Five Ways to Engage Your Millennial Employees

Any workforce today has a mix of Baby Boomers, Gen X, and Millennials. While Baby Boomers continue to form the largest section of the employee population, by 2020 they are going to be overtaken by the Millennials. Already the Millennials account for the second largest proportion of the workforce, ahead of Gen X.
The rise of Millennials in any organization has a strong impact on the organization, especially its culture. For instance, managements across organizations have implemented a certain style of employee engagement strategy for years. However, now that needs to change. Millennials have been raised in an environment which is markedly different from that of their predecessors. It is prudent, therefore, for organizations to take a close look at their strategy to engage millennials.

We have listed down five key areas that organizations should consider while revamping their employee engagement policies for the millennials.

• Flexibility: Millennials enjoy flexibility in the way they work. For example, according to a recent study conducted by Millennial Branding, 89% of Millennials prefer to choose when and where they work rather than being placed in a 9-to-5 position.However, this fondness for flexibility is not just limited to logistical elements like work timing. Millennials also like having the autonomy to do their work in their own way, which might very often deviate from the tried and tested methods of the past.

• Clear Career Path:The new generation is very career focused. However, they also want work life balance.Being cognizant of where their career is heading helps them in planning their life ahead. This in turn, helps them to constantly maintain that balance between their profession, and their interests outside of work. Hence, if an organization wants to engage and retain any millennial talent, it is imperative that s/he is taken through a well chalked out career plan. This eases his/her anxiety pertaining to his/her career, thus enabling greater focus on delivering their best for the organization.

• Role: Stemming from the clarity of their career paths, another critical area to engage millennials is to offer them roles which challenge them. A typical 9 to 5 job is not something that excites the new generation. Studies show that professional growth & development is one of the strongest motivators for millennials. They need to be offered roles which allow that to them. Their role should judiciously utilize their capabilities, and challenge them to push themselves further to innovate. In fact, according to a recent study by Deloitte, nearly 70% of Millennials prefer working for organizations that actively reward employees for innovative ideas.

• Continuous Feedback:The millennials are a generation of here and now. They are used to getting things immediately (almost!). The ever so reducing delivery time offered by e-commerce companies (same day delivery!) is a testament to this drive for instant gratification. When it comes to the professional front, it is no different. Millennials expect instant feedback. The gap between annual, bi-annual appraisals is too huge to keep them engaged. It is important that their managers share their feedback with the millennials regularly. Importantly, this feedback shouldn’t be limited to the positives and negatives of what they are doing, but also include specific inputs on what are the areas/skills that they need to improve to get ahead in their career.

• Socialization: There was a time when employees wanted to keep their professional & personal lives separate. However, for the millennials these two worlds are closer than ever before. Be it adding colleagues on ‘personal’ social media sites like Facebook & Instagram (as opposed to a more professional networking site like LinkedIn), or spending post work evenings bonding with colleagues at a pub, the millennials are more open to bridge that gulf between what’s personal & professional. Socializing comes more naturally to them, than their predecessors. This is also reflected in the fact that millennials enjoy working in teams, juxtapose their predecessors who preferred contributing individually. Any engagement strategy for millennials ought to look at this motivation for them as well.
In conclusion, millennials are the immediate future for organizations and it is critical that they engage them well. One of the first steps in this initiative is to understand the specifics of what drives the millennials in their organization. An employee engagement survey would benefit greatly in achieving this. Based on the findings of the survey, organizations can then lay down a strategy to engage their millennials, which would help organizations grow in the long run.

InpireOne’s employee engagement survey, in partnership with IBM Smarter Workforce, empowers organizations to drive business performance through in-depth insights on the pulse of the organization.

Assessments Outcome - InspireOne

When including assessments into the recruitment process, most clients we speak to are keen to know the outcomes and often focus on reduced time to hire and lesser turnover.

As a consequence of introducing assessments, other improvements such as consistency in the process and a better idea of which sourcing channel is identifying better candidates are also very much possible.

