Regardless of how talented and experienced your team is, there is always room for improvement in optimizing employee performance. Work overload, work-related burnout, team conflicts and toxic environments can heavily influence individual performance. 

• Use the SMART approach for your employees goals. This allows them to set their goals by being Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. 
• Conduct one-on-one meetings to address all professional challenges of your team. Allow your team members to learn new skills that align with their goals and interests. This not only improves the bond between your team and the organization, but gives them a motivational boost. 
• Avoid micromanaging your team, especially your remote workforce. Keep in mind that tracking your team’s performance is important. Use tools that allow your team to track their most productive work hours, so they know when their peak performance is reached.

• The company’s culture and value: Make sure that the mission, vision, and values of your business are aligning with the employees work ethic. 
• Legal Policy Framework: Address internal policies and legal requirements, ensuring that you remain compliant and employees have a clear understanding of workplace norms. 
• Work-life balance strategies: Show employees holiday schedules, leave policies, their work hours, and how your organization supports a work-life balance. 
• Development opportunities: Highlight training, performance reviews, and encourage career progression and growth.

• Encourage meetings with your employees, where they can share insights on new ideas they may have or best practices.
• Promote an open communication culture that creates a safe space for your teammates to share ideas and express their personal opinions with senior managers. This might motivate the team to excel in performance.
• Encourage knowledge-sharing and collaboration practices for your company’s work policies. This promotes a collaborative work culture.
• Encourage teamwork from different departments to share expertise with one another. Cross-functional team environments promote skill and knowledge sharing.

Therefore, it’s important to reward employees and make them feel valued about everything they are doing. In short, it’s important to consider the following:

• Meet together to celebrate individual milestones with each team member.
• Give out shout outs via email for employee efforts.
• Provide bonuses that may include promotions, monetary benefits, or something else your organization can offer.

Moreover, here are a few important tips you can follow:

• Decide performance review frequencies and schedule meetings based on each employees specific agendas
• Collect feedback from seniors in the team regarding employee performance, milestones reached or that need to be achieved, and all weak areas that need improvement.
• Make sure that all team members are present in the meeting for guiding teammates on work-related technicalities, challenges, and more. During performance reviews, you can also encourage team members to learn new skills on work based on the feedback they need.

• Remain flexible and avoid staying defensive. Conduct employee feedback surveys to learn more about what your team needs in case they can’t say it directly.
• Request clarifications. Asking clarifying questions is always important in case you have any doubts and concerns on how you can make something better.
• Pay close attention to actions, and not words. The most concerning part should be the way someone behaves during working hours.
• After you receive feedback, the best thing you can do is to take action instantly.

The post 9 Strategies to Improve Employee Performance appeared first on Shout.com.

Dennis Lodge

Before we get started, we should cover why employee engagement survey analysis is key for your business. Did you know that a staggering majority of employees are not engaged in their work?

In fact, according to one study, only 20 percent of employees worldwide are actually engaged in their work.

That means that the vast majority of people are just going through the motions day after day, without any real passion or enthusiasm for what they do. Why is this such a huge problem? Well, employee engagement is critical for any organization.

After all, it’s the employees who do the actual work and make things happen. If they’re not engaged and motivated, then the organization is going to suffer.

How can you get your employees more engaged?

One way is to conduct an employee engagement survey. But once you’ve collected all that data, what do you do with it?

This guide will teach you everything you need to know about analyzing employee engagement survey data so that you can take action and improve your workforce’s engagement levels. 

What is employee engagement?

Employee engagement has become a popular topic of discussion among businesses in recent years. But what is employee engagement, and why is it so important?

Employee engagement can be defined as a measure of how motivated, involved, and committed employees are to their work and their employer. Achieving high levels of employee engagement is essential for businesses to succeed for several reasons. Here are the most notable reasons:

Engaged employees are more productive

Studies have shown that engaged employees take less time off, and generally speaking, engaged workers are also more likely to stay with their company, which saves on the costs of recruiting and training new employees.

While it’s impossible to put a price tag on employee engagement, it’s clear that it offers businesses a wide range of benefits. With that in mind, it’s no surprise that so many companies are looking for ways to increase engagement levels among their workforce.

Engaged employees are more productive

A study by Gallup found that companies with engaged employees saw a 21% increase in profitability. In today’s competitive business landscape, companies that can create a culture of employee engagement will be the ones that thrive.

The study found that engaged employees are more likely to stay with their company, and they’re also more likely to go above and beyond for customers. As a result, organizations with engaged employees enjoy higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty.

