What We Learned About the Employee Experience in 2022

Date: Wednesday, December 14, 2022

Time: 1:00pm Eastern / 10:00 am Pacific

Presenters: Charles Rogel, VP of Consulting; Matthew Wride, President

Another year in the books.

With thousands of surveys administered and hundreds of firms surveyed, we’ve learned a thing or two about what makes or breaks the employee experience.

Join us as we discover the emerging trends in employee engagement for 2022, and determine what those patterns mean for organizations moving into 2023.

Transcript

Charles Rogel | 00:00 

We’re at the top of the hour here, so let’s begin. Um, hi everyone, and welcome to this decision wise presentation on what we learned about the employee experience in 2022. My name’s Charles Rogel, I’m the Vice President of Consulting Services. I’m joined by the president of decision wise, Matt Wride. 

Matt Wride | 00:18 

Yeah, Charles, thanks for having me. 

Charles Rogel | 00:21 

Um, so before we jump in, I have a couple things to cover, a few questions we normally get. One is about, um, HCRI and SH RM credit Hours. This webinar does qualify for one hour of credit. So following the webinar, we’ll send an email with the codes to the participants here today. And for those of you that are watching this in the future on demand, just email us at info@decisionwise.com and we will send you those codes. Uh, we will also not be sharing the slides from today’s presentation, however, this webinar, along with all of our webinars will be, can be viewed on demand. So you can kind of go back there and do some screenshots or whatever if you’d like, um, to get access to some of this data that we’ll show. We also want to welcome your questions and comments as we go through. 

Charles Rogel | 01:06 

So we wanna encourage you to use the chat feature. We’ll be posing a few comments from you as well. And we’re very interested in understanding, um, what you’re experiencing as we share some of our, uh, data and finding findings as well. So let’s jump into the agenda today. It’s very simple. We’ve got a few topics or trends that we’ve been, uh, keeping an eye on over the past few years that we’ll kind of set up and dive into and explain. We’ve got a lot of data, uh, as well to kind of show from all the companies that we do employee surveys with, and so we’ll try to put that together and show you, provide a picture of what we’re seeing in aggregate for a lot of our clients. So, um, we’re gonna talk about the great resignation, so retention, attrition, the flexibility, work from home topic, uh, workload in general, uh, DEI and culture, and then this topic of health and wellbeing. A lot of data to kind of show some of these areas. And Matt, anything else you wanna add to the list here today? 

Matt Wride | 02:05 

Yeah, I would love to know from those, uh, participating today of the things they thought was going to might happen in 2022. What, what did they, what was most surprised them that actually sort of took place and what prediction were they fully expecting to come true? And it really didn’t, and for me it was the great resignation was really just the great reshuffle. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, right? Like, there wasn’t a lot of people, you know, taking time and just, and just living in Tuscany. Um, people just went elsewhere, but there wasn’t like a mass. Um, I don’t know. I sort of in my mind at the time thought everybody was just gonna sit around and <laugh> have laptops and be on the beach. So <laugh>, 

Charles Rogel | 02:46 

Right? Yeah, no, you’re right. 

Matt Wride | 02:48 

So we had, yeah, MI Michelle, Michael said not a great resignation for our company, sh that she was expecting it, so, oh, that’s good. That’s probably, anyway, 

Charles Rogel | 02:57 

No, so yeah, keep it coming. And as we touch on these topics, we’re curious to get your, um, your kind of take on what you’re seeing. What we wanna start off with is kind of just sharing some of our benchmark data on engagement. So what happened with the level of engagement that people feel in their job in 2022 To set this up, I’ll just kind of explain how we think about this. Um, we’re looking at, uh, kind of the difference between engagement and satisfaction. A lot of times these topics get conflated where we kind of think they’re one and the same. What we see is that satisfaction’s really this foundation upon which engagement can grow the elements that usually influence satisfaction or topics like pay and benefits, workload, stress, safety, things like that. And if these things are working for FE people, a lot of times they don’t think about it, like this is kind of, um, good for them, but when they’re not working for people, they will detract from their ability to engage. 

Charles Rogel | 03:49 

So we wanna make sure these are on par with people’s expectations ’cause they’re important in terms of driving retention in your organization, engagement is different. It’s really this, this, um, passion and motivation we feel towards our job that drives performance. And based on the data we’ve collected over the past 26 years, we see these five elements really distill from the results as the main drivers of engagement. So, you know, meaning growth impact, this magic model. Um, you know, as we looked at these topics or themes, we rearranged the letters a bit, um, to come up with this easy to remember kind of cheesy acronym called magic. So, um, we’ll kind of explore some of these topics too as we look at our data. But generally we see these elements as really drivers of engagement and satisfaction. Again, we’re trying to keep on par with people’s expectations. Hey, 

Matt Wride | 04:36 

Charles, just to, to, to jump in. Mm-Hmm. Of these, I think meaning and connection, um, are really, we’re, we’re in the forefront in 2022. As we, as we’re more work from home or hybrid. I’m, I’m really interested, especially in the chat of how companies are building connection. How, how are we doing connection intentionally and and how do you do that with remote teams? And then meaning, um, we’re seeing the rise of chief purpose officers as a new member of the C-suite that whose, whose purpose is to or mission is to help employees understand how they, their meaning and purpose as they, as they engage with the organization. So, uh, we’ve been talking about magic for a long time at our organization, but those two elements really were top of mind in 2022. 