We like to think of these as Tier 1 metrics or the ‘non-negotiables’. Unfortunately, most organizations do not build up on those improvements to realize possible improvements in business outcomes. We define these as Tier 2 metrics and they largely vary based on the job role.

For instance, for sales roles, what is the improvement in sales productivity as a result of introducing new organization assessment solutions? Or for quality & product development roles, has selecting the right employee translated into better brand quality?

In order to realize this, it’s important to view assessments as a long term (5 to 10 year) investment decision. That in turn enables organizations to view immediate and long term benefits that result from the out-years and are correlated with business performance.

The best starting point for implementing such a strategy is to first identify the most critical job role in any organization or industry. This could be a Store Manager or Assistant Store Manager in Retail, a Branch Manager for Financial Services firms, a Developer for Software or IT organizations or a Warehouse Manager for eCommerce companies.

So how long term & strategic is your assessment approach?

What Is The ‘Right’ Frequency For Conducting An Employee Engagement Survey?

When considering an employee engagement survey initiative, one of the first questions that comes to mind is ‘How frequently should my organization conduct the survey?’. This is a basic but critical question, and organizations must have a clear answer to it before formalizing their employee engagement survey.

The thing with engagement surveys is that, every organization has to set its own right frequency. In case the surveys are launched in quick succession, say every 6 months, then that could lead to several issues. Firstly, surveys that are too frequent do not allow an organization adequate time to create and execute on their action plans based on the findings of the previous survey. The second challenge of too frequent surveys stems from this first point. Given that organizations have little time to implement any of the changes, employees tend to perceive the initiative as a ‘tick in the box’, and start believing that nothing really comes out of them. Thus, employee engagement surveys lose their credibility among employees. Finally, frequent engagement surveys lead to ‘survey fatigue’. Employees simply get tired of answering surveys every few months. This becomes further frustrating if the high frequency of these surveys is not complemented by an equally fast implementation of changes and constant communication. Thus, having engagement surveys too frequently may not be beneficial.

Now let’s look at the other side. What happens if we have a huge time gaps between our employee engagement surveys? In this scenario, an organization runs the risk of not identifying critical issues that the employees, and the organization at large, is grappling with. This can pose a serious threat to the health and performance of the organization and oftentimes could result in a challenge turning into crisis.

For instance, imagine the future state of a fast growing consumer goods company, that is growing at 30% year on year but unable to identify telltale signs of fatigue in the workforce due to an overexerted work environment?

Imagine the savings of both performance and health of Carnegie Steel Company back in 1892 if the working conditions of the steelworkers’ union were highlighted as a red flag had the company conducted a workforce survey! It could have prevented the Homestead strike or massacre altogether!

So what is the ideal frequency to run engagement surveys? The answer would depend on various factors such as company size, nature of work, company context, business & industry performance, among others. However, drawing from our experience across industries, we recommend that organizations should ideally conduct employee engagement surveys once a year. An annual employee engagement survey will help the organization to align the survey with the overall business cycle and signal to its workforce as an important annual initiative. Since most organizations plan or realign their business strategy annually, findings from the survey can become inputs for this annual strategy and thereby form a major input to the overall workforce strategy. Furthermore, organizations can utilize the 12 months to frame & execute on action plans across all levels of its workforce. Short term plans that are implemented during the course of the year build credibility for the survey as employees see changes and continuous progress, based on their feedback.

Regardless of the frequency, conducting an employee engagement survey is likely to be beneficial to an organization and its workforce. However, studies suggest that an annual survey has greater impact on employee engagement. For example, a study conducted among 105 companies revealed that 64 percent of the companies that surveyed every year noticed improvement to engagement scores, compared to 56 percent of organizations that surveyed biennially.

So when you decide to do an employee engagement employee survey, it’s best to think through the ultimate goals that you wish to achieve, and when & how you should launch the survey to meet these goals.

Does Performance Management System Really Improve Performance?

Most Performance Management practices turn out to damage the performance they are intended to improve. In the context of neuroscience research this is based on fundamentally flawed understanding of human responses, as revealed in recurring patterns of mental activity.