In addition, engaged employees are more productive and have lower levels of absenteeism. Just like opting for resume help to increase your odds of landing a job, all of these factors add up to a significant competitive advantage for companies that can create a culture of employee engagement.

How to design an employee engagement survey

Optimizing your employee engagement survey analysis, you need to think carefully about its design.

There are a few key things you can do to ensure that your survey is successful. You’ll want to find a top-of-the-line survey maker to make sure you have all the tools and features you need to create an employee engagement survey.

The most important thing is to make sure that your survey covers all of the key areas that you want to measure. Here are the steps for designing an effective employee engagement survey:

Choose your topic

The first step in designing an employee engagement survey is to choose your topic. What do you want to learn from your employees? Do you want to find out about their satisfaction with their job, their level of engagement, or something else entirely?

The topic you choose will determine the type of questions you ask and the overall tone of the survey. Once you’ve decided on an issue, you can move on to the next step.

You’ll want to ask a mix of close-ended questions, which you can use to draw conclusions based on statistical analysis. Intersperse these with some open-ended questions that ask employees to expand on why they gave specific answers. This qualitative data will allow you to dig deeper into the why of it all.

Keep timing in mind

When designing an employee engagement survey, you’ll want to wait for the right time to ask employees to participate. You don’t want to administer the survey during a busy or stressful time for your employees. Not only will they struggle to prioritize the feedback, but that feedback may even be influenced because they’re under pressure.

For example, if you know that quarterly reviews are coming up, you might want to wait to administer the survey until after they’re over. In general, it’s best to conduct the employee survey when things are relatively calm at your company. That way, you’ll get more accurate results.

Set a duration and frequency

The next step is to set the duration and frequency of your survey. How long do you want the survey to be? And how often do you want to administer it?

Remember, you don’t want to overburden your employees with a long or frequent survey. A good rule of thumb is to keep the survey short (no more than 10 minutes) and administer it no more than once per quarter.

Write survey questions that provide actionable data

Once you’ve decided on your survey’s topic, timing, and frequency, it’s time to start thinking about the interactive questions you’ll ask. This is arguably the most important part of designing an effective employee engagement survey.

Your goal should be to identify questions that will provide results you can act on. In other words, you want to ask questions that will help you improve your employees’ experience at your company.

Here are a few examples of questions you might want to ask:

1. How engaged are you with your work?
2. Do you feel like your job is fulfilling?
3. Do you feel like your skills are being utilized?
4. Do you feel like you have the opportunity to grow and develop at your job?
5. Do you feel like your managers’ support and value your work?

These are just a few examples of questions you might want to ask. The important thing is to choose questions that will give you the information you need to make improvements.

3 Steps for employee engagement survey analysis

Once you’ve administered your employee engagement survey, it’s time to perform some data analysis. This can seem daunting, but it’s relatively simple if you follow these steps.

Step 1: Calculate the overall score

The first step is to calculate the overall score for each question. This will give you a general idea of how your employees feel about each issue.

To calculate the overall score, simply add up the number of employees who responded positively to each question and divide by the total number of respondents.

For example, let’s say you asked the question, “Do you feel like your job is fulfilling?” and 50% of your employees said yes. This means the overall score for this question would be 50%.

Step 2: Identify themes

The next step is to look for themes in the results. This will help you identify the areas that are most important to your employees. This is possibly the most important steps of employee engagement survey analysis.

To do this, simply read through the responses and look for patterns. What are employees saying about the company? Are there common complaints? What are employees most happy with?

Identifying themes will help you focus on the areas that are most important to your employees.

Step 3: Take action

Once you’ve analyzed your survey results, it’s time to take action. This is where you’ll use the information you’ve gathered to make improvements in your company.

First, you’ll want to develop a plan of action. This should include specific steps you’ll take to improve the areas that are most important to your employees.

Then, you’ll want to implement your plan and track the results. This will help you see if your efforts are making a difference.

What to do with employee engagement survey results

The results of these surveys can be both positive and negative. However, it is important to remember that even the most personalized custom survey is only a tool to help identify problems and potential solutions.

It is not a silver bullet that will solve all of your company’s problems. So what should you do with the results of an employee engagement survey?

First, you should take the time to review the results carefully. Look for patterns and trends that may be indicative of underlying issues. Identify areas for improvement and put together an action plan for all those who would be involved in the changes.

This plan should involve key stakeholders from across the company, including team managers, employees, and HR professionals. With Shout, there are lots of ways for you to share results, from spreadsheet and PDF exports to sharing your digital report with a URL link.