Charles Rogel | 05:29 

Good points. So here’s some data when we look at our benchmark, and that’s kinda how we bucket, uh, items. You know, we have these kind of statements around strongly agree, agree, and neutral. At the bottom here, what we’re saying is we use a subset of questions on our surveys, uh, to measure the overall level of passion and motivation people feel. So we’ve got these five questions. Um, if people are mostly saying strongly agree to those statements, we put them in this fully engaged category. If they’re saying agree, uh, key contributor, neutral, and so on, we combine these two green groups to give you an overall engagement score. Um, and so again, we’re combining the fully and key engaged and key contributors. We find that 77% of people generally are engaged in their work. Um, and comparatively as we’re looking across the years, you know, so our global database is pretty broad. 

Charles Rogel | 06:16 

It’s four years of data from 2018 to 2021. Um, if we look just in 20 20, 20 21, 20 22, you can see it was higher when the pandemic set in, in 2020. Dipped a little bit in 2021 has kind of been holding steady this year as well as we’re looking at our first three quarters of data, um, around these, uh, these potential benchmarks. Um, another thing you’re probably noticing as well, it’s 77% because back in 2018 and 19, engagement was slightly lower compared to what we saw in this jump in 2020. So there’s a slight increase or trend here we’re seeing overall in engagement, uh, despite the big disruptions that we’ve gone through. 

Matt Wride | 06:57 

And I just wanna point out that this is our, this is where we kind of disagree with Gallup. Gallup likes to have a very binary way of looking at engagement, either engaged or disengaged. Yeah, we, we believe that there are four buckets. There could be even more, but certainly are 78% of your employees, of your coworkers walking around and ready to contribute. Yeah, they are, they’re not zombies as sometimes the press will tell us. 

Charles Rogel | 07:23 

Agreed. Yeah. Um, so let’s jump into these trends. Now. When we’re thinking about these trends, we’ve kind of been tracking them over the past three years because as we’ve been measuring and conducting employee surveys, our clients are coming to us. And in 2020 what happened was everyone was concerned about safety. How do we keep people safe during the pandemic? You know, getting people working from home, all that kind of stuff. Diversity, equity and inclusion, uh, became a big concern. And also topics related to communication, productivity, and collaboration. ’cause we were so disrupted and people working from home, all that kind of stuff. So these were the areas or topics we were really focused on. A lot of times clients, you know, maybe 20% of our clientele was asking, we’re asking questions about safety or DEI. Now it’s just about everybody. And so we’ve got some really good data that we’ve been tracking on these topics. 

Charles Rogel | 08:11 

And the good news in 2020 is these areas improve. You know, we saw engagement go up, we saw some really high scores around communication as everyone was really, um, emphasizing or, or trying to, um, uh, what accommodate and, uh, communicate how we were gonna navigate forward this, uh, transition a bit. In 2021, the topic of working from home, uh, was a top priority. And how are we managing folks working from home? How effective or productive are we? Also, towards the end of 2021, we were starting to get people back to the office. So back to the office policies started being implemented and that caused some frustration and disruption as people were kind of saying, Hey, you trusted us to work at home during the pandemic. We see no reason to come back to the office. Why the change? And so people and organizations were navigating various work from home or hybrid policies during this time that were having an impact on people’s perception of satisfaction with their job. 

Charles Rogel | 09:09 

Workload was also high, uh, in many areas. And, you know, retention, you know, this great resignation topic kind of came into play as people were kinda looking around for jobs. DEI was important still. And culture became more important as people were wondering what happened to our organization. Uh, you know, during the pandemic, you know, as people were working from home, we weren’t as connected, you know, had it changed. And then this past year, here were the topics we were looking at and measuring. And this is what we’re gonna talk about in our presentation, um, retention. So what really happened around retention in organizations? What was driving it? Uh, what did people do to retain people? A lot of this had to do with flexibility. So from working from home and these hybrid, you know, working, uh, policies, people craved more flexibility, more work-life balance or life work balance became a top priority for a lot of workers. Workload was still there. DEI kind of merged with culture and wellbeing was another topic we were tracking. Uh, as that became more popular with a lot of companies. 

Matt Wride | 10:10 

Yeah, in fact, wellbeing was, people were indicating maybe that would be the key metric of how we would measure the employee experience going forward. It hasn’t turned out to be that because there’s still some those out there that think of wellbeing as wellness and employee assistance programs. So we’re still trying to figure our way out in that, in, in, in order, how, how do you get a good metric? The other one is flexibility. I think work from home was great, but no one wants to work from home like it was in the pandemic. And so what they, what it morphed into is, is they didn’t want to employees who had liked the flexibility from working from home, that’s, that’s, those are the gains they didn’t want to give up. Coming into 2022, now as an a recessionary, uh, stress hits the market and you see more employers requiring, um, employees to return. We’ll see how that goes. But flexibility is really, it’s more about flexibility and less about work from home, is what I was trying to say for 2022. 

Charles Rogel | 11:07 

Yeah, that’s a good point. And, and I would shout out, you know, to the chat as well, if you had any other items that you’d add to this list or if there was some, you know, maybe what your priority was as well as you’re trying to manage, uh, through 2022. So we’re gonna dive into these and we’ve got a lot of data. We’ll, we’ll, most of the data that we’ll talk about is around this retention, uh, topic. Um, so we’ll visit kind of what the US Census Bureau is tracking and, uh, when we’re looking at kind of the quit rates, so this is the number, you know, as it says at the top, number of unemployed persons per job opening, seasonally adjusted. Actually, I’ll get into quit weight rates in a moment, but we’re saying how many people are available in the job market right now. 

Charles Rogel | 11:48 

You can see this is the recession back in 2008. You know, it, it spiked. And then it’s kind of come down to this, this part right before the pandemic. Pandemic is this little gray line right here where we saw, you know, a huge number of layoffs. Um, and so hence a higher volume of employees or people available in the market. So this would indicate close to five unemployed people were available for every job opening right at the end of the pandemic. Well, now we’re down to 0.6. Um, and so this is, uh, a huge drop and this indicates that for every, uh, unemployed person there are 1.7 job openings. And so you as recruiters now are saying, where are all the people? We, you’ve got 0.6 people to kind of recruit from for every opening that you have in, in essence, if we’re looking at these averages, uh, another bit of, uh, kind of busy slide here as we look at the, um, the quit rates by industry. 

