CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition, Author at CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

November 3, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

The Benefits of Hybrid Learning in L&D

The move to remote working has caused organisations and L&D professionals alike to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of the future of L&D and its approach to learning.

With increased demand from employees to continue a flexible working schedule as we emerge from the pandemic, it’s no wonder that hybrid learning – which combines digital and in-person training methods – is quickly becoming the most popular approach to L&D in the new world of work.

To give you a more comprehensive idea of what hybrid learning brings to the table, we discuss the five major benefits of hybrid learning that every HR and L&D professional should know about.

1. Accessible and Inclusive
What makes a hybrid learning approach so useful for modern organisations is that it allows organisations to provide training to all employees, regardless of whether they’re working from home or in the office, in the UK or internationally. On-demand learning also broadens access to employees who may have tight schedules or are in different time zones.

This is vital in a world that’s moving towards a hybrid working approach, where many employees are working remotely full-time while others split time between office and home.

This is particularly important when it comes to team building, as employees who learn together – even if they’re not physically in the same room – are likely to feel they are part of a team with common goals and shared experiences to work from.

2. Flexible and Engaging
When given the opportunity to participate in learning sessions that are tailored to their personal needs – whether that’s in-person or remote, live or on-demand – employees are likely to be more engaged than when training is delivered with a one-size-fits-all approach.

That’s why providing a flexible digital learning experience that employees can access from anywhere should be a top priority for L&D leaders and teams. Implementing a flexible learning schedule and varied methods for how employees can engage with their learning materials, coworkers, and instructors can help keep employees motivated and engaged.

Keep in mind that hybrid learning is not about replacing classrooms with online and virtual learning. Instead, it’s about using a combination of in-person and digital approaches to tailor training initiatives to the needs of each employee, creating an inclusive environment where employees can feel motivated, engaged, and excited when it comes to their continual professional development.

3. Cost and Time Effective
On any typical day, most of us have one hundred and one tasks to juggle, whether that be work, family, friends, or a plethora of other commitments and responsibilities.

Digital learning options make it easier for employees to fit training into a busy day, reducing the time spent out-of-office or travelling to training venues.

Organisations also have the chance to benefit from reduced training costs, as digital learning removes or reduces the bill for transport, venues, accommodation, and even trainer fees, as many more people can attend a virtual session than a live one.

This positively impacts not only employee satisfaction but the organisations’ bottom line as a result.

4. It’s What Employees Want
Perhaps the most important benefit of hybrid learning is that it’s what employees want – plain and simple.

Unsurprisingly, the demand for hybrid learning is on the rise, and according to LinkedIn’s 2020 Workplace Learning Report, 57% of L&D professionals claim that they spend more time with hybrid learning than they did a few years ago, with 37% claiming they spend less time with in-person training.

LinkedIn also found that 58% of people professionals surveyed want to learn at their own pace, making it clear that employees prefer a flexible approach to learning to match the flexibility of hybrid work.

It’s safe to say that the hybrid approach to L&D is here to stay – now it’s up to forward-thinking people professionals to embrace this modern learning experience and use it to cultivate an engaged, motivated, and highly skilled workforce.

Good luck!

Incorporate digital learning into your L&D strategy with ICS Learn’s accredited online professional qualifications, from CMI to CIPD.

November 3, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

Business resilience, workplace flexibility and people connectivity: all in a single integrated platform?

For organisations wanting to streamline their HR and Payroll processes, is the most intuitive, fully integrated, cloud-based, mobile-first HR & Payroll platform available.

People First addresses all an organisation’s HCM needs, including recruitment, talent management, learning and development, payroll, HR analytics, workforce management, employee engagement and internal communications, from a single, easy-to-use, cloud-based platform.

Here are its top five benefits:

1. Simplify and automate time-consuming processes – People First provides a single repository for all HR and Payroll data, reducing exposure to human error resulting from manual data entry or reliance on copying and pasting between spreadsheets or different systems. As a single system, it requires no integration, reduces support costs, and improves data security.