Finally, you should track your progress over time to ensure that your efforts are having a positive impact on employee engagement.

One of the best early ways to improve engagement is to make sure employees know that you’re now aware of their feedback (both negative and positive) and outline some of the ways you’re going to address it.

Wrapping up

Employee engagement is a critical issue for any company, so it’s super important to take employee engagement survey analysis seriously.

By taking the time to design and administer an employee engagement survey, you can gather the information you need to make improvements in your business. Use these tips to ensure that your survey is successful.

The post Guide to Employee Engagement Survey Analysis appeared first on Shout.com.

• 4 Reasons to conduct employee satisfaction surveys
  • 1. Build an understanding of your employees
  • 2. Improve your employees’ well-being
  • 3. Give your employees a voice
  • 4. Boost employee engagement
  • Ready to increase employee satisfaction?
• How to measure employee satisfaction
  • Employee satisfaction questions
  • Employee Net Promoter Score
• Wrapping up

Employee satisfaction surveys are crucial to the success of a company. It’s said that happy and satisfied employees work better with their teams, are more productive, and are more likely to stay with their companies for a longer period of time.

To understand how your employees are doing and if they have any concerns, conducting an employee satisfaction survey can be helpful.

Companies typically conduct customer satisfaction surveys but often neglect doing the same for their employees. As we previously mentioned in our blog, customers are the lifeline of your business and their experiences with you can contribute to your future success.

Similarly, your employees are also as important to your company, and knowing what they think is important to your continued success.

4 Reasons to conduct employee satisfaction surveys

If you need more information on why you should conduct an employee satisfaction survey, continue reading below.

1. Build an understanding of your employees

Employee satisfaction surveys are one way for you to understand what your employees are feeling. This survey can track their sentiments over time so that you can make sure you’re addressing their needs.

Moreover, this can help you understand if your employees need extra help, new resources, or if any changes in the company are not as favorable for them.

2. Improve your employees’ well-being

You should also consider your employees’ well-being. If employees are struggling with something personal or work-related, it should be your priority to assist in any way you can. Leaders can promote a culture of well-being if they can consider their employees’ physical and mental health.

For example, more employees are now favoring the hybrid work setup but most companies are insisting they come back to a normal work setup.

However, this can have a negative impact on how they’ve become accustomed to working. An employee satisfaction survey can easily highlight this and inform your strategy going forward.

3. Give your employees a voice

Some employees are used to being seen and not heard. This propagates a culture of employees keeping quiet on topics you need their input.

An employee satisfaction survey will provide a way for them to share their thoughts. This will let them know that you are listening to them and value their opinion.

For this, you might also consider an anonymous survey so that your employees can feel comfortable answering your questions.

4. Boost employee engagement

Conducting regular employee satisfaction surveys allows you to get your employees’ insights and opinions on company matters. With this, you can make improvements and changes to the workplace for your employees’ benefit.

This will help them feel valued, as they see that you’re considering their perspective when making company decisions. Which will go a long way in boosting employee morale and engagement.

This in turn engages employees that are more productive and are happier with their jobs. It will also help them feel more satisfied with your company, therefore, lowering employee turnover rates.

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Sign up to our 14-day Free Trial and get started collecting employee feedback.

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How to measure employee satisfaction

The easiest way to collect feedback on employee satisfaction (eSAT) is to use an online survey tool. This way, you’ll have access to a range of interactive question types to keep employees engaged and collect the data you need.

We’d recommend that your survey responses are collected anonymously, this will encourage employees to provide honest feedback.

When it comes to employee satisfaction survey questions, you’ll need to consider the different aspects of their job, work environment, and company culture.

For example, one of the most common factors to ask about is whether employees feel that have a good work-life balance. Questions such as this can gift huge amounts of insight to managers and human resources. Enabling them to action positive changes in the workplace.

Employee satisfaction questions

Here are some other examples of employee satisfaction survey questions:

• Are your goals clearly defined by your manager?
• Are you happy with the level of internal communication?
• What changes would impact your role in a positive way?
• Do you have access to all the resources you need to perform your role?

You’ll likely be asking a lot of closed-ended questions that require employees to agree or disagree with statements, for which you can use matrix (Likert scale) or multiple-choice question types.

But it’s essential that you collect open feedback as well. This will give you insight into why employees feel a certain way and will help you inform change.

Employee Net Promoter Score

Another method for measuring job satisfaction is to ask an Employee Net Promoter Score question (eNPS). This is similar to the standard NPS question, in that it asks a single question to gauge loyalty based on experiences. Although, you’d reframe the language to target employees instead of customers.