Charles Rogel | 12:43 

So how, what’s turnover like, what are, how, you know, voluntary separations, essentially, um, looking October last year to September of this year, this is kind of the most recent data I was able to pull here. We’re showing by industry. I’m gonna kind of highlight at the top here. For private industry, essentially, where are we seeing this? Well, it’s gone down slightly. So as we’re looking at what October was last year to September this year, 3.2 people or 3.2% is, uh, or 3.1% is where we’re at in September of this year, uh, for turnover for that month. Now, if we extrapolate that for the whole year, it comes out to 39 or 38% turnover, uh, overall. And it does vary widely by industry. So if you’re looking at some of these, um, categories, you can tell yeah, we’re an accommodation of food services, retail trade, you know, much higher turnover compared to the federal or state government where historically we’ve seen lower, uh, quit rates, uh, essentially. 

Charles Rogel | 13:41 

So there is a, um, you know, a continuum here or a broad range, but again, you’ll see some of these like transportation, warehousing, utilities, uh, that’s increased a bit. Same with other services. Uh, re uh, real estate rental leasing, that’s actually gonna go higher. Well, there’s more layoffs actually in that group now too, as real estate industry’s taken somewhat of a hit. So this will fluctuate a bit. We’re really curious to see how this plays out as we get into the beginning of the year. And one, one piece of feedback I’m curious to hear from you all as a group is with this, with the talk of the recession, um, are you seeing kind of a hold on hiring right now? Are we saying, Hey, let’s kind of ride this out to the end of the year and maybe not bring on some of these people? You probably have several requisition orders submitted and people are feeling like, Hey, we’re understaffed, but maybe we’re gonna wait to staff those positions for a few months. Yeah. 

Matt Wride | 14:36 

Yeah. I’d love to know if you can just say, I think all of us would be curious in the chat, how many have hiring freezes right now? 

Charles Rogel | 14:43 

Yeah. Um, so, 

Matt Wride | 14:45 

So there was a question, Charles, on nonprofit sector, do you have any data about trends in the non in nonprofit specifically? Were you able to break it down? 

Charles Rogel | 14:54 

Um, let’s see. Not from the government data. I’m trying to see where they would put nonprofit, um, because they do kind of lump them in, uh, in some of these different ones. So you could have educational services or even, uh, finance on, let’s see, credit unions might be in this finance and insurance. Um, no, I don’t have a nonprofit, NGO it looks like on this list, but we do have those types of benchmarks that we actually track internally, uh, but not in this dataset. 

Matt Wride | 15:23 

And then back to our chat, it’s, it’s lightened up. It, it, it’s interesting. There are, there are no lots saying there are no hiring freezes, but then there’s a fair enough, it’s kind of either or. We either see companies with hiring freezes or it’s business as usual, but it’s certainly not skewed. It’s like 50 50, which, you know, that’s, that’s a significant number. If half of these respondents are saying we have hiring freezes, then people are, are, are, you know, thinking about it. Yeah, well, I guess it’s not quite half. I’d say just guessing it’s about 60, 66, 33, 2 thirds have no hiring freeze, but mm-hmm. <affirmative> a third do. 

Charles Rogel | 16:00 

Yeah. So this is a trend that we’re kind of monitoring is, um, you know, is retention, you know, is the great, uh, resignation or retention going to be such a big, uh, deal it is now. And, and I can tell you I’ve probably done or debriefed executive teams, probably 70 different companies this year alone. And we’ve really DD um, dived dove <laugh> into, um, retention pretty deeply to understand what’s going on. So one of the types of analysis that we do, and I recommend this for everyone, if you do an employee survey, um, we wanna look at perceptions of employees after they leave the organization. You know, so they’ve taken your annual survey. If they leave within the next six months, well, let’s look at their responses in aggregate and identify any kind of, um, precursors to them leaving. So here was what we did, this, this analysis that we’ll show you here. 

Charles Rogel | 16:52 

We identified those who left the organization within six months of taking the survey. We compared those voluntary separations with those who stayed. And then we’re gonna be identifying and pointing out some of these predictors of voluntary turnover. Um, we’ve got a data set of 28 organizations who did this with this, this past couple years. And so here’s the data. Um, when we look at the greatest differences in Quest, so which questions do we see the biggest difference between those that left and those that stayed? So voluntary separation percent or, uh, percent favorable is the yellow bar. My job is fulfilling and challenging. 38% of those that left the organization voluntarily agreed with that statement. They said agree or strongly agree on a five point scale compared to everyone else that stayed 77% agreement on that statement. So they weren’t feeling very fulfilled and challenged in their position. 

Charles Rogel | 17:45 

They didn’t feel like they belonged here. Only 53% of those that left the organization agreed with that statement compared to 80% of those that stayed. So big difference on that question. We ask another question kind of directly, a direct measure of this concept choosing to remain even if a job with similar pain benefits were available elsewhere. Well, yeah, there were some early indicators. Only 46% of this group agreed with that statement compared to 73%. Now, it is interesting because again, maybe within three months of, of taking the survey, they got a fantastic job offer. So they left. So again, you know, some would agree they weren’t, you know, uh, immediately thinking of leaving, but, you know, they didn’t feel like their work was valued, opportunities for advancement. Those perceptions were lower. Um, they didn’t feel as listened to in this valuing feedback. And then it’s interesting, here’s the only supervisor question that shows up on this list where my supervisor supports my efforts to grow. A lot of times we say we don’t leave organizations, we leave bad managers. Well, I’ll show you some more data here, but this is saying it’s other stuff. And then here’s growth. So growth advancement is a clear theme that shows up here feeling like I belong, um, feeling valued, listen. So you can see some of these sentiments that really show up on this data around what might be causing people to look around, right? 

