Employee engagement is a vital aspect of any organization’s success. It directly influences productivity, employee retention, and overall workplace satisfaction. Many organizations rely on employee engagement survey software platforms, sometimes called Employee Experience Platforms (EXPs), to help them manage their employee research efforts.
In organizational development (OD), employee research involves using surveys, focus groups, and other data-gathering methods to understand the attitudes, opinions, and feelings of members within an organization. This effort is a valuable activity for organizations to gain insights into their workforce, identify areas for improvement, and enhance the employee experience. By listening to employees and addressing their needs, companies can create a more positive work environment and boost engagement, ultimately contributing to better performance and retention.
Culture – Employee Experience – Engagement
Before we discuss the key features your EXP or engagement survey platform should include, let us take a brief moment to explain how the concepts of culture, employee experience, and employee engagement are interrelated.
Culture
This refers to the shared values, behaviors, and beliefs within an organization. Culture can be best explained as, “The way things work around here.” A positive culture fosters a sense of belonging and alignment with the organization’s goals. Cultures develop either deliberately or organically. Whether you realize it or not, every organization has a culture, and sometimes those cultures are counterproductive.
Employee Experience
This encompasses the various interactions and perceptions an employee has with their organization. It includes everything from the work environment to the tools and resources provided for job performance. In summary, the employee experience is how an employee experiences the organization’s culture, or stated differently, it is culture through the eyes of your employees. Another way to think about it is that a strong employe experience is when we become intentional and deliberate about our organization’s culture.
Employee Engagement
This is the emotional commitment an employee has to their organization and its goals. Engaged employees are more likely to be productive and contribute positively to the organization. We cannot, however, directly create employee engagement; it is a byproduct of a strong employee experience. Thus, we influence employee engagement by creating a compelling invitation to engage through well-designed and deliberate employee experiences.
As noted, these three elements are intertwined. A positive and inclusive culture enhances the employee experience, which in turn boosts employee engagement.
A Platform is Not the Answer, But it Matters
Building superlative employee experiences is not a matter of selecting the right HR technology; software cannot replace effective leadership. Instead, it is about mentorship and leaders coming together to build something special. That said, you do need capable software tools that help you best understand the experiences you are creating.
Below, we explore six key features that HR professionals should look for in an employee experience platform:
1. Purpose-Built-Software
The software should have an intuitive and easy-to-navigate interface with logical workflows built into the system. The goal is that HR professionals should be able to easily create, distribute, and analyze surveys without needing extensive technical knowledge. Too often, the large survey platforms offer “too much,” while the tools included in an HCM may be overly simplified. DecisionWise’s platform, Spectiv, has been built to give you just the right number of tools in a simple-to-use package.
2. Customizability
The ability to customize surveys is essential. Every organization has unique needs and goals for their employee engagement surveys. The software should allow HR professionals to tailor questions, response options, and survey design to fit their specific requirements. In addition, the software should come with preloaded instrument templates, benchmarks, and question libraries. We have infused Spectiv with some of the best IP, which has been developed over the last the 25 years.
3. Confidentiality
To ensure honest feedback, employees must feel assured that their responses are confidential. The software should have robust privacy settings and manageable ethical walls/screens to keep prying eyes away from individual responses, along with clear policies about data usage and protection.
4. Scalability
As organizations grow, their survey needs may change. The software should be able to handle an increasing number of respondents and have more complex survey structures. This ensures that the platform can adapt and grow with the organization.
5. Data Analysis and Reporting
A useful EXP should provide comprehensive data analysis tools. These tools should be able to generate insights from the survey data, such as identifying trends, highlighting areas of concern, and suggesting potential solutions. Additionally, the software should be able to present these findings in clear, easy-to-understand reports so that leaders can make data-driven decisions about the changes they need to make to improve their employee experiences.
6. Integration Capabilities
Finally, the software should be able to integrate with other HR systems, such as HCMs and learning management systems. This allows for a more holistic view of employee engagement and can help identify correlations between engagement and other HR metrics.
Conclusion
In the end, your employee engagement research tools need to help you uncover the insights and information your leaders need to understand the employee experience and know what actions they need to take to improve their organization. While it may be tempting to opt for the price-conscious choice, such as SurveyMonkey, the tradeoffs are simply not worth it. You need the right tools so you can get the best insights to leaders who can make informed, data-driven decisions.