The Top 7 Employee Insights Your Company Needs To Succeed

The success or failure of any organization is dependent on its human resources i.e. its workforce. And the success of the workforce is dependent on the experiences they get. So how can organizations keep track of metrics that matter? What these insights about employees and their experiences that HR stakeholders can track? The essential employee insights are the observations and thoughts that employees have about their work, their company, and the industry they work in. These insights are valuable to know what motivates employees, how they perceive their job, how to keep them engaged, and how the company as a whole is perceived by its employees. These insights are the best ways to understand and analyze a company’s culture.

Employee insights are important because they help businesses understand their employees and needs. These insights are the key for companies to understand what their employees think and feel about the company and the working environment. You can use this knowledge to improve employee productivity, satisfaction, and overall experience. It can further help make better decisions about its overall talent strategy.

By understanding the employees’ perspective, businesses can better manage their HR and training operations to help employees reach excellence. They can also use these insights to avoid making the same mistakes repeatedly. These insights can even lead to a better customer experience in some ways. Therefore, having these employee insights is highly important for a company to succeed.

This post will look at the top seven insights your employees have that could help your business grow.

What are the top 7 insights your company needs to know?

1. How is the Employee Experience in your company?

Employee experience (EX) is the term used to describe all the interactions and events an employee has with their employer. Employee experience evokes the employees’ emotional state regarding their job and relationship with their employer and the organization. The employee experience is about what employees feel, what they do, and how they behave. It is not just about what happens during working hours but also encompasses the entire employee life cycle. Employee experience includes when they first heard about their company, recruitment, work tenure, and when they leave (and even after they’ve left).

It is proven that employee experience should be considered in every decision an organization makes. A good employee experience can help organizations attract and retain the best talent, increase productivity, and improve customer satisfaction. On the other hand, a poor employee experience can lead to high employee turnover, decreased productivity, and a negative reputation. Therefore, employee experience can be a precious insight for businesses that will guide them towards the path of success in multiple ways.

2. What is driving the employee experience to be so?

For many businesses, it’s the first and last question. They are generally unaware of what is driving the employee experience, which in most cases isn’t limited to only motivation, appreciation, or compensation packages. It usually goes down to several factors: teamwork, environment, company culture, employee engagement, recognition, leadership styles, manager’s working behavior, and remuneration. Therefore, due to the lack of this insight, one could say that they don’t even know their employees very well. Therefore, understanding these hidden forces will be precious for businesses. It may help you know what culture changes in work are required to provide a better experience to your employees.

3. How are Leadership and managerial styles contributing to your company’s employee experience?

Employee experience isn’t always limited to processes and policies. The most crucial factor is the level of engagement from team leaders, managers, and executives in an organization. It includes leadership styles, managerial styles, and day-to-day behaviors they demonstrate on the floor. If it’s tied tightly with your company values, mission statements, or vision and takes employees well into account, one can expect to contribute positively towards a good employee experience!

Let’s take an example. If your company’s leadership and management don’t consider employee wellness necessary, then the importance of employee wellness will be low across the organization. In a nutshell, leadership and management styles contribute to the employee experience across several parameters.

4. Why are employees quitting your company?

Knowing why employees are leaving the company will help you better understand the areas that need improvement within your company and may generate new ideas on how to improve them! Employees could be quitting for several reasons ranging from compensation to employee experience. Some of these may be in your control, and others may not. Many of these reasons could have nothing to do with the job itself.

But still, most of the employees who leave do believe that they need to move on and realize new interests outside of their jobs due to the emotional toll their current work causes them. Finding out these reasons can give your company a better idea of what kind of employee experience you can provide and how it affects retention or turnover.

5. More importantly, why are employees staying back at your company?

Of course, retention is a massive topic of discussion in most companies. Knowing your employee’s thoughts and opinions on company policies, culture, or whatever makes them stick to your company can give you deep insights into why they feel comfortable staying with you rather than finding another job!

Knowing this, you can figure out your organization’s strengths that make employees stick around. You can then work to get even better on these strengths and make sure that you never lose them. Or communicate these strengths more to the workforce to create a positive perception around them.

