Jessica Cates 
Right now, there’s a huge push to focus on being employee-centric – and for good reason. As we discussed in our prior post, companies that take a modern approach by focusing on their employee’s well-being and engagement get more done, have better client interactions, and ultimately – make more money.
So how, exactly, do you gauge where your company falls on the scale of most to least employee-centric? As a starting point, we recommend evaluating these three areas of your business with the goal of identifying areas of improvement.
1 – Your company’s customer and employee Net Promoter Score (NPS)
It’s common for your customer success team to have hawk eyes on your NPS, diligently watching for abrupt shifts or any deviations from the norm. But are HR and people teams also scrutinizing what that score means internally? If not, perhaps you should be.
A company’s customer NPS is a valuable tool because it allows your teams to measure customer satisfaction at every stage of their journey. Doing so provides valuable insight into each client-facing department of your organization. If low grades appear and complaints arise, it’s time to dig in and do some correlating. For example, if you’re hearing a lot of complaints from customers that tie back to employees on a specific manager’s team, investigate why.
Some companies are already all over this idea and are even conducting regular internal surveys to capture an employee net promoter score (eNPS). This provides another tool for sensing temperature changes in your company culture. It can surface feelings bubbling beneath the surface, especially among employees who tend to fly under the radar. It can also help your leadership team detect signs of burnout and address any key issues that have the potential to negatively impact employee engagement and satisfaction.
To capture an eNPS, most companies use a simple one-question approach to measure employee engagement over time – “On a scale of zero to ten, how likely is it that you would recommend this organization as a place to work?” However, we’re starting to see the focus on capturing employee feedback expand and expect to continue to see this process evolve into more comprehensive company-wide feedback initiatives.
What is your team doing today to get a pulse check on your people?
2 – Public employee feedback
Employee reviews on sites like Glassdoor can tell you a lot. If employees are publicly revealing all sorts of feedback you don’t hear internally – whether it’s good or bad – it may be time to take a closer look at your internal structure.
This type of public purge can be uncomfortable – and it can also be a major sign that employees don’t feel like they have a safe or appropriate place to share these sentiments within your organization. If you’re unsure if this may be the case, think it through:
- What avenues do employees have if they’re concerned about a co-worker’s behavior?
- What if they’re not getting along with their direct manager or department director?
- Are employees commonly turning to their leaders with feedback?
If your answer to any of these questions is uncertain or tepid, this can signal a lack of employee-centric culture. Identifying these gaps and putting solutions in place can help you build a more balanced work environment where employees feel their opinions are valued.
As you comb through Glassdoor reviews, carefully consider what’s being said in each review, and be sure to look at your CEO approval rating, interview rating, and benefits ratings. It’s important to get a holistic view of how the company is faring in different areas. Then, you can again do a gap analysis and identify where there’s room for improvement. One of the most important things you can do with Glassdoor reviews is to make sure any feedback that singles someone out is addressed and discussed with the appropriate people in your organization.
It’s never easy to reflect on criticism objectively, but the learning that comes from evaluating opportunities for improvement can be one of your biggest growth catalysts. And while feedback can be embellished if it’s provided at a moment in time when someone is particularly incensed, we all know the truth nearly always lies somewhere in the middle.
Do Glassdoor reviews play a role in your brand marketing and in how you measure your employee experience today? If not, it’s smart to set aside some time each month to stay on top of these reviews. It’s also very important to publicly address negative feedback in a human way. What you find when you start to think critically about what you see may surprise you.
3 – Outcome-driven success measures
86% of modern employees strongly prefer to work for a company focused on outcomes over volume. Knowledge workers seek out companies that value “the impact they can deliver to the business in a holistic sense.” In other words, leaders need to focus on value, not volume.
When nearly 90% of knowledge workers surveyed agree that this one thing is monumentally important to their well-being, companies need to listen.
But what does it mean, exactly? Gallup Workplace says, “Outcome-based cultures (OBCs) let leadership define the end goals and then leave it to individual contributors and their managers to determine processes.”
Implementing an OBC in your organization creates room for creativity, adaptation, and autonomy. The idea is to remove leaders from day-to-day operations. This gets them out of the weeds, leaving the experts they hired to do the job – to do their job. If outcome goals are met, the manager and employee’s contributions are considered a job well done.
Perhaps the trickiest part of implementation is hiring managers with the right strengths to lead the charge. To be effective, this approach requires leaders to enjoy learning what motivates their team members and must be good at identifying their strengths and matching talent to tasks. These leaders must also have a high degree of trust and need to be willing to stay out of their employee’s way. Evaluating your business’s use of outcome-based goals to measure success can help you determine how attractive a role may or may not be to modern knowledge workers.