Does your business use employee surveys? Most businesses do, but only some make the most of these surveys. These employee surveys can give a unique insight into how your employees view the workplace, how engaged they are and the current obstacles they’re facing. Now, thanks to modern technology, you can get even better insight from employee surveys by combining them with people analytics.
People analytics helps businesses collect and analyze numerous employee data points related to performance, engagement, satisfaction and more. When you use people analytics and employee surveys in tandem, you can make real actionable changes to make your business run better and make it a better place to work for employees. In today’s guide, we’ll walk you through integrating people analytics with employee surveys and how you can turn the resulting data into actionable insights. Let’s dive in.
With all the data and analytics we have at our fingerprints, it can be easy to forgo the traditional methods of data gathering like employee questionnaires. However, employee questionnaires will always have their place. These surveys, when conducted regularly and thoughtfully constructed, can reveal the thoughts, feelings and experiences of your workforce in a way few other methods can. You can look at data about your employees all day, but these surveys can give voice to that data.
With the right employee questionnaire, you can understand what needs to be improved and what employees like about the current workplace. You can also track trends over time to see if employee sentiment is improving or if things are getting worse. You can also customize your surveys to hone in on specific pain points, such as leadership effectiveness, culture, etc. When used the right way, these surveys can be very versatile for gathering useful insights.
While survey data can be extremely useful, it’s better when you don’t use it on its own. Integrating workplace analytics with your survey data can give you a more holistic view of your organization and provide more in-depth insights.
For example, your survey may reveal that employees are feeling burnt out. While some employees might shed some additional light on this, it can be hard to pinpoint the main contributors to burnout. But, with workplace analytics, you can see that many of your employees are working more than 40 hours a week, some aren’t using up vacation time and various teams aren’t getting enough focus time out of meetings. From there, you can implement strategies to encourage work-life balance and reduce meeting frequency so there’s more time in the day for focused work.
You can also use workplace analytics to help structure your survey. For example, if you notice engagement metrics are off, you could include direct questions in the survey to give you more details and insights from the employees. This integrated approach allows organizations to move beyond surface-level observations and develop strategies that address the underlying issues, leading to more effective solutions.
If you want to augment your workplace surveys with people analytics, it’s a good idea to identify key metrics that align with your business goals and provide additional context to survey questions and answers. Below, we’ve highlighted some key metrics you can use to augment your surveys.
Productivity and performance are always important KPIs for nearly every business. These metrics can include tasks completed, time spent on tasks and any other output measures your business uses to see how efficiently and effectively work is getting done. By using these KPIs to augment survey data, you can gain insight into obstacles employees are having in completing work, how engagement affects performance and more.
For example, you could see in your analytics that most employees aren’t using key functions in a software platform that is supposed to help them. A survey could reveal that employees find the software confusing. You would then have actionable insight and could implement more training or find a new platform that is more intuitive for your employees.
Burnout is a concern for businesses, as it cannot only affect performance but also employee satisfaction and well-being. Employees who are burnt out may be more likely to leave the company and won’t be able to perform optimally when they are working. Engagement plays a similar role, as employees who are engaged with their work are more likely to be productive and high performers. Conversely, employees who have low engagement may not feel connected to their work and perform at a lower level.
Analyzing engagement and burnout indicators can help organizations understand where the pain points are and why employees aren’t engaged. For example, you could see in your survey results that employees don’t feel like they have enough time to complete their work, leading to burnout and low engagement. Your analytics could help you find the reasons employees are pressed for time, giving you the data you need to make actionable strategies to address the issues.
Retention and turnover are key indicators for employee loyalty and satisfaction. Low retention and high turnover rates are costly and disruptive for your company, so it’s important to identify the factors causing employees to leave. Exit surveys can be a great way to get more information on the reasoning behind their departure. You can also conduct surveys to find out why long-term employees stay, so you can capitalize on those while improving on the reasons employees leave. You can augment this information with people analytics by keeping track of the turnover and retention trends and seeing if they improve over time.
Collaboration and focus time are needed for productivity. Collaboration metrics help you understand how employees interact and communicate with each other while focus time metrics show how much uninterrupted time employees have to concentrate on their work.
Using people analytics, you can measure the frequency of collaboration, the quality of communications, the time spent in meetings, focus time and various other collaboration and focus time indicators. You can then gain insights from surveys to see how employees feel about their collaboration ability and focus time to see if there are roadblocks. Your survey and analytics results can work hand-in-hand to help you pinpoint these obstacles and implement necessary changes, like restructuring workflows or investing in new collaboration tools.
Finally, people analytics and surveys can be used to measure and improve leadership effectiveness. Surveys can give you the employee view of leaders and if they feel they’re getting enough attention from leadership or if leadership is performing adequately. Performance metrics can help back up these viewpoints and help companies find where improvements, training and interventions are needed.
Isolated data points can sometimes be useful, but you need a holistic view to enact real, actionable change that improves your business. Integrating people analytics with survey data is a great way to understand your workforce and get more nuanced insights to improve the employee experience.
Collecting data through surveys is only the first step; the real value comes from turning this data into actionable strategies. Once survey results are analyzed and key metrics are identified, organizations need to develop a plan to address the findings. This involves setting clear objectives, prioritizing actions and assigning responsibilities. Let’s touch on how you can implement change and iterate effectively.
Implementing change based on survey results and people analytics can be challenging. Change management requires careful planning, clear communication and ongoing support to ensure that the changes are successful and sustainable. Here are the steps to follow to implement change and iterate on it:
If you need an effective way to track workplace analytics, Worklytics has you covered.
If you want to understand your organization better and get the people analytics you need to understand survey results, Worklytics is your solution. Worklytics is a comprehensive workplace analytic platform that can help you get insight into metrics like collaboration, work-life balance, employee engagement, leadership effectiveness, performance and much more. Workltyics also anonymizes the data to protect the privacy of your employees and keep your data secure. Ready to learn more about Worklytics and see how it can help you get a holistic view of your business? Schedule a demo today.