2. Connect and align a dispersed mobile workforce – People First is an intuitive, mobile-friendly platform. It enables employees to work from any location at any time, accessing the tools and information they need quickly and easily, wherever they are located, delivering workplace flexibility and greater resilience for the business. Ideal for organisations with an internationally dispersed workforce, supporting localisation with different time zones and numerous languages to ensure your people feel supported and connected no matter where they are. With a mobile-first design, employees can access the system from their smart phone delivering an entire HR system “in their pocket”.

3. Empower and nurture valuable talent – People First gives you the tools you need to identify and attract the right candidates to enhance the talent pool within your organisation. Employee performance and development can be easily and effectively managed, to ensure you’re maximising the potential contribution of every individual and promoting the wellbeing of your employees by supporting and rewarding their development.

4. Improve data visibility and make more informed business decisions – People First’s powerful analytics features enable you gain insights from your people data, helping you identify new opportunities across your workforce and inform strategic thinking at every level.

5. Eliminate inefficiency by consolidating HR Infrastructure – People First enables you to reduce direct license and maintenance costs, by replacing multiple systems with a single, integrated platform, reducing your administrative and IT support overheads.

The aim of People First is to give customers the power to drive business resilience, workplace flexibility and people connectivity throughout their organisations, while simplifying the most time-consuming people processes and offering the insight to make decisions with confidence and to have impact on the bottom line.

Come and see us at Stand E10.

www.mhrglobal.com

October 27, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

Learninghubz boosts learner engagement & sharpens L&D effectiveness with the best of YouTube

Learninghubz, the L&D content curation specialist that connects corporate learners with the very best from YouTube for skills development, has chosen CIPD 2021 in Manchester to make its UK debut.

Regarded as one of Portugal’s most exciting learning tech start-ups, Learninghubz combines a video content curation service performed by an expert team of people – not AI algorithms – with a modern workplace learning hub, multi-channel communications, and smart customisation options, to offer L&D departments a low cost, high value alternative to expensive and closed content libraries.

Lifelong learning engagement
Designed to enable any organisation to introduce a culture of lifelong learning and self-development, Learninghubz succeeds where other L&D platforms fail. This because content curation is the missing ingredient in most people development strategies. Learninghubz curates the best content available and makes it accessible to employees in an entertaining way.

L&D departments using Learninghubz can instantly respond to employee development needs – with relevant learning content covering over 80 topic areas and the ability to easily launch targeted learning campaigns to address new learning goals.

Increasing the relevance of L&D content
As an online YouTube curation service, Learninghubz benefits L&D departments in two ways. Firstly, by identifying the very best free content on the most in demand topics – digital, management, professional and leadership skills; and secondly, by curating additional content, based on an organisation’s specific requirements.

Learninghubz’s curation team, led by CEO and Chief Curator, João Nogueira Santos, operates by searching, collecting, tagging and organising into playlists the best quality and most creative L&D videos freely available on YouTube. Published in engaging formats, like bite-sized tips, animated book summaries or short movies, these are being created by the world’s leading experts and business schools, plus brilliant independent L&D influencers.

Currently over 10,000 videos are offered within a Learninghubz subscription and fresh new content is added to the user’s learning hub every day.

YouTube is #1 learning resource
By providing the very best content from YouTube, the #1 learning platform for Generation Z and Millennials, Learninghubz makes workplace learning easy and spontaneous. Learning becomes engaging, diversified and up to date, with none of the distractions, ads and timewasting that usually come when using YouTube. Learninghubz also avoids HR budgets being wasted buying uninspiring L&D libraries, because for the majority of learning needs, better content already exists on YouTube which is freely available.

Over 30,000 corporate learners across Europe are already using Learninghubz and reporting unprecedented levels of learner engagement and satisfaction. Learninghubz’ NPS (Net Promoter Score) as reported by employee users, is 51 or 8,6/10.

