Employee Engagement Survey: The Gallup Q12

Employee Community Case Studies

Most discussions of online communities for feedback involve communities of customers and prospects. Just as important are online communities of employees. Such closed, private communities can offer employers rich insights about workplace conditions and changes in markets the employer serves.

One Vovici client, an international bank, has been experiencing tremendous growth in an emerging market, taking advantage of financially weakened competitors. As a result of this growth, the bank is facing a number of new challenges, chief of which are increased competition for local sales talent and increased competition for customers. The organization implemented an employee community to help address both of these issues. Employee feedback gathered from the online community is used to help position the bank as the "employer of choice" in this region's financial market. The community is also used to provide a unique window on customers: employees share customer feedback from the field and submit product and service ideas of their own and those suggested by customers.

Another user of Vovici Community Builder has created an employee community that goes far beyond feedback. While employee satisfaction research is fielded through the online community, employees typically log in for other reasons:

• To view weekly sales numbers
• To participate in discussion forums
• To submit questions to senior management
• To view status reports for each department
• To see company news
• To access other employee portals, such as the benefits portal

What innovative uses of online employee communities have you seen?

Employee Satisfaction Presentation: Five Reasons You Must Measure Employee Loyalty During a Recession

See this write-up of the presentation.

Employee-Satisfaction Survey Gotchas

Here are some common mistakes to avoid when creating employee-satisfaction surveys. Some workplace environments are filled with negativity and paranoia-especially in this economy. Accordingly, you have to be extra sensitive to employee fears.

• Asking detailed demographic information. Respondents realize that you can triangulate answers to different questions to identify them. How many employees are male, over 40, with 15 years of service, in Houston? Ask only a few key demographic questions.
• Assigning unique URLs to every respondent. Most employee-satisfaction surveys promise confidentiality, yet survey invitations go out with different hyperlinks for different email addresses. In a poor working environment, recipients will compare URLs. While an open-participation link enables ballot-box stuffing, that risk is worth it if employees don't trust the survey system's safeguards to confidentiality.
• Trying to cover all aspects of being an employee in one survey. Be focused: are you exploring benefits or ways to improve how the customer is being served? Narrow and deep is often better than wide and shallow.
• Asking employees about things you cannot fix. Do you really want to ask if they get enough vacation time? Or if they want 401K matching?
• Failing to get enough completed responses to have representative results. Since early respondents in employee-satisfaction surveys tend to be on the extremes (very satisfied or very dissatisfied), broad participation is crucial if your data is to be representative. Make sure you get enough completes for your recommended sample size.
• Not sharing the results. The more negative the results, the more important to share them. Of course, when sharing the results, make sure to communicate what your management team has identified as the top priorities for improving employee loyalty.

What common mistakes have you seen in employee-satisfaction research?

Priorities for Improving Employee Loyalty

After you've conducted that employee loyalty study (see Five Reasons You Must Measure Employee Loyalty during a Recession), you need to prioritize the areas where improving your organization's corporate climate will increase employee engagement.

Besides segmenting employees by attitude and behavior, Walker Loyalty studies also segment attributes into strengths and areas for improvement:

• Top Priorities - high performance gap, high influence on employee engagement
• Lesser Priorities - high performance gap, low influence on engagement
• Leverageable Strengths - low gap, high influence
• Other Strengths - low gap, low influence

This quadrant analysis makes it easy for organizations to determine what areas they should focus on to improve employee loyalty:

To implement improvements inspired by the feedback, a Walker consultant will walk our clients through developing an action plan to address these priorities.

The True Cost of Low Employee Loyalty

Employees who feel trapped or are at a high risk for leaving won't just hurt your organization in the future, when they quit your company.  They are hurting your organization now.

According to a 2007 study from Vovici partner Walker Information, disloyal employees are less likely to recommend your organization as a good place to work than loyal employees are: just 39% of such employees are very likely or extremely likely to recommend your company, compared to 92% of loyal employees (a 53-point difference).  But not only are disloyal employees not promoting your company to those outside the organization, they aren't doing any favors for those inside the organization either. Disloyal employees are 29 points less likely to help coworkers with heavy workloads, and 38 points less likely to take on tasks that are "above and beyond the call of duty".

These trapped and high risk employees are 43 points less likely to do what it takes to make your company successful or to do their part to execute your company's strategy.  
Too often, I have heard company executives express concern about employee loyalty only because of the direct costs incurred when employees leave and must be replaced.  While the costs of advertising open positions or contracting with recruiters can add up, and the investment required to train a new employee until they are productive can be significant, the true cost of employee disloyalty is paid today, in how such employees behave before they leave, and in how much less you get from such employees as compared to your loyal staff.  
This makes it more important than ever for you to conduct an employee loyalty satisfaction study and get everyone in your organization working together to ensure your success.

New Year, New Job: Helping Employees Break that Particular Resolution

One New Year's resolution that is perennially popular is the resolution to find a new job.  A significant number of employees evaluate their careers at the end of the calendar year.  As a result, expect to see many job fairs and more help-wanted listings (yep, even in a recession). 