Matt Wride | 19:05 

Yeah. But Charles, you, you’re right in the sense that the technically the data set may say that it’s, that managers may get high scores. Yeah. But managers are really directly involved in things like growth and development and pushing those opportunities, advocating for their teams, having one-on-ones where they’re a big part of it. So it’s an indirect, uh, mechanism, if you will, as opposed to direct where, where you need managers championing those things for their employees. 

Charles Rogel | 19:36 

Agreed. And, and I’m curious, I’m gonna show you some exit survey here, data here too. So if you all have exit surveys that you’re doing and other reasons that you’re seeing bubbling up as the main reason for people leaving, we’d love to see that too. One thing we don’t typically ask on our employee surveys is stuff about pay or compensation. Um, if with clients who do ask that, I see that as a reason as well. Uh, but since we’re not asking that on most, in most cases, we’re not seeing that on this list. Um, here are the smallest differences. So what wasn’t bugging people when they left? Well, actually, here’s that compensation question, <laugh>. Um, we do ask this with a subset of our clients. Um, but when we look at these differences, um, you know, what’s working for people? Well, these are basically not the reasons why people are leaving. So they feel like they’re treated equally. Um, manager safety kind of, or manager encouraging safety compensation. Most people, we see low agreement on this statement, whether we ask it. That’s why we say don’t ask it, right? We’re, you know, less, you know, half the people would kind of agree about compensation, which is pretty typical. 

Matt Wride | 20:40 

I, but the, the thing is, is that’s 48% of those who left agree ag, uh, agreed. Agree. Agreed. 54%. Like it’s almost the same. It’s kind of a, one of those metrics that doesn’t tell us anything. 

Charles Rogel | 20:51 

Exactly. So, yeah, so we don’t factor that in. Um, you know, people, a lot of teamwork questions in here, vision and goals, seeing positive results, kind of a sense of impact, the i in our magic model and collaboration. So, you know, teamwork was working for people and some of these other items. Um, so this was, you know, interesting to say, Hey, this is what’s working 

Matt Wride | 21:11 

For people well, but 

Charles Rogel | 21:12 

Yeah, 

Matt Wride | 21:12 

This is what’s really interesting. Belonging, we noticed a really difference in belonging, and yet they like their team, 

Charles Rogel | 21:20 

Right? 

Matt Wride | 21:20 

So what that tells us, and it’s something we’re learning, is, is that you have three types of managers, Charles, you have org first managers, team, first managers, and then me, first managers, well, we don’t know, we don’t wanna talk about me first managers, but team First managers can build great, great collaboration and a great sense within their team, but it’s really that org first manager that we’re looking at, because it’s belonging to the org that matters. Not just belonging to a team. They need to feel part of the, the broader mission and purpose of their organization. 

Charles Rogel | 21:53 

Sure. Um, so here’s to answer, what about the supervisor impact? What were their perceptions about the direct manager before they left the organization? There are some differences here. We already pointed out the top item here around growth, where we saw the biggest, one of the biggest differences. But here’s another one about, you know, creating a positive energizing workplace. A big difference there. Uh, 61% agreement compared to 80% being treated with fairness in respect. So there is a difference. Um, these might not be the main reason. Well, with some people it is their manager, obviously that does show up in our results, but in the aggregate, we’re seeing, you know, differences but not as great on as some of those other topics. Um, so yeah, there is an impact or an influence here that a manager can have. 

Charles Rogel | 22:41 

All right, so exit survey findings. So the data set here, um, we do exit surveys with kind of a subset of our organizations that we work with. Um, we had enough in the database to identify 15 organizations who are using some of the same or similar questions. So we could get some benchmark data here. And again, we’re looking at percent favorable, which is the percentage of agree and strongly agree, um, statements. It is over four years. So again, it’s a little bit of a broader benchmark. What’s going on here where you can see career advancement, this growth kind of topic, um, less agreement, only three 33% of people who left agreeing with these statements, um, recommends a great place to work. Valuing input, stress tools and resources, training and matching my career interests. Again. So these are the items that on exit surveys where we kind of ask a different subset of questions, show up with less agreement overall. Um, anything else here, Matt, you want to point out or talk to? 

Matt Wride | 23:39 

Well, some of ’em are obvious, right? Yeah. I mean, if you left, you’re not gonna work. You’re not gonna have a net promoter score. I would recommend this as an organization is a great place. You’re not, you’re not gonna see it. But the but growth, it is one that stands out to us that, um, people leave when they don’t see a path. We, we talk about the three Ps all the time. Every employee needs a purpose. They need a path and they need a place. And if managers aren’t watching those, and so when I look at these exit survey responses, I see those three Ps pop up all the time, purpose, path in place. 

Charles Rogel | 24:14 

Yeah, really good point. And, and, um, sometimes, you know, managers shy away from having a conversation about career growth because they’re like, well, there isn’t anything I can offer you right now, but still it’s important. And you might say, yeah, we’re gonna lose people after three years because they will kind of tap out or, or grow out of their position. But that’s fine. We just need to kind of set those expectations and work with them. Alright, so another type of analysis we do is looking at intent to stay, or we call it our attrition index. We’re looking at the factors that the satisfaction element here at the bottom of the model that I referenced earlier in our presentation, we do a similar exercise where we ask another subset of questions that, um, give us a bead on their intent to stay. One of those questions is that I choose to remain at this organization. 