“Learninghubz has enabled Sonae to offer a really engaging and fun L&D experience to all employees. Short videos are the best way to encourage learning and our employees are embracing this format. Using Learninghubz also brings us huge advantages of scale, consistency and agility in responding to the different training needs within Sonae”, says Cristina Rodrigues, Corporate Learning Manager at Sonae.

João Nogueira Santos, Co-founder and CEO at Learninghubz says, “Video has universal appeal, it is the easiest, most natural way to learn about any topic and YouTube is a huge, untapped resource. It has already brought about a generational shift in the way new generations learn and expand their knowledge and now Learninghubz is enabling this shift with corporate learners. Our goal is to bring YouTube’s best, most enjoyable and relevant L&D content to every workplace learner and convert this amazing resource into an invaluable tool for people development.”

Find out more on stand D46 at the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition 2021.

October 26, 2021October 26, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

The impact of the IR35 reform on HR Practitioners

Kingsbridge Contractor Insurance provides market-leading solutions to over 500 partners, recruiters and accountants. Kingsbridge provide business insurance to limited company contractors, sole traders, and freelancers, as well as supporting organisations, including HR professionals, with their insurance compliance requirements.

In addition, Kingsbridge can support HR professionals, organisations and their contractor base with the IR35 legislation. Read on to find out more about the IR35 reform and how Kingsbridge can help.

What has changed with IR35?
The off-payroll legislation, otherwise known as IR35, is a complicated piece of tax legislation that first came in back in 2020. In a nutshell, the IR35 reform in April of this year saw the liability for assessing a contractor’s employment status (working in the private sector) shift from the contractor to the client they provide services to. In addition, the responsibility of any taxes and national insurance payments owed for the work now sits with the fee-payer. You can find out more about IR35 on the Kingsbridge blog.

Exploring the impact of the IR35 reform on HR practitioners
Kingsbridge will be at the annual CIPD event from 3-4 November to help you with everything related to IR35 and contractor insurance. In addition to having a stand (they will be at stand K30, make sure to go and say hi!), they will be holding an IR35 focused talk.

The talk will be held by Kingsbridge’s Legal Manager, Nicola Hayman and Andy Vessey, Head of Tax at Kingsbridge. Andy has been deeply involved with IR35 since its inception in the year 2000 and has personally defended more than 500 IR35 cases, winning almost every single one.

Andy and Nicola will be exploring the impact of the IR35 reform on HR practitioners, covering:
– The background of IR35, from when it was first introduced in 2000, to how the legislation stands today.
– Explaining where the PAYE and NIC liability now sits.
– Giving an overview of the latest IR35 news, including details on the recent HMRC compliance letters that have been sent.
– The impact the IR35 reform has had on the contractor market and finding talent in this space.

IR35 support from Kingsbridge
If you are feeling overwhelmed about IR35, or need assistance, Kingsbridge is here to help. They have developed a robust process to help HR professionals, offering a complete IR35 solution covering:
– An award-winning status determination tool;
– IR35 Insurance, which can be purchased by the contractor or recruiter;
– Consultancy services from their expert IR35 team.

To find out more about the tool, or to book a demo, don’t forget you can come and see them at stand K30 at the CIPD event. Alternatively, if you’ve missed them or are unable to attend, you can book a demo of the IR35 tool.

About Kingsbridge
Kingsbridge Contractor Insurance provides business insurance to their contractor base, having served over 50,000 customers to date. The comprehensive insurance has been specifically designed to suit the needs of a contractor, with professional indemnity, public liability, and employers’ liability at the forefront. The cover also includes occupational personal accident cover and directors’ and officers’ liability.

Kingsbridge’s award-winning IR35 solution has been designed to help all parties in the IR35 supply chain. The hybrid IR35 status tool offers a fully automated process, paired with manual review by an in-house IR35 expert team for any borderline results. The innovative insurance product protects all parties and can be purchased by anyone in the supply chain.

For more information, please visit https://kingsbridge.co.uk.

