Perception matters in engagement and performance
Asia is the driving force behind global engagement decline.
Now that’s a strong statement but this is backed by the Aon Hewitt 2017 Trends in Global Employee Engagement Report which shows two global regions improving (Latin America and Africa) but drops for Europe, North America and Asia. Engagement is measured in this study with a Say, Stay, Strive model where employees are asked if they say positive things about their organisation, if they intend to stay at the organisation for a long time and lastly, if they are motivated to strive to give their best efforts to help the organisation succeed.
This challenge, while tremendous for Asia, is also one that may present an opportunity. And it is one that SelfDrvn may be able to play into successfully.
Boosting Engagement in Nettium
A few years ago, Nettium, a tech company founded and run by Lam Mun Choong, was battling a big problem. Many of the millennials joining their young and growing company were leaving due to the mundane nature of the IT support roles they were playing. Leadership understood that something needed to be done quickly to address this and they decided that an employee recognition system would be the best place to start.
They began with very specific things initially, very focused on how they could be attractive and how they could retain good talent. Those early strategies worked but at a huge cost because for one, nearly all of the plans they initiated were manual in nature. It was tedious and involved two full time administrative staff. The human element meant a great deal of errors to deal with because things were largely dealt with on a spreadsheet with titles and “badges” placed besides employee names. They grappled with one fact – it was not very motivating to deal with or to look at. As such, people rarely took the time to look at it.
The group of the people who were at the centre of this endeavour were the support staff, many of whom took on the night shift, which meant foregoing a normal social life. The system actually encouraged staff to volunteer for the night shift as much as possible, allowing reward points to be racked up.
The manual approach was not effective.
All the information had to be keyed in individually into a spreadsheet. Sometimes, staff did not report this information, sometimes the administrators failed to capture it. It was clear, after a while, that a better system was called for. So, the team looked to technology to examine where it could sit in all this, to remove redundancy, streamline processes and allow for some degree of automation. They looked at this from two viewpoints – that of the administrators handling the project and that of the viewers, those who would be consuming the information generated.
The Answer?
This is where SelfDrvn came into the picture. It presented an all-in-one tech platform to retain, reward and engage talent. No more spreadsheets. No more emails bouncing to and fro – everyone was on the one platform. Nettium began to work in an environment where there was real-time, 24/7 feedback.
People were feeling, exchanging, sharing and responding in a timely manner and this became very obviously effective. Real-time feedback was, therefore, a huge success driver.
A community-based solution
Being on the cloud, it meant that anyone in the team could access the information at any time and not have to wait until data was shared. A greater level of transparency became apparent with a platform like this because it was a single interface to manage every thing and every person.
This really worked for Nettium, where like many other organisations today, millennials rule – more than 75% of their talent pool averages 26 years of age.
The tech platform meant a consolidation of everything – how information was keyed in, achievements logged, goals tracked and shared. It was a better way not only of capturing data and deriving insight but also of showing this off. Getting away from a boring spreadsheet which lacked a sense of dynamic action and moving to an app platform where everything was responsive, in real time and provided easy access to all through mobile, it was a success to both employer and employee. You’re looking at a seamless platform that gives you an opportunity to provide end-to-end care for your people, looking at data collection, context analysis, active participation, live results and social engagement.
Putting the employee in the driver’s seat
Making the move from a manual approach to a tech platform takes guts if you’ve not known anything else. You’re moving from an approach where you control all the data points and the insight to one where you put the employee in the driver’s seat. That’s part of the allure.
Platforms like SelfDrvn involve the employee in identifying what works and what does not as well as source new ideas about potential remedial action. Most organisations have top management defining remedial action but with platforms like these, increased employee involvement means a greater degree of ownership and therefore, greater responsibility on them, for making the workplace great again. It shifts the “I centric” viewpoint from that of the employer to that of the employee. Motivation levels rise, staff feel more supported and attrition is reduced. And that’s not a bad thing.
About SelfDrvn
SelfDrvn is a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform that helps organisations improve engagement with their employees and customers through effective communication, gamification and behavioural analytics.
To learn more about SelfDrvn’s platform and how it can benefit your organisation, contact the marketing department at this email: [email protected], or mobile: +01-8447700645. Alternatively, visit their website at www.selfdrvn.com.