6. Do employees feel loyalty or belongingness to the company?

Employees who feel a sense of loyalty and belongingness to their company are more productive, engaged, and committed to their work. They’re more likely to leave the organization for the slightest mishappening or an encounter with another possibly better opportunity. Conversely, those who don’t feel a sense of belongingness and loyalty are more likely to be less productive and engaged. It will be much easier to retain them in the long run. Therefore, it is imperative to have this insight so that the hr management of the organizations can make sure that employees feel loyalty and belongingness with the company.

7. What should be your priority, Hiring to backfill or retention?

There is no easy answer when it comes to this question. Hiring to backfill is essential because it allows you to continue to grow your company and maintain productivity. It is also the apparent solution when your current employees leave your company.

However, retention is also necessary to work on because it ensures that you are not losing valuable employees, to begin with. Therefore, companies need to know which one should be prioritized. An easy way to decide that is to analyze the company’s current position. If the company lacks talent or wants to expand, the focus should be hiring new employees. On the other hand, if they have enough talent to grow or sustain well in the market, but there is a growing risk of employees leaving, the focus should be retention.

How can you get these insights?

1. Use a compelling employee experience measurement platform

Effective employee experience measurement systems help companies better know their employees’ experiences and engagement levels with the company. It also allows you to quantify different aspects of an employee’s work experience, which ultimately improves your talent management, organizational development, and development plans for the future. However, such services are expensive unless managed carefully, so effective use must be in place.

2. Conduct “Exit” and periodic “Stay in” interviews with your workforce

Exit interviews and periodic stay-in interviews (also known as exit surveys or employee value surveys) are essential methods to get insight into your employees’ importance to a company. In exit interviews, you can further ask them about their goals and aspirations, what they think of the company, what made them leave, and what could have been offered better by the company. It will give you clarity about why exactly employees are leaving your company.

On the other hand, in stay-in interviews, you could ask them if they are happily willing to continue in their current role, what they like the most about their job/company and the possible improvements in their work that can make it even better. It will clarify why employees are staying back at your company and what you can do to retain them longer. Understanding your employees’ mindset about the company also gives you insights into how motivated an employee is and what motivates them.

3. Measure leadership styles and manager effectiveness as part of your employee experience strategy

As we already know, leaders and managers play a crucial role in creating the experiences that employees get. The way managers work with their teams impacts what employees feel and their emotions about the organization as a whole. Being a conduit of the company’s objectives, strategy, and culture, managers can make or break this critical chain.

Hence, you must consider leadership styles and manager effectiveness as critical ingredients of your employee experience strategy. Taking these insights will lead you to create a compelling and actionable strategy at the company level and each team and demographic level. You will see what is driving what experience in which part of the organization.

4. Train the managers and supervisors to connect with their teams better

Getting insights from employees can be difficult for managers and supervisors. They’re usually too busy or don’t know how to connect with their team better. But if they are trained well to better connect with their team, they can draw these valuable insights from the team. It may happen with better connection, and employees will be able to feel more comfortable with these managers and supervisors. These employees then won’t hesitate much before providing honest insights.

5. Engage outside consultants, assessors, or experts who can provide fresh perspectives on these topics

External consultants can bring value by providing unique input that may not be present in internal research. Having access to outside points of view and different perspectives for comparison can shed new light on the work towards drawing valuable insights from your employees. Therefore, by using external consultants or tools, you help your company to have a more holistic approach in formulating the directions toward drawing valuable employee insights.

What should you do with the Employee insights once you have them?

There are a few things you can do with employee insights:

1. Use them to improve your company culture. Employee insights can help you create a more positive and productive work environment.

2. Use them to improve your recruiting process. How the hiring experience was for the most recent hires can help you improve the process further and find the best candidates for your company.

3. Use them to improve your management style. Make your people managers effective in solving people’s challenges in their span of control.

4. Use them to find new revenue streams/opportunities for growth. Employee insights can help you find ideas for new products, services, or partners, increasing your company’s profitability.

5. Finally and most importantly, Use these insights to provide a better experience to your employees. These insights will clarify what your employees want and what they don’t, and you can work on it to improve their experiences.

Conclusion

To conclude, employee insights are essential for many reasons, but at the top of the list is that they can help your company achieve its goals more efficiently. By understanding what makes your employees tick, you can better customize your work environment, motivate them, and improve teamwork. However, decide what insights you need and get those insights. This blog outlined the top seven insights your company needs to know and the different methods you can use to get those insights. We also provided a few tips on what to do once you have them. By following these methods and gaining these insights, we believe you can take your organization to great heights of employee experience.