Failings of Traditional Performance Management system

Labelling people with any form of numerical rating automatically generates an overwhelming “fight or flight” response that impairs good judgment, and leads to disengagement. The employee then ignores the feedback, the push back against stretch goals and rejects the example of positive role models. In contrast to ‘the growth mind-set’ model which holds that people learn, grow, and improve all their lives most organizations promote the fixed mind-set of human growth and learning which is reinforced by Performance Management systems.

Performance Management in the Dynamic Environment

In the context of rapid change; where organizations become obsolete in no time; the pressure on the organizations is to re-innovate and re-invent to survive.  To cope with the external demand, organizations are focusing on creating internal flexibility; and strengthening agility of its internal processes.

To breed innovation, organizations are shifting from hierarchical to more networked cross functional work groups; where the individual is working on multiple projects within different teams. Millennials entering the workforce has further created complexed structures with multi-generational workforce. More than ever before, the organizations are facing a greater need to align individual goals with organization goals. With periodical goal and role changes, insufficient performance data availability to allow managers to compare them with each other and most importantly difficulty in identifying employee’s career development plans are few major challenges that arise within organizations.

Organizations have felt challenged with the inability of current performance management process to support the business objective. The Performance Management System has repeatedly failed to inspire performance with multiple causes like single year- end performance review, end of year rating, one time performance conversation and being goal centric versus development focused. All this has been evident through low engagement scores which has pushed the HR strategist to re-design the Performance Management System based upon the need of the customer (employees).

Dynamic Performance Management System for Dynamic Environment

What is the new and dynamic performance management system? Compared tothe traditional evaluation in which employees usually receive performance feedback about how well they did against their goals and peers, employees in the new system receive feedback beyond work performance. They also receive feedback about their expertise levels and potential for growth. That is, the feedback employees receive in the new system provides more insight into their strengths and opportunities for advancement.

Employees are assessed on both work performance and new dimensions of expertise and potential and are rated individually without comparison to other following an ‘absolute’ approach vs. ‘relative’ approach. In traditional relative rating, managers usually compared employee performance against others and sort all employees into pre-determined performance categories. In contrast, the new evaluation is based on an independent assessment of each employee’s performance.

In the new performance management system, there are frequent conversations with the line manager where 360 review feedback from multiple stakeholders including peer, team leaders, juniors is taken. The new performance management system complements the new dynamic and innovation cultures within the organisation which inspires performance to achieve business results.

Improving Performance through New Performance Management System

The success of the new Performance Management system depends upon its successful execution. The inability of line managers to hold great performance conversations coupled with lack of feedback, coaching behaviours and continuous communication in real time will need to be addressed for a seamless execution of the new performance management systems.A 2013 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management asked HR professionals about the quality of their own Performance Management systems; and only 23 percent said their company was above average in the way it conducted them.

Currently the owner of Performance Management within the organization is Human Resource. However, the new process needs to be led and owned by business to drive performance while Human Resource acting as a support instead of the owner. The success of the new Performance Management System lies in the ownership along with skills of the line managers to drive quality performance conversation. In the new system, managers are urged to use their judgment about a conversation frequency that best supports employee performance. Managers are required to display everyday leadership; ongoing conversations around goals to be achieved, review of past, feedback and coaching centered on development.

The conversations should allow employees to feel autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Due recognition of the work and alignment with employee career aspiration are other important element that conversations need to address. To build structure and objectivity in the performance conversations; many organizations are collecting real time data, making the check-in conversations more accurate than annual reviews.

To drive the new Performance Management System with success; organizations need to prepare their line managers with essential skills of conversations, feedback, coaching and more. Here is where InspireOne through its solutions support the organizations in the entire change initiative through well-developed global processes. InspireOne supports organizations with different interventions at different stages which considers the support around change process, performance and development to successfully implement the new Performance Management System and inspire Business Performance. Know more about our Performance Management Solutions.