Charles Rogel | 25:03 

Um, and if people are, again, saying strongly agree to most of these statements, we’d say they’re fully committed or content or, or whatever. Here we’re breaking this out and saying, well, if you are less, or if you’re undecided in our database, or if you are a high potential for turnover. So when we ask, you know, look at our entire database over the past four years, we find that like 20% of people are undecided and 8% have this high potential for turnover. Then we say, well, what’s bugging these people? Why are they less committed to stay with your organization? Now we’re looking at the questions on the survey they answered where they said, disagree or strongly disagree. So of this 20%, 36% of them disagreed with working effectively across departments and functions. Here’s communication, senior leaders going on, knowing what’s going on, but here’s advancement and growth, which we saw before. So no surprise here. Um, on the right hand side, if you’ve really checked out and are looking around what health and wellbeing, 71% of this population disagreed with that statement. Um, you can see some similar items. Here’s growth or professional growth and advancement. So again, this theme bubbles up again, when we look at this, uh, data in this way. 

Charles Rogel | 26:18 

Uh, taking it one step further, um, if we look at these people in this group that are undecided, and we, we peel out just the questions about workloads. So those 20% of people who are undecided about staying, we look at their perceptions about workload using these questions, and there is far less agreement comparatively. So only 45 to 39% agreement on these statements. A lot of neutral responses and a lot more disagree responses too when we’re looking at workload, healthy work-life balance, stress, and, uh, again, reasonable work-life balance. So these items typically show up on that list when I’m working with a client, I’ll see workload growth opportunities and voice type questions continually as the items that are bugging people, causing them to be less, um, uh, committed. 

Charles Rogel | 27:12 

All right, so, and then I think I got another thing. Okay, so what are we seeing right now? So in 2022, here’s some fresh data. Um, we’re looking at some of these, uh, intent to stay questions similar to our anchor questions. So if people are confident in the future, we’re seeing a slight dip from 2022. We saw 88% agreement out of our entire database. Everyone in our global database in 2021 this year, it dropped to 84%. That’s a pretty significant decrease when we’re looking at all the data in our global global database. Uh, recommend is a great place to work. Uh, slight decrease two points, and then choosing to remain, uh, larger decrease 3% difference from what we saw in 2021. Now this might change. So as people anticipate a recession, they tend to hunker down and stay with an organization longer to kind of write it out. Um, so we might see kind of a, a recalibration here in terms of what these pe these perceptions turn into in 2023. Matt, anything else you wanna say about retention in general before we, other 

Matt Wride | 28:16 

Than we can actually see these? We, we, there are times where you’ll see these numbers go down, but then the actual rates, the quit rates are not because of the hunkered down. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the quit rates actually stay low. Yeah. And so, so it’s interesting. It’s the one area where we break the correlation because they hunker down, but yet they are saying, I don’t know if I wanna stay here. <laugh>. 

Charles Rogel | 28:40 

Right, right. So, um, anyway, so this is, you know, kind of how we’re getting at this. There’s gonna be some disruption here. This is something we’re gonna be tracking in 2023 pretty closely. So we were interested in work-life balance. Um, and it’s interesting, this is kind of changing a bit. I I’m almost reversing this to life work balance. So if you think about it from an employee’s perception, they’re thinking about life work balance. We’re calling it work-life balance as an employer. Here are some of the questions that we ask on this topic, and here are some of the trends that we’re seeing. So promoting a reasonable work-life balance, we’re seeing that dip, uh, 70% agreement compared to 75% healthy, uh, balancing person. You know, kind of another way to ask the question that some of our clients use. Yeah, it dipped a bit. And here’s workload and stress. 

Charles Rogel | 29:26 

We kind of showed, showed you that some of these similar questions already, but this is a factor. What I’m seeing with clients specifically is it’s, uh, a lot of times, um, uh, unique to a job function, job role, um, you know, areas, departments within an organization, it’s usually not enterprise wide. Um, so again, we’re trying to say people are valuing this, this is kind of a higher priority, is what we saw in 2022 DEI and culture. You know, this has been very interesting as we’ve kind of been monitoring and, and question or, you know, asking these questions. Number one, it’s a very kind of US-centric topic as we work with our international clients. You know, we’re not looking at breakouts by ethnicity, for example, um, across Europe or Africa or Asia. It’s mostly within the United States that it’s very pertinent. Um, but we are looking at this by gender, um, and, uh, by job level, different things like that. 

Charles Rogel | 30:24 

So, um, we’re, you know, if we look at DEI, diversity is kind of this first question that, that we track and develop people, diverse backgrounds. We’re seeing it kind of improve slightly if we, uh, feeling treated equally or equitably higher perceptions here, which is interesting. So 84%, these are kind of trending, uh, or, or maintaining some stability. And this, this inclusive environment, um, we kind of included or had enough data to start tracking in 2021. It decreased a bit. And so as people are thinking, what does inclusivity mean, um, yeah, we’re seeing a difference, uh, a pretty big drop in perceptions there. Belonging. Yeah. A lot of clients are turning this into DEIB, and so here’s our belonging question. That’s been pretty stable. 