Here’s the eNPS question:

“On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend [Company] as a place to work?“

Asking this gives you a birds-eye view of how your employees feel about working at your company. But again, don’t just stop there, you should follow up with two or three open-ended questions to find out why they gave that rating and what improvements they can suggest.

Wrapping up

We’ve covered for reason for conducting employee satisfaction surveys and how to go about doing so. Hopefully you’re convinced that these could help you turn your company’s work environment into something employees are happy to be a part of.

If there are any other reasons for conducting these surveys you can think of, get in touch and let us know!

We’d also love to know what has worked well for you in the past, so we can share that with others looking for the same success.

The post Should You Conduct Employee Satisfaction Surveys appeared first on Shout.com.

In many cases, it can be difficult to adapt to a brand-new environment and culture where you work as well as meeting all of your new co-workers.

In order to ensure that they made the right hiring decision for their company, employers will want to see that you can successfully integrate yourself into your new company in 30, 60, and 90 days.

What is a 30-60-90 day plan?

A 30-60-90 day plan will set out specific milestones for you within 30 (1 month), 60 (2 months), and 90 (3 months) days of starting at your job that will help to ensure that you feel comfortable in your new position, and your managers have faith you can perform well in your role.

When to make a 30-60-90 day plan?

Before you accept a new role, ask your employer what milestones they expect you to meet 30, 60, and 90 days after starting. Once you have the plan in place, be sure to check in with your manager 30 days after starting so that they can assess how well you are performing.

30, 60, and 90-day milestones should be manageable, so don’t expect yourself to have completely conquered it by the 30-day check-in. It is better to have a plan that is flexible and can adapt as you go.

Benefits of creating a 30-60-90 day plan

Many employees are thrown into a new role with no direction on what is expected. 30-60-90 day plans set out specific goals and objectives that the company expects from an employee within 30, 60, and 90 days, so there will be less ambiguity in your role.

It helps ease the transition and allows you to be more productive in the earlier stages of your new job. They also allow companies to track new employee performance within that time frame.

Once you know what is expected of you 30, 60, and 90 days after starting your new role it will be easier for you to ease into the position.

30-60-90 day plans also allow you to identify what’s just not feeling right or if there are some challenges that weren’t foreseen.

Scope of a 30-60-90 day plan

Before you start writing a 30 60 90 day plan, you’ll want to think about the overarching elements that it’ll be composed of.

• Determine your top priorities
• Create a list of SMART goals
• Identify what metrics you’ll use to track your success

Top priorities

These are the broader aims of your plan, things such as:

• What tools you’ll need to learn in order to perform your role
• Who you’ll be in direct communication with on a day-to-day basis
• Internal processes
• Answers to common questions

It’s essential to identify these priorities in order to make the goals you set achievable.

SMART goals

SMART is a tool for planning achievable goals, it stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. 

Specific

Your goals should have a clear and specific focus in order for them to feel achievable. Nothing kills productivity like a problem that feels too big to solve, which is why you should avoid goals that are too general. 

For example, a goal to increase sales is too general. There are hundreds of ways businesses can increase sales, and not all of those will be relevant to your role.

A more specific goal would be to implement Abandoned Cart Emails that retarget leads who have already shown an interest in purchasing.

To narrow down your goal, ask yourself these questions:

• What do I want to accomplish?
• Why is this goal important?
• Who is involved?
• Where is it located?
• Which resources or limits are involved?

Measurable

It’s essential that you have a way of tracking your goals and measuring their success. This is how you demonstrate how effective your process is and gives an indication of when you have achieved your goal.

If we use the example from above, “increasing sales” is obviously not a measurable goal. By adding a figure or percentage to work towards, to make the task more digestible. For example: send automated emails to leads who abandoned their cart with the aim of getting 20 purchases in 90 days.

Is 20 purchases an impressive feat? Well, it depends on what you’re selling. But regardless of that, you can still demonstrate the effectiveness of a strategy by setting goals like this.

Achievable

It seems obvious, but your goal has to be achievable.  Even if it’s specific and measurable, you’ll still need access to the right resources and knowledge in order for the goal to be viable.

Don’t waste your time on something that’s not attainable.

Relevant

Your goals should be set in the context of those around you or in that of a larger plan. If your goal is completely unrelated to those of your colleagues then you won’t be contributing to anything larger than yourself.

That’s not to say your goal isn’t worthwhile, but this might not be the time to set it.

Time-bound

All goals should have an expected date for completion, something to work towards. This is the only way you can plan each stage accordingly and track their success.