October 26, 2021October 27, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

The Great Resignation

It’s very likely you’ve heard the term ‘The Great Resignation’, an expression first coined by Anthony Klotz, a professor at Texas A&M University. This wave of job changes is a hot subject in the US, where 3% of the workforce quit their jobs in August.

Employers in Europe are also facing challenges related to employees quitting their jobs. In Europe’s largest economy, Germany, more than a third of companies had staff shortages in July, their highest rate in three years. 38% of workers in the UK and Ireland claimed to be planning to quit in the next 6-12 months.

So what’s behind the employee exodus? A recent poll of 2,000 US employed adults, commissioned by Explorance and conducted by Wakefield Research, reveals that companies’ failure to act on employee feedback may be driving employee flight.

Assessing company surveys, approximately half of respondents (45%) don’t believe their feedback leads to meaningful change. This is not confined to entry- and mid-level employees: two in five company executives (40%) do not have the impression that their feedback is valued. Forty-one percent of all respondents are currently looking for a new role, with Millennials (53%) being the leading cohort in this regard. Almost half (49%) of Gen Z respondents and nearly a quarter (24%) of Baby Boomer respondents also said they were looking for a new job.

Our research found that the majority of employees are eager to share feedback with employers, in the hope of seeing that acted upon and positive change resulting. However, when that feedback goes unheard – either uncollected, collected too infrequently, or not acted upon – employee dissatisfaction grows and can lead to resignations.

What you can do to minimize the impact of the Great Resignation in your organisation:

1. Listen to your employees’ feedback
Employees are ready and willing to provide feedback. Contrary to the concerns of some HR professionals, most employees (78%) are eager to take company surveys, and consider them the preferred method for sharing feedback (38%).

2. Ensure every voice is heard
Open-ended questions enable employees to speak candidly, and have the potential to reveal insights that can drive meaningful change. However, text responses are often the most difficult for organisations to analyze. The next generation of comment analysis tools – Explorance’s BlueML – enable rapid analysis at scale, ensuring that organisations can capture sentiment and understand their employees’ concerns.

3. Act on the feedback to avoid employee dissatisfaction
Communicate key findings to employees. You will need to address employee concerns rapidly in order to close the loop, and prevent hearing about them again in an exit interview.

Find out more on the Explorance stand (C21) at the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition 2021.

Contact:
John Atherton
General Manager, Europe & Africa
jatherton@explorance.com

October 26, 2021October 26, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

HR and the Life-Work Journey

Facing up to New Challenges
There has, over the past couple of years, been a radical change in the challenges faced by businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted the way employees view their work, and their attitudes towards their employers. Employees are now demanding greater fulfilment, flexibility and autonomy in their roles: the ‘Great Resignation’ has seen employees’ rising expectations driving them to leave their jobs, in search of more attractive employment. A report by McKinsey1 in September 2021 found that 64% of employees were willing to leave their jobs without having a new job in-hand.

The New Future of Work is driving other challenges, too. Changes in customer demand and higher than expected post-pandemic growth rates have forced organisations to change their operating models, and seen them struggling to recruit and retain sufficient talent. Additionally, customers now have high expectations of businesses when it comes to corporate and social responsibility standards, and fairness and transparency in relation to diversity, equality and inclusion.

Organisations are relying on their HR teams to help them navigate these challenges, today and into the future.

Understand the Life-Work Journey
Recent events have highlighted the meandering journeys that organisations and individuals have been navigating over the past couple of years. While some organisations were thriving, others were shuttered. Similarly, many of us as individuals have been moving between stages in our careers and personal lives, often feeling stable or growing, but sometimes feeling threatened and at risk. This is the life-work journey, something employees and employers must recognise and understand to be happy and successful.

Employees who feel at risk or taken for granted are unlikely to be focused on delivering great products and service. When people feel fulfilled, stable or growing they’re more likely to take on new roles and responsibilities, and to strive to exceed customer demands and business goals. Understanding these states for life and business, and how the business and its people affect one another, can help organisations cultivate an environment that attracts, motivates, and retains the best employees.