Charles Rogel | 31:11 

Um, what we’re seeing as well, uh, you know, as I, as we analyze comments as people ask other questions, another good question to ask here is, uh, within our organizations, you know, our efforts to promote diversity, equity, inclusion, have created a better environment or something, you know, so we’re trying to track are people seeing an impact, uh, from our efforts? And, um, it really has seen a positive impact in organizations who have had an emphasis on this topic. And it’s either through education, um, you know, speakers that they’re bringing in, whatever, it’s having a positive impact on the entire employee population overall. Can I, 

Matt Wride | 31:49 

Can I, can we go back and just pause for a second? So yeah, 

Matt Wride | 31:53 

We, we are in the process of a bit of a shift here at decision wise. And I think across the country, as you said, is particularly in a, a United States thing, we’re, we’re shifting in DEI away from, uh, quota based, uh, orientation towards outcome based. So if you look at these questions, they’re more quota oriented, like creating an inclusive environment is a top priority. What’s interesting is we start to measure things like, I feel like I can speak up without fear of retribution, or my manager takes the time to listen to all of us equally, we’re finding that the, they’re not as high. So when you start measuring outcomes or I, I see people with different backgrounds progressing and, and, and, um, finding growth opportunities in this organization when we start to measure outcomes. So just one thing, I would encourage those on the, on the webinar, think about questions that measure the outcome in addition to measuring sort of the quota, as I say, or the, the, the, the goal, because those are not as high and they may reflect a little bit more what’s actually going on. 

Charles Rogel | 33:03 

That’s a really good point. And we are seeing a shift in this, like this is a moving target. Now for us, as we’re trying to analyze this, we can usually, our employee surveys, we measure this somewhat lightly. Like we include some questions, sometimes other clients include like five or 10 questions around these topics. Um, but we’re able to do SA lot of analysis around different populations. I like Ashley’s comment here for, um, Virginia. It’s changing to diversity opportunity and inclusion. Um, which, which I think is uh, you know, gets, you know, do we have equal opportunity or equitable opportunities? And then, um, you know, the other question is Debra asked, do we have this broken out by generations or age groups? And we do that as well. And one finding we’ve seen there is that with your younger employees, it is just an expectation that we are emphasizing DEI like that’s, yeah, that’s a given. 

Charles Rogel | 33:54 

We’re supposed to be doing this. This is no dub. With older employees, older generations, they’re like, oh, this is great. This is, you know, wonderful. So it’s brand new to them. And um, they’re feeling like, Hey, this is kind of opening my eyes a bit. Whereas the younger generation is like saying, this is kind of basic stuff. Like, yeah, we get it. Um, so it’s interesting to kind of see that reaction, but generally the outcome is, yeah, we need to emphasize things. We need to keep the conversation going and it’ll morph and change as you kind of work through these topics, uh, within your, uh, organization. Um, I’m also interested in other trends. So if anyone wants to enter the chat and provide any other perspectives around what you’re measuring or how you’re describing this, um, that’s, that’s helpful. Uh, the culture questions we do here. 

Charles Rogel | 34:43 

So just a couple items. You know, we talk about belonging already, which we kind of categorize as culture. We ask these two questions quite regularly around feeling comfortable in the culture or being myself at work. The culture question dipped a bit, so a 4% difference in the culture. Some of that is an outcome of, well, I’m working from home more, or maybe I’m not sure what the culture is. I got hired during the pandemic. I’ve never seen my boss face to face. So some of the things that we hear. So, um, so yeah, it has changed a bit and we’re trying to define what that is. And there’s a lot of work you can do in terms of shaping or promoting your culture. Um, again, these are kind of some light measurements on the topic. We’re trying to gauge more alignment with the culture here. Um, being myself at work looks great again, uh, that’s improving as we’ve started measuring that more. 

Charles Rogel | 35:34 

All right, so let me transition a bit from here, um, and kind of get to this, uh, I think it’s our last topic here around health and wellbeing. You know, we were, we saw some importance here, right? So the pandemic really kind of kicked off this first question for us, um, being used more often and 2020, there were high perceptions here, 82%. So there’s a lot of emphasis on keeping people healthy accommodations, stuff like that. People noticed it. Um, now it’s dropped off a bit and some of it has been residual. So if you see in like, you know, this year as we’re looking at our first three quarters of data, 71% agreement with this question compared to 82%. And some of that has been kind of this, uh, frustration from some people feeling like, Hey, you forced us back in the office. That doesn’t seem like you’re considering my health and wellbeing seeing, you know, with the pandemic still being around or something. 

Charles Rogel | 36:28 

Um, but there’s also been less emphasis and I think people are just kind of noticing that it’s not a top priority anymore. We’re almost back to business as usual. Um, my, my take also is I want to change this question a bit. So instead of a top priority, maybe it’s a priority, maybe it’s, uh, being emphasized regularly, whatever, but we’re measuring this maybe differently now. Care comes up, it’s dipped a little bit. I’ve seen care drop in healthcare organizations specifically because they have gotten beat up a bit as they’ve been forced to work during the pandemic and have felt a little bit more put upon than other employees. And so that’s been a big concern. Um, and also the care question tends to trend a little bit with people’s, um, higher concern with pay and, um, compensation. So as they’re feeling like they’re not compensated as well, then the care question takes a hit too. But supervisor care trending pretty well tracking pretty evenly overall. 

Matt Wride | 37:30 

Yeah. Variation, variation on that top question is, is my supervisor makes wellbeing a top priority for my team. Yeah, I like that question as we start to think about really matching questions with where the onus, the burden of, of actually the outcome should be. Um, I’m not sure wellbeing is something that organizations can do. They have certain structural, structural things they can provide, but the way we’re thinking about wellbeing in a modern context, you know, not just employee assistant pro assistance programs, but actual, that, that is very much a, a, a manager driven, um, conversation. We know that here, uh, we have a, we have one of our, one of our great leaders, Zach, is constantly measuring wellbeing for his team. You and I both know that. And, and that’s what we wanna see is our supervisors taking that on. 