Metrics for success

We’ve covered the ways you should devise individual goals above, but you should also think about what metrics you’ll use to track the success of your 30, 60, 90 day plan. Try to come up with at least one metric for each month of the plan.

How to create a 30-60-90 day plan

When you are creating a 30-60-90 day plan, you should ensure the milestones outlined will allow for success and productivity within the first few days of starting. A great way to lay a foundation is to use what questions and comments were made in your interview.

Look at how closely aligned your skills and previous experience are to what is required in this new role and how that may impact how quickly you can become productive.

If possible, you should consider speaking to the person who previously occupied your role, they may well have some tips and tricks for impressing your new managers.

What to include

While your employer may have given you some guidance on how they would like to see the progress of your role within 30, 60, and 90 days, it is ultimately up to you how to achieve this. There should be specific milestones in place for each time period, that you can aim to achieve.

30 day plan: Learning and familiarization

30 days after starting you will have met with your manager to discuss company culture and objectives.

Become familiar with the products/services your company offers, the target market, major competitors in the industry, and how your role contributes to overall business objectives.

Understand the infrastructure of your company network/systems and software, including the location of files, folders, printers, etc., as well as who has access to what information do they have a traditional hierarchical work set up or work in cross-functional teams.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions in these first 30 days. Curiosity is an indicator that you want to do your job well and reduce the time you need to take up from other people in the future.

Finally, look into the best practices for your role. Are you expected to create email campaigns? Take a look at the best practices for email subject lines.

60 day plan: Apply learning and develop skills

60 days after starting, you should be applying what you’ve learned and develop your skills.

Take time to formulate opinions on how the company’s products/services can expand their reach, identify new opportunities within target markets under-served by their current offering.

Stay up to date with industry news so that you are knowledgeable about recent changes in your field.

Continue to build your network, it is important in all roles, but especially in sales.

Begin applying what you have learned about the company’s infrastructure and technology systems to become familiar with how your department functions on a daily basis.

90 day plan: Demonstrate success

90 days into your role, the third month, you should aim to demonstrate success. Take the lead in performing tasks and show managers or stakeholders how far you’ve come.

Start to show how your actions positively impact shared projects and the business as a whole.

Consider attending at least one industry conference/trade show to build your network and learn how other professionals approach roles similar to your own.

30-60-90 day plan example

The sample below shows how the milestones outlined in the 30-60-90 day plan may play out over time, depending on what you are expecting to achieve. Remember that this is just a sample and your own plan will be tailored specifically towards your role.

First 30 days

Focus: Learning.

Priorities: Meet your team, gather internal resources, understand what’s required of your role, learn what’s expected of you by managers and stakeholders, and identify the challenges you may face.

Learning goals

• Reference internal materials that are relevant to your role.
• Access tools and platforms you need to perform your role, such as email accounts, CRM software, customer support systems.
• Set meetings with colleagues and managers to acquaint yourself and build relationships.
• Review current SEO strategies and editorial guidelines.

Performance goals

• Write a blog article.
• Post to social media.
• Ask for feedback on your performance and work it into your plan.
• Ask what other skills you need to learn in order to grow quickly.

Personal goals

• Get acquainted with your team.

Second 30 days

Focus: Apply what you’ve learned.

Priorities: Start to perform the entirety of your role and determine how you can have a positive impact on the business.

Learning goals

• Take 2 internal and 1 external training course to become more proficient.
• Shadow a team member or manager to understand how your role impacts their work.

Performance goals

• Write 8 blog articles (2 per week).
• Compare engagement with your articles to that of pre-existing articles.
• Create a social content calendar for the month.

Personal goals

• Develop relationships outside your own team.

Final 30 days

Focus: Demonstrate success.

Priorities: It’s time to start forging your own path and take initiative within your team. Demonstrate the impact of what you’ve done so far and make suggestions on how to push the boat out. Here, you should start thinking about goals for the rest of the year (and beyond).

Learning goals

• Identify courses or conferences that you can use to develop your skills further.
• Review your past goals with the metrics you set yourself.

Performance goals

• Perform your responsibilities at a higher level than before (more articles, more engaging content).
• Pitch a project or campaign.
• Complete a project or campaign and report on its success.

Personal goals

• Immerse yourself in the company culture and social events, with the intention to become an advocate.
• Lead a meeting with your team.
• Demonstrate the value you’ve provided in the past 90 days to your team or manager.

The post Create a 30-60-90 Day Plan for Starting a New Job appeared first on Shout.com.