With clear strategy and the right technology, HR teams can guide their organisations and employees through their life-work journeys, helping both flourish. Michael Puck’s blog, ‘Four Hacks,’ is a great resource, exploring practical ways for HR leaders to increase their teams’ impact on their businesses.

Life-work Technology: in Service of People, not Process
The concept of finding a ‘work-life balance’ has traditionally assumed that personal lives should revolve around work lives. As a result, technology has concentrated on serving the needs of businesses, with solutions laser focused on driving cost control, productivity, and compliance. As we’ve discussed, though, times have changed. In a world where talent is scarce, the successful organisations will be the ones who are able to actively consider the needs, capabilities, and ambitions of their people.

This is why UKG develops Life-work TechnologyTM a new solution vision that elevates people’s life-work balance by being in service of people, not processes. Powered by best-in-class people and work systems, and built in the cloud with embedded AI, Life-work Technology helps organisations become adaptive and resilient. By listening, learning and anticipating employees’ needs, Life-work Technology makes people feel valued and gives them a sense of belonging, helping them contribute their best to their organisations and families every single day.

Learn more by searching for Life-work Technology and visiting www.ukg.co.uk.

McKinsey Quarterly, ‘Great Attrition’ or ‘Great Attraction’? September 8, 2021 article: https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/people-and-organizational-performance/our-insights/great-attrition-or-great-attraction-the-choice-is-yours

October 22, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

5 Ways to Improve Employee Experience with People First

Employee experience is important

To some, ‘employee experience’ maybe a woolly, hard-to-define term but it’s real and directly impacts on your business. Work is no longer largely just a transactional process. It needs to be more than that – employees need to feel engaged. And an engaged employee is a productive employee.

It starts at the start
There’s only one opportunity to make a first impression – and it works both ways. From application to their first day, that first impression is significant in shaping the employer-employee relationship.

People First, by MHR, facilitates the automation and streamlining of key tasks in the recruitment journey – freeing up hiring managers and HR to focus on more nuanced elements in the process.

2. Good communication and collaboration is key
Effective communication is a business cornerstone. Poor communication leads to problems. Good communication impacts positively across an organisation and it’s particularly pertinent as we emerge from the pandemic with the shift to hybrid and remote working.

People need to know what’s happening and they need to stay in touch.

People First facilitates positive, effective workplace communication. This includes general companywide information: an interactive organisational chart, company newsfeed, policies and a weekly digest. This means there’s no need for a separate intranet or other communication methods, saving money, resources and time.

The engagement functionality within People First expedites collaboration and teamwork. The social feed, communities, polls and posts are just some of the tools that help employees connect and engage with each other and the wider business.

Regular check–ins provide the opportunity for ongoing, continuous two-way interaction between managers and team members – helping everyone keep on top of the key issues at hand. Check-ins are simple to organise and manage in People First. They’re an accurate, live record of formal interactions between manager and employee.

Effective talent management is crucial; essentially asset and growth management rolled into one. Match and Gap in People First will help – it’s basically a people skills audit which facilitates succession planning by holding skills, competencies, qualifications and memberships, meaning talent can be matched and potential candidates readily identified.

4. Promote a culture of learning; give recognition
Many organisations proudly declare that their employees are their ‘greatest asset’. But what does that mean and what are they doing about it?

The ability for an employee to largely determine their own developmental direction is practical and empowering. Using People First, employees can identify training that aligns with their goals.

Focused training nurtures skills, supporting growth and career pathways. It also reduces attrition rates. Using People First, learners drive their own professional development.

There are many drivers for why we do what we do at work. Recognition is a key one; People First enables public recognition throughout the organisation.

Helpful, attentive, engaging, collaboration and leadership are some of the attributes and skills employees can be recognised for. They can be displayed as badges on the employee’s People First profile. These recognitions are public and celebrate exceptional performance.

