Employee Listening and People Analytics – A Match Made in Heaven?
In today's increasingly dynamic work environment, organisations are looking for new and innovative ways to attract, engage, and retain top talent. Engaging and improving the employee lifecycle is a major element of ensuring this. One specific emerging strategy gaining traction within the HR and People Analytics space is employee listening.
Employee listening refers to the process of using data and analytics to understand employee engagement, satisfaction, and experiences within an organisation. In essence, it allows organisations to gather valuable insights about their employees to inform their HR and people strategies.
Indeed, many organisations are starting to recognise the potential of people analytics and employee listening as a way to transform HR with data. Research from our Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2022 report found that employee listening is one of the top five areas where people analytics add business value.
The same report also highlight's that 69% of organisations where the people analytics function is responsible for employee listening have a clearly defined employee listening strategy. Compare that to the 46% of organisations where the people analytics function is not responsible for employee listening, and it is clear that people analytics can revolutionise how organisations approach employee the employee experience.
Source: Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2022 Report, Figure 13.
Why is Employee Listening Important as a Manager?
There are several key benefits to why managers should approach their employee listening strategy through the lens of people analytics.
Source: Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2022 Report, Figure 5.
People analytics allows managers to make more effective decisions about engaging and motivating employees, ultimately leading to better business outcomes. People analytics can increase innovation, productivity and retention.
People analytics gives managers a deeper understanding of which levers to pull when it comes to employee engagement and motivation, helping them create more effective strategies and interventions that genuinely reflect the myriad of experiences and voices within their organisation.
People analytics enables managers to identify areas where they can proactively address issues before they become major problems, allowing them to build stronger relationships with their team and more effectively lead their organisation.
How to Maximise the Impact of Employee Listening?
To maximise the impact of your employee listening strategy, you need to ask yourself why you are doing it in the first place. Specifically, what do you hope to achieve through your employee listening efforts, and how can people analytics help you get there?
Is it to gain insights into your employees and their organisational experience? To identify areas of improvement that can lead to increased productivity and retention. Or to create a stronger connection between employees, managers, and leadership?
Once you have answered these questions, you must determine how you will capture and analyse all the relevant data. This might include an engagement survey, focus groups, or performance reviews, which can provide valuable insights into your employees' needs and preferences.
At the same time, it is also essential to have a clear plan for how you will use this information. This could involve tailoring existing programs and initiatives to better align with employee needs and preferences or creating new programs that address these unmet needs.
A great example here is how Uber used its employee listening strategies to develop its return-to-work strategy. By putting employees at the centre of the return-to-work conversations and taking the feedback they received from their COVID-19 survey, Uber devised a successful return-to-work strategy. It was tailored to the unique needs of their workforce and ultimately generated positive business outcomes.
Harnessing the Power of Continuous Employee Listening
Uber also realised that more than semi-annual surveys are needed to capture the entire employee experience. If the past few years of black-swan events taught us something, anything could happen in six months.
As such, it is vital to embrace a continuous employee listening loop that allows you to keep track of changes in sentiment over time. In Uber's case, they moved to monthly surveys and continue gathering feedback from their employees on an ongoing basis to help them stay on top of any emerging challenges.
Another organisation that maximises the impact of continuous employee listening is Microsoft. Microsoft can capture real-time employee feedback on a wide range of topics through its daily pulse surveys - covering various issues and distributed to a random sample of 2,500 global employees each business day. This allows them to gain a constant stream of deeper insights into employee needs that can help better inform organisational decisions and actions.
Ultimately, the key to maximising the impact of your employee listening strategy is to view it as an ongoing process rather than a one-off initiative. By establishing a culture of continuous feedback and engagement, you can ensure that your efforts truly resonate with employees, drive real change within the organisation, and ultimately lead to improved business outcomes.
Going Beyond Employee Engagement Surveys
Microsoft is an excellent example of how people analytics can transform the workforce through effective employee listening.
Speaking on the Digital HR Leaders Podcast, Dawn Klinghoffer, Head of People Analytics at Microsoft, explained that while measuring employee engagement was serving Microsoft well,
"during the pandemic [they] started to realise that [they] wanted a higher bar than engagement".
That is when, after much research on the matter, they started measuring employee thriving. A term that Dawn expresses is being in a state of bringing your best self to work. And while they have only measured thriving since Spring 2022, going beyond the traditional employee engagement surveys has enabled Microsoft to identify areas of improvement and create new initiatives that better align with employee needs.
Dawn highlights that
"one of the things that [they] did was a drivers analysis on thriving, and career is the top driver of thriving. So, [the people analytics function] are helping [their] partners understand the different areas that [they] can lean into, in terms of ensuring that [their] employees are getting the career opportunities that they are looking for so that they can thrive".
By harnessing the power of continuous employee listening and putting employees at the centre of their decision-making, organisations like Microsoft and Uber can transform HR with data, drive real change within the organisation, and ultimately improve business outcomes.
Transforming HR with the Power of People Analytics
Are employee listening and people analytics a match made in heaven? The answer is a resounding yes!
To succeed in the digital age, HR professionals need to take a more data-driven approach focused on understanding and meeting employee needs. And by leveraging the power of people analytics, employee listening can be a powerful tool for driving meaningful change within the organisation.
At organisations like Uber and Microsoft, employee listening is being used as part of a broader people analytics strategy. By gathering ongoing employee feedback and analysing that data systematically, HR professionals can gain insights into the employee experience and create a truly modern and effective HR function.
If you want to learn more about how employee listening can drive real change within your organisation, sign up today for our Introduction to Employee Listening course. With our expert-led online training, you'll learn about Insight222's Nine Dimensions Framework and gain the skills and knowledge you need to start measuring employee experience with people analytics.
You may have the initiative for an employee listening strategy, but you’re not sure where to begin. If that's the case, book a free consultation with one of our experts for our Consulting Discover service. Our Discover engagement helps you understand how employee listening can accelerate your people strategy. Together, we will explore what and who you should be listening to, why listening is important and what your goals are. We will build a compelling story and vision for employee listening and connect this to the your mission, your team, and your technology. This typically delivered over a 12-week period and looks to deliver tangible business value to your organisation.