How do you truly understand your employees? Spoiler alert, it may not come from relying on an annual engagement survey with fifty homogenous questions.

Completing an all-employee survey annually probably isn't enough, while spending other people's time and money surveying all staff more frequently may be impractical too. Here are three ways to help you better understand your people.

- Check in weekly and sample the views of colleagues and teams. Do it little and often. Use simple questions and clever tools like slido, and mentimeter to gather real-time anonymous insights that you can immediately react to - "How was your job for you this month?", "Do you feel valued and appreciated by the company and your colleagues?"

Slido   Mentimeter

- Ask yourself what long term data you have now that can help you predict the future. Start with a single difficult question, such as "Is there evidence to show that paying someone more means that they do better work?", or "Will promoting people frequently lead to greater engagement and retention?", "Can frequent, short absences accurately predict long-term well-being challenges?"

- Understand that there's no such thing as a standard employee. Segment your people into groups. The deeper you go and the more personas you create, the better you'll understand the needs and preferences of the different types of people that work for you.

Be careful, don't catalogue people like a stock inventory, based on age or location, or level, or even worse - their cost to company.

Segment using qualitative measurements like where are they in their career, how do they like to use digital tools, what motivates them, how do they like to work, learn, or be recognised?

Be ready to enjoy some odd looks when you start asking questions. More importantly, be ready to do something with what you learn.  

Contact