5. Simplify workforce management
People First’s Workforce Management tool aligns business needs with employee objectives. It simplifies inputs, reduces duplication, and drives HR and payroll processes.

Simplifying things further is the People First which provides fast, 24/7 HR for your people. A single source of information, it’s effectively a personal digital assistant – accessible on smartphones, anytime, anywhere. It’s intuitive and simple to use. Employees can clock-in and out, manage overtime and time off among other administrative tasks.

The importance of employee experience cannot be overlooked. Investing in your workers makes sound business sense.

Take a look at People First.

October 21, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

Explorance to Showcase Employee Experience Management Solutions at CIPD Conference

Explorance, the leading provider of Employee Experience Management (EXM) solutions, will attend at the upcoming CIPD Conference in Manchester Central, UK, from 3-4 November.

Showcasing the very best EXM solutions at Stand C21 throughout the conference, Explorers will be standing by to help HR professionals tackle their pressing L&D and talent management challenges.

Supporting Employees from Hire to Retire
Explorance is attending the CIPD Conference as ‘The Great Resignation’ continues to unfold, with employee turnover and role satisfaction being key challenges for HR and L&D teams.

As the leading provider of EXM solutions, Explorance supports more than 1,000 organizations in 45 countries, including 35% of the Fortune 100.

The importance of a comprehensive feedback process, geared towards making the transition from insight to action and support the employee experience, is increasingly vital. An adaptive approach to Employee Experience Management will pay dividends in boosted engagement, performance, and reduced attrition.

This year’s CIPD conference also takes place at a time when demonstrating an L&D team’s contribution towards business goals is crucial. HR leaders need to substantiate the impact their team is having on the business at large, as well as continually measuring and increasing the effectiveness of current initiatives.

Finally, the importance of the employee voice is increasingly vital in this highly competitive environment. Organizations run the danger of collecting feedback but not acting on it – demotivating and disappointing staff. Ensuring your decision-making is made in harmony with business goals as well as employee sentiment is challenging, but increasingly achievable.

Join Explorance at Stand C21 from 3-4 November and get the expert guidance you need to comprehensively address both these challenges – and those unique to your organizations.

CIPD Conference
The CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition 2021 is based around the theme of seizing the opportunity of disruption and realizing a more responsible working world.

With the impact that COVID-19 has had on modern workplaces, HR professionals are presented with a unique opportunity to reform and restructure the workplace into an improved environment for all.

Above all, there is a widespread acceptance that the quality of working lives can be radically improved –CIPD 2021 will focus on the opportunities that exist to improve engagement and inclusion, hybrid working, and other transformational changes.

The conference will be based around three specific streams: hybrid and flexible working, inclusion and engagement, and strategic planning.

October 21, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

Single workplace app Yoomiapp is attending the CIPD Conference and Exhibition

Yoomiapp is attending the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition 2021 ‘Seizing the opportunity: reinventing HR to create a responsible working world’ at Manchester Central on 3-4 November 2021.

Yoomiapp is excited to be showcasing the single workplace app that changes everything! It is a simple workplace platform that transforms the engagement, performance, and wellbeing practices of the modern hybrid workplace.

Right at this moment and for the future of work, the distance between people exists as does increased mental health and anxiety in the workplace. Employees can find it difficult to convey how they really feel at work, especially under time and distance pressures.

Yoomiapp allows for employees to express their feelings quickly, openly, and honestly with ease of use and the visual mobile app.

Come and visit us at stand D13 at the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition and save hours of research back in the office.

info@yoomiapp.com
#yoomiapp

October 20, 2021 By CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition

The Power of Employee Voice: 6 Steps to Improve Employee Wellbeing

Gone are the days of ad hoc wellbeing initiatives, welcome to the era of holistic wellbeing strategies that people very much expect from their employer. From improving employee experience and engagement to bottom-line benefits, organisations everywhere are putting more and more focus on employee wellbeing.