If you are an employer or HR professional, you want to make sure that your best employees stay with you.  You want to help them seek those new career opportunities within your organization.  As I've written before, 47% of top-performing employees are actively looking for jobs, while only 18% of low performers are (Source: Leadership IQ).

All of which makes this a great time to conduct an employee loyalty study.  Because this is one New Year's resolution you do not want your best employees to keep!

Correlation between Employee Loyalty & Customer Loyalty

Walker Information, Vovici's partner for employee loyalty benchmarking, has done detailed annual studies looking at customer loyalty and employee loyalty.   When Walker compiles its U.S. benchmarks, it finds that both types of loyalty move in parallel to one another, tracking each other for increases and declines:

While correlation alone does not necessarily imply never implies causation, Walker has found that high-risk employees provide poorer customer service than loyal employees: a sure way for employee disloyalty to lead to customer disloyalty.  As I wrote last week:

If you don't take care of your employees, they won't take care of your customers.  Loyal employees have a positive impact on customer loyalty and retention:  where 92% of loyal employees do tasks for customers "above and beyond the call of duty", only 54% of trapped and high risk employees do so, according to Walker.  Where 89% of loyal employees help coworkers who have heavy workloads, only 60% of trapped or high-risk employees do.  In a recession, of course, it is more important than ever to keep existing customers loyal, because the cost of acquiring new customers is so high.

This is Reason #1 of the top five reasons to measure employee loyalty during a recession.  Make sure to review them all.

Five Reasons You Must Measure Employee Loyalty During a Recession

With unemployment in the U.S. workforce rising more rapidly than it has in a quarter century, why am I discussing employee loyalty and retention?

First, it's a recession, not a depression.  Despite the negative headlines, organizations are still functioning.  Despite great uncertainty about the future, organizations still count on their employees to help them adapt, change and grow.  Those organizations that protect their invesment in people will come out of this stronger.

So here are five reasons that you must measure and improve employee loyalty during a recession:

1. To maintain customer loyalty.  If you don't take care of your employees, they won't take care of your customers.  Loyal employees have a positive impact on customer loyalty and retention:  where 92% of loyal employees do tasks for customers "above and beyond the call of duty", only 54% of trapped and high risk employees do so, according to Walker.  Where 89% of loyal employees help coworkers who have heavy workloads, only 60% of trapped or high-risk employees do.  In a recession, of course, it is more important than ever to keep existing customers loyal, because the cost of acquiring new customers is so high.
2. To keep your top talent. Because we are faced with tough decisions, we must keep our top players to help us reach the right decisions.  Unfortunately, 47% of top-performing employees are actively looking for jobs, while only 18% of low performers are (Source: Leadership IQ).  Having owned my own company for many years, I can tell you it is a bitter irony when the good employees leave and the bad employees stay.
3. To focus on the right things. Organizations must be efficient in times like these; avoid trying to boil the ocean. Don't ask questions about issues that can't be addressed. Too often the focus is given to attributes where the organization is rating the lowest, rather than focusing on the attributes with the highest impact on employee perceptions and behavior.
4. To maintain morale and productivity.  The economy has us all a bit twitchy and insecure.  Your employees are nervous - a loyalty survey opens up the dialogue and gives you a chance to listen and respond.  A recent Walker study of human-resource professionals found that three-quarters of those surveyed had seen a noticeable decline in employee morale in the past several months.
5. To emerge from the recession stronger. You want your organization to exit this downturn with an uptick in performance.  When the economy improves, you want to have a stronger, more loyal staff, giving you a competitive edge over your competitors as you look to hire and grow:  92% of loyal employees will recommend your organization as a good place to work, compared to only 39% of trapped or high-risk employees.

So what are you waiting for?  Conduct an employee loyalty study today, or start an online community to gather insights from your employees.

[This post was inspired by a presentation given by Chris Woolard of our partner, Walker Information.]

An Apostle Model for Employee Loyalty

Where the Apostle Model analyzes customer satisfaction and loyalty, Walker Information - Vovici's new partner for employee benchmarks - has an analogous segmentation for employee loyalty.  The Walker model segments employees by attitude and behavior:

Unlike the Apostle Model's reliance on two questions, the Walker model integrates four questions into its analysis.  The attitudinal index used in the segmentation is derived from three questions, giving it greater accuracy and stability than one-question metrics.

The four Walker employee segments follow:

• Truly Loyal - positive attitude, positive behavior - These employees plan to remain employed and want to work for your organization.
• Accessible - positive attitude, negative behavior - Accessible employees want to remain employed but may not be able to, because of outside circumstances or better opportunities elsewhere.
• Trapped - negative attitude, positive behavior - Trapped employees plan to remain employed, but would prefer to work elsewhere.
• High Risk - negative attitude, negative behavior - High Risk employees do not plan to remain employed and no longer want to work for your organization.

Wallker has been using this segmentation for almost a decade now.  In its most recent study, Walker found that, in the United States, 34% of employees are Truly Loyal, 7% are Accessible, 23% are Trapped and 36% are High Risk.  How do your employees compare?  To find out, contact us today for your own employee-loyalty study.

Update: This post is part of the series The Apostle Model and Related Loyalty Segmentations.