list could go on and on based on specific organisational needs, it shouldn't be too extensive, but make sure you find your top 5-7 evaluation criteria. This will narrow down the tools you want to demo to 3-5. Requesting a demo of these tools will allow you to further evaluate your top criteria, especially when it comes to features and analytics.

Go-live is just the beginning

What's really important when implementing an employee engagement tool is what happens after go-live. Make sure everyone who needs it is trained and properly empowered to use the tool. Set up sessions after the first results come in to help managers and relevant stakeholders properly analyze the data and take action steps from it.

Second, make sure you share results and action steps to increase transparency, share your efforts, and engage the entire organization. Make sure you make these things a habit and a good routine. It is very important that employees see their voices being heard and action steps being taken so that their opinions have a real impact.

Of course, every company is different and there are more steps and key points to consider, but this should be a good starting point.

Want to digitise your HR landscape but don't know where to start? Feel free to contact us for an introductory call.