But you can’t improve what you don’t measure! Amplifying employee voice and gathering feedback can help you to measure employee sentiment toward your wellbeing strategy and identify trends to improve it further.

And it’s a win-win situation. Many of the benefits of employee voice are intrinsic; just knowing that there’s a channel to speak up safely can have a huge impact on employee wellbeing.

On top of that, any wellbeing strategy worth its salt should be personalised to the organisation and its people. And by understanding how your approach is being received on both an individual and collective basis, you’ll get the insight you need to tailor and improve to that strategy.

So, here’s a six-step framework for how you can make those changes by amplifying employee voice…

Step 1: Set yourself up for internal benchmarking
The best way to gauge how your people are feeling is with employee surveys; you can reach everyone, easily store insights to report on and refer back to, and you can give your people a confidential platform to really open up about their needs.

During this stage, create a question set that you can use multiple times as your own internal benchmark. Whether that’s a couple of questions monthly, a pulse survey quarterly, a larger survey biannually… figure out what works best for your people and use it to monitor your progress.

When you get to the stage of implementing new workplace wellbeing strategies, these questions will be great for highlighting whether they’re having a positive impact or falling flat.

Step 2: Do your temperature check
Next, it’s time to use your question set and send out a survey. This is your “temperature check” to gauge how people are feeling right now; always keep hold of these results to measure your progress against as you go forward.

Before running your survey, take time to consider the key stakeholders in your feedback process: how will you get your senior leaders bought into a new approach? How will you engage your managers with people data? How will you communicate everything to your employees? Everyone has a role to play, so make sure to get people on board.

Step 3: Ask people what they want from your wellbeing strategy
You’ve run your temperature check survey and you know exactly how your people are feeling right now. Next, it’s time to simply ask what wellbeing benefits and strategies they would like to see implemented.
Your people know better than anyone what would help improve their wellbeing at work, so make sure to ask for their ideas and input. Use a variety of channels to really open up the conversation; while employee surveys are a great temperature check, other feedback channels can be really helpful for uncovering more varied insights.

Why not host an employee forum to bring forward the most prominent ideas? Or run a confidential poll allowing people to pick from a list of wellbeing benefits to see what they would want access to the most? There are plenty of options to diversify your listening channels and gather specific insights that you can act on.

Step 4: Dive into results and set your actions
Armed with a mixture of ideas from your workforce, it’s time to reflect on the results and dive into what trends and hotspots have emerged.

This will help you to understand which areas take immediate priority, which need further consideration and which you won’t be taking action on; it’s not as simple as just giving people what they ask for, but making sure it aligns with how they’re feeling and the impact it can have.

Whether at an organisational level with senior leaders or at a local level with managers, it’s important to prioritise actions—otherwise the feedback process becomes overwhelming and nothing is done! Choose two to three actions that you believe you can implement to make sure you’re not tackling too much at once.

Step 5: Keep communicating
Once you’ve gathered the employee insights you need to improve your wellbeing strategy and created an action plan, it’s crucial to keep the line of communication open with your people.

Even if no actions are planned, explaining why that is and reinforcing the value of employee voice is one of the most important elements of the feedback process. People will create their own stories, believe they have not been listened to, and feel disengaged if their input is met by radio silence.

Communicating action plans affirms the value of employee feedback. Your transparency will build trust and make sure employees are motivated to participate in your next survey.

Step 6: Make listening continuous
And repeat! Remember to keep measuring, keep listening and keep improving.

Seeking feedback regularly can alert you to emerging wellbeing needs; this way, you can make sure your offering remains relevant and meaningful to your people. The key is to build a culture around employee voice, where people have psychological safety to speak up about not just their wellbeing, but everything else that affects their role and organisation.

Hive is an employee voice platform and strategic HR partnership. We believe every voice has the power to change the working world, improving everything from employee experience, engagement and productivity to inclusion, belonging and culture.

If you’d like to find out more about our four flagship features and People Science support, simply book a chat with us here. Or visit stand J10 at the CIPD Annual Conference and Exhibition 2021.