Charles Rogel | 38:25 

That’s really good point. And what we also seen is wellbeing. Like if it’s defined as a wellbeing program, then yeah, there’s a different way we wanna measure that in your organization. Mental health is also another topic that some of our clients have been kind of trying to zone in on or understand better in terms of providing resources. Um, and so this is a, you know, a topic we’re trying to say, well, what does it mean to care about us or feel cared about? What does that equate to? Um, and again, accommodations from your supervisor have a big, uh, impact there. So, um, 

Matt Wride | 38:59 

We just had a great comment, um, from m Brian said We use a four point scale to push folks, either negative or positive. They’ve taken out the middle of the road to sort of get some clarity. And that is, that’s actually a great idea on certain questions to not allow that gray area. 

Charles Rogel | 39:16 

Yeah. And it does allow you to kind of say, well make a decision, right? So tell us, <laugh>, tell us, tell if it’s working or not work. ’cause we’re trying to get, like a lot of times you get a neutral statement, you’re like, well, how do I action on that? I don’t know if that’s a good or bad score. We look at neutral statements a lot of times to say, when I answer this question, I was thinking sometimes yes, sometimes no. Like, um, yeah, it works sometimes, other times it doesn’t. I’m gonna put neutral instead of disagree or or agree. Um, so sometimes that neutrality helps and that also tells us that we have some opportunity to influence those perceptions in a positive way. And so we can, you know, that’s a population we can get after, or a statement we can get after. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative>. Um, but yeah, the, so the downside, um, so there’s several upsides to four point to get to that. The downside is that it, uh, doesn’t allow us to benchmark anymore. So we can’t really give you a good comparison if you wanna look at that. And 

Matt Wride | 40:09 

This is a long ranging debate in survey science. I mean, it still is best practices to provide the middle or the, I don’t know, because there are honestly, people look at you and say, I have a feeling and I can’t express it. You’re forcing me to express a scenario. So when you use four point scales, it’s, you really wanna use it kind of in just these key areas where you feel like it’s an either or Mm-hmm <affirmative>. But generally I would not recommend adopting a four point scale across the board because it’s proven that it gives you bad data. ’cause it just, it forces that you need to know the undecided is just as important as, as knowing those that have an opinion one way or the other. But again, I support what this, what Ann Brian said in certain areas. It’s a great little great little device. 

Charles Rogel | 40:58 

Um, so again, just revisiting as we kind of conclude here, what we’ve been trending, we’re, we’re trying to, you know, we think retention as we kinda revisit some of these topics is going to, um, is gonna change a lot. So we’ve been, you know, there’s been so much talk about a recession hitting us right now, but the employment data is kind of flying in the face of that right now. But that could all change the beginning of the year, first quarter of next year. So depending upon how many companies or organizations kind of put this hiring freeze on, we’ll see, I imagine those that kind of do a hiring freeze too soon are gonna feel they might suffer a bit, right? ’cause people are gonna be overworked, their managers are gonna be screaming, I need people I can’t meet production quotas or whatever without it. 

Charles Rogel | 41:44 

And so they might take a hit if they did that too soon. So it is a risky game, uh, a lot of uncertainty and there might be some frustration because of that. Um, but you know, we’re trying to ride this out. Um, I predict, so we’ll get into our prediction. I won’t give you all our predictions I guess ’cause our next webinar we’re gonna set up our predictions for 2023 and trends to watch out for and what we’re gonna be monitoring. But, um, flexibility I have seen this year is still very important for people. So how we’re developing those, uh, our policies. Fairness has been a big topic. So as we have different hybrid policies across an organization, one department looks at another and says, well, why do they get more days at home than we do? Or why is the tech department full-time at home? You know, that’s a common response I hear. So just navigating that and figuring it out. I’ve also seen expectations of realigned, like it was a big deal at first and now we’re kind of used to it and okay, this is working. And so it’s not such a big deal with a lot of companies. Matt, you’re gonna say something, um, 

Matt Wride | 42:45 

Just on flexibility. I, I would love to see what people’s general feel on flexibility is right now. Like what’s their sense? Is their organization embracing flexibility or do they feel like there’s a bit of a pullback by senior leaders? I would love to know from the chat where generally kind of what people are seeing in that context. 

Charles Rogel | 43:07 

Uh, yeah. And some clients, you know, they are selling their buildings and it’s like, we are remote or we’re mostly remote and we’re gonna lease out all these floors of our building now. So, um, that’s been interesting. Uh, yeah, here’s a few people pull back from our senior leaders. Um, the, the benefit again about flexibility, and you all know this as HR professionals, is that you’ve got a much broader recruiting platform or recruiting, uh, pool to pull from if you can hire people remote all over the world. So, um, you know, there’s those plus and minuses there. Um, let’s see, workload, you know, this is gonna be, this is the one I think that’s gonna be real hard for people to navigate because again, if we’re gonna pull back on hiring, that’s gonna exacerbate workload in a lot of areas and you’re gonna suffer a bit and you might lose, some people might get some burnout, burnout’s kind of the antithesis of engagement. And so that, that’s what you’re gonna have to kind of manage a bit with your folks. And if you can give them some light at the end of the tunnel and kind of say, this is what we’re doing and how we’re predicting this, you can navigate that. So I am just, 

Matt Wride | 44:16 

Just some of these chat it people are saying there’s pullback, I like this one. It still feels very mixed. Senior leader by senior leader. Mm-Hmm. This whole notion of flexibility is not being DA is not driven by data. And that bugs you and I, right? We, we need leaders to be evidence-based decision making here as opposed to kind of gut. But I still feels like there’s a lot of gut going on when it comes to, to flexibility because I don’t, I don’t think you can just say productivity’s down or any of that when you give people flexible work. Um, we don’t see that at our firm. Certainly Charles is that Yeah. When we grant flexibility, we do not see a decline in productivity. 