Integrating Technology with Assessments | InspireOne

Numbers are honest. Sometimes, brutally so. Anything that can be measured is mapped to a number. Right from the number of man hours needed to bring a software project to completion to the number of productive hours spent by a unit of the organization. However, there is one thing that numbers can’t do by themselves – make decisions. That job, thankfully, still rests with people. Imagine a world where the right people are armed with the right numbers. Imagine a world where the honesty of numbers meets the intuition of man. Imagine a world where you have all the information you need to quantify things like employee productivity. Our assessment tools bring this world as close to reality as is possible in this day and age.

One thing all managers, recruiters and executives complain about is the fact that their decisions are made based on very abstract and often intangible and unquantifiable attributes. The gap between feeling and fact, intuition and reality is what our assessment tools seek to fill. Let us look at recruitment, for example. It is pretty obvious that the quality of your organization would be a direct function of the quality of recruits. Recruiters often face one glaring problem – how do we make sure that he/she is the right person for the job, which is a big deal, given that that’s what their job is – to find the right people. The first step towards understanding whether an individual fits the requirement is toassess the individual.

Humans assess and size each other up very quickly. We’ve developed immense stereotypes about each other that have grown over thousands of years. However, human assessment based on human perception can be extremely dangerous due to the perception being impacted by elements such as bias. Given the way things are at this point of time and given the fact that we’re unlikely to nominate a machine as CEO/president in the near future, it would be safe to assume that we can’t change ‘who’ makes those assessments. What we can change, is ‘how’. Assessment tools drive out human perception and bias and replace it with a set of objective indicators. You could assess whether or not a candidate is fit for a job by looking at his EQ or personality tests. You still get to make the decision. But you now have the ability to make an informed and objective decision.

You could argue that standardized as well as customized tests have been around since the beginning of time. You could also argue that we have always used some objective measures to arrive at decisions. So what’s different about assessment tools these days? There’s a huge list, actually. But let us start out with a couple of benefits you stand to gain out of these tools. To start with, you could actually conduct these tests online. Great, but that only makes it easier for collection of data. It isn’t building any intelligence into our systems, you may ask. The answer to that is simple, really. It isn’t just collection of information that’s easy, but also storage and retrieval. Online tests enable you to create huge repositories of data – which you could use for modelling something, or even use as a baseline for a different entity.

The biggest benefit of collecting such information or running such tests online is the fact that these tests can then be analyzed via a variety of techniques, which can again be customized. You can slice and dice across data, look for outliers, look at measures of central tendency and what not! This information can lend several perspectives and would form an immense repository that would hold you in good stead later. What’s more, given the fact that we’re moving into a cloud based environment, all this information is stored on the cloud, making it accessible to any place with an internet connection! Have multiple branches that span across continents? No problem, as long as you have an ISP who is willing to give you an IP address that you can use to get on to the internet. If you can read this blog, you can access your data. As simple as that.

Most organizations are reluctant to move from traditional assessment methodologies onto more tool and automation based methodologies. This is mostly because  there’s a huge paradigm shift in the manner in which this information is collected and analyzed. One thing that most organizations fail to realize is the power of sample spaces. With online assessments, you can increase your sample space massively, especially in a cloud-based environment. A greater sample space would mean that you have more data to work with and this brings down the probability of surprises (read shocks) that would arise as a consequence of your decisions.

To sum all of it up, it does appear that the future of decision making lies via assessment tools. They act as great enablers and ensure that your decisions are tied to something tangible, something quantifiable and something measurable. Imagine a cricket match where the teams don’t really know what their scores are. They’re just playing along with some vague idea of what they need to do in order to seal victory. Contrast this with the bare minimum information that you would need in order to succeed – runs, wickets and balls. Information is truly paramount. It manifests itself as data that can be mined to create new information. This new information can be fed back into systems and results can be observed. These results go back into the system again as further information. Once you set the information cycle in place, you can rest assured that you will be making decisions based on observable, well defined parameters. Information systems have revolutionized the way we view data and make decisions. The world is headed towards a second IT revolution. The world is moving to a space where data can be accessed anytime, anywhere and from any device. The world is moving towards the cloud. You should too.