Charles Rogel | 44:54 

Yeah. And I think, um, it’s funny ’cause like when we look at individual employee preferences, what I’ve seen is a continuum. So there’s like, you know, 10% that wanna work home, work from home, full-time, 10% that wanna be in the office full-time, and then a mix in between in terms of the number of days that they prefer to be at home or in the office. Um, and then in organizations, you’re right, it’s very much the preference of the manager. Like, uh, yes. You know, I feel like we’re productive when I see everyone here compared to, you know, we want to provide a lot of flexibility. Um, well, well 

Matt Wride | 45:27 

One of those reasons I just want to comment on this is when people are present, it’s easier for the manager. So there’s this natural bias that when I see you, it kind of makes, because you have to be way more intentional when people are remote. You have to be more organized, more scheduled, more focused. And I think that some of that is that bias. ’cause it’s actually easier when the manager can just sort of drop in and assign tasks because he sees you walk in the hall. So 

Charles Rogel | 45:53 

For sure, you know, and the other dynamic is those organizations where you have to have people either at the factory or, you know, serving customers at the office and then there’s others, other departments that can work from home. So that creates a little resentment from those that always have to be here compared to others. And, um, yeah, so I’ve seen that play out in results too. Um, the other thing around flexibility, and you touched on this Matt, is just having like, um, uh, significant events or experiences together. People are craving connection and they’re craving the opportunity to meet with their teammates, but not just to show up at, like, if you were forcing someone in the office and like you’re, you’re there with two or three other people, then they’re not getting that just to kind of, um, to fill the, you know, days in the office policy. They’re, they’re craving some team activity. 

Matt Wride | 46:43 

Yeah. I wanted to ask about that is as people have kind of gone to hybrid, how many have seen events taking a center stage in creating event-based, uh, re reasons to come to the office, you know, so that the office is event-based. I know that sounds weird and I’m not really describing what I’m trying to say, but I’d be curious if anybody’s seen that as well. ’cause that’s being talked about is when they do come in and as a way to encourage people to come in. We’re kind of doing event connections and event trainings and, and it’s just kind of, we’re thinking about it in terms of events. So Yep. 

Charles Rogel | 47:20 

And people, another finding we’re seeing are people are craving more in-person training as opposed to virtual. And so, um, you know, know, we thought with the pandemic, well training’s going virtual and it’s gonna stay virtual because why would we wanna bring everyone to one location to do this? And it’s, we’re finding some pushback, right? People like to kind of meet and they feel like it’s more valuable, more impactful if they can. Um, 

Matt Wride | 47:46 

Interesting. Some things they mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, some people call ’em collaboration days, some say they’ll notice they come in for the event and leave, but then others we’re seeing, hey, yeah, that, that they’re coming in for training in the fir they haven’t been trained together in three years. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And so it’s working well to create connections. So, 

Charles Rogel | 48:03 

Um, yeah. And so those are important. So if you can create an event where everyone’s there and it’s fun and we get to connect and develop relationships, that’s great. Introverts still might hate it, but, uh, but it’s good in the long run. 

Matt Wride | 48:17 

<laugh>, did you see that, that that twi Twitter, not LinkedIn debate where, um, it was kind of like this, I don’t wanna have, I don’t wanna be forced to have fun, right? I’m tired of being forced to have fun. <laugh>. 

Charles Rogel | 48:30 

Exactly. 

Matt Wride | 48:31 

Leave me alone. I’m done with the zoom meeting. I don’t wanna have virtual coffee <laugh>. That’s pretty funny. 

Charles Rogel | 48:37 

Um, you know, and, and as we look at DEI and culture, and that’s a, you know, again, moving target, it’s evolving. We’re trying to figure this out. Um, you know, it’s interesting, there’s been in organizations where I’ve seen a lot of emphasis on this. They’ve been successful, generally very positive, um, comments in the survey, I have seen some people push back, um, very few. So a small percentage of comments are people saying, why are we doing this? We’re creating a problem where there is none. Um, this is forcing political views on us. I don’t like it. You know, so some of the, some people don’t like it and kind of feel like it’s, uh, uh, it’s extra or not needed, but for the most part, others very much like it and enjoy that experience. Um, wellbeing not as big of a theme as we thought it was gonna be, but um, still kind of topics that our companies, or at least our clients were interested in, in knowing about. 

Matt Wride | 49:34 

As I said, the little bit that’s on us, we’ve gotta figure out how to measure wellbeing better, that it’s not, wellbeing is so many factors from the flexibility needed to manage the needs of my family, still get my job done. It’s not just mental health, it’s not just those types of things. It’s not just even getting to the gym. It’s, it is this really complex idea. We’re still working on it. 

Charles Rogel | 49:58 

Agreed. So stay tuned. We are, uh, preparing our predictions for 20, 23 topics, themes that we think are gonna trend or be important to measure in your organizations that impact the employee experience. And so join us on our next webinar. Keep following, uh, we’ll be kind of trending a lot of these same topics too. But thanks everyone for joining and especially thanks for all the chat comments. I think they really added a lot of value to our presentation today. 

Matt Wride | 50:23 

Yeah. Hey, can I ask the, I just wanna ask the audience 30 seconds more. Yeah. How many of you are reevaluating your work tech or your HR tech? We’re sort of seeing that there was a rush to fill the need and a lot of great HR tech solutions were built and now people are sort of reevaluating ’em and saying, are we headed to work Tech 2.0? So if anybody is doing that, I would love to hear that in the chat. But it sounds, it looks like they’re all leaving. They’re all telling you, oh yeah. Sorry. 

Charles Rogel | 50:50 

You did a good job, Charles. So <laugh> <laugh>, no problem. All right, well thanks everyone. Signing off. Hope to catch on our next session. Bye now. Yeah.