engagement Archives | Make Happy

Acting on feedback from an employee survey

We all want to know what people think of us. If we are scared to ask, we are usually even more afraid of hearing the answer. This is also the case with organisations. Too afraid to ask their employees what they really think of their work culture, values and environment, many businesses rely on assumptions.

So, how do we get to the truth, how do we stop working on the basis of what we believe, and start dealing with what we know? How can we really ‘hear’ what people in the office think and feel about the organisation? How can we capture feedback in an objective and informative way that helps achieve the business goals? And importantly, how do we embrace and empower those who took the time to feedback to us?

Well of course, it’s the good old employee/climate survey. There’s certainly nothing new about this – it’s a method tried and tested across many organisations. However, in my view, the success of such surveys relies on what happens after the survey is fielded. How are the results analysed and turned into visible action to demonstrate to your people that you have listened to them and valued what they had to say?

When I worked for a large global PR firm, we were keen to engage with people and hear their honest feedback, but we had some anxiety about how we would deal with their feedback. We were concerned about what they might say, and worried that we would need to have all the answers.

So what did we do? We sat back with a cup of whatever and faced the results. In my experience, the data usually tells you what you already know. You just haven’t confronted it, dealt with it or said it out loud.

Once you’ve taken the plunge and fielded the survey, and braved the results, these simple steps will help you take visible, credible action:

1. Decide what areas of your business you need to improve on to achieve your business goals and then separate the urgent from the important/nice to have.

2. Feedback the results to everyone in a transparent, engaging and meaningful way – let your employees know you have heard them and value their feedback.

3. Give leaders and managers responsibility for improving year on year and, if you want, build this into their review and/or their reward.

4. Then respond and engage with your employees again – set up guiding coalitions across your office to come up with ideas and suggestions to improve their organisation – really empower them to deliver on their ideas and solve their own challenges.

This post was written by our People Partner Fiona Riley. For more information on how we help businesses transform their people strategies, email sophie@makehappy.co.uk

Explain your business’s purpose through storytelling.

I recently read an article in HBR about how storytelling is a great way to explain a business’s purpose. I couldn’t agree more.

To me, purpose is about understanding and aligning a business’s values (who you are and what you stand for) and value (what you do and how it benefits others).

To activate purpose, you need to set a narrative. As with any good story, you need a beginning, middle and end.

1. Beginning

You need to tell a personal narrative, focusing on real events in the founder’s life and explaining how these incidents established the personal values that will later link to the values of the organisation.

2. Middle

You then need to connect these values with broader shared values of the audience, clients and employees. You can aim to do this through sharing values, experiences, hopes and aspirations. By doing so, you can create a common narrative.

3. End

Once a connection has been established, you then need an urgent call to action for those who want to share the business’s purpose.

A great example of activating purpose can be seen with Kickstarter. They use storytelling as an impactful way of asking people to join their team. Their narrative begins with the founder telling the story of the company. Their website then includes pictures and short descriptions of each company employee. Finally, the narrative finishes with a call to action, asking the reader “Love Kickstarter? You’ll fit right in.”

Although the process of storytelling can seem daunting, it’s a powerful tool that builds passion, motivation and buy-in for the stakeholders of any organisation.

Image: FlickrCC/BY/2.0 Jim Penucci

Mumbai – India’s Creative City

I’m delighted to announce Make Happy’s partnership with the G5A Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the project from Founding Director Anuradha Parikh. I first had the pleasure of working with Anuradha back in 1986 on two documentary films between finishing school and starting university. Two weeks ago I travelled to Mumbai to meet her again, as well as the staff, artists and local community behind the project.

Anuradha and I had discussed at length the creative community in Mumbai. In a city seeing rapid regeneration and economic change, the arts and innovative processes have suffered, and G5A responds to this. Its mission is to be a centre for creative expression that encourages participation from the marginalised as well as the elite, and to build a model of participatory neighbourhood governance and management within the local community. These goals will empower its inhabitants to enact effective change.

Urban studies academic Richard Florida theorises that to define a city as creative it must nurture the ‘3 Ts’: talent, technology and tolerance. G5A pushes for these through its mission. Additionally, Anuradha and I fervently believe that the best approach to tackling the issues Mumbai faces is in itself a creative one.

To this end, I facilitated a number of workshops at G5A’s launch week aimed at getting people thinking about what constitutes a creative city, harnessing applied imagination to empower participants to take real world actions. The workshops opened people up to techniques that allowed for radical change of thought to address problems. I introduced Lego Serious Play as a tool to nurture open communication, with people from diverse backgrounds getting comfortable around one another. Each person built a model expressing what they thought was a key characteristic of a creative city. We brought models together to discuss what, how and why each element could come together to produce a harmonious whole.

Paramount to the success of the workshops were the broad-ranging backgrounds of its participants. Teachers, fishermen and shop-keepers from the local community collaborated with high-profile individuals from the world of arts and culture. These included film makers, musicians, writers, architects and artists, including Kunal Kapoor, trustee of the world-class Prithvi Theatre.

Whilst my time at G5A was limited, I believe we succeeded in opening people up to the power of workshop techniques in facilitating better conversations. Moving forward, G5A will not only be used as a venue for the arts, but as a base to train a generation of workshop facilitators who can go back to their individual communities to discuss their own specific issues.

UNESCO doesn’t list Mumbai as a creative city at present and this we need to change. The city has huge potential to reinforce its reputation as the place for creativity and innovation in India and potentially the destination for an annual innovation and creativity conference. I hope we see the success of G5A reflected in a creative spark throughout Mumbai. If ideas facilitate other ideas, people will be challenged and pushed to learn from one another, enacting effective change in the process.

In terms of geographical distance, Make Happy has an obstacle to overcome with helping G5A. However, we’ve never been one to shy away from a challenge, and look forward to finding creative ways in which to support the centre on an ongoing basis.

If any readers have an interest in developing the arts, culture or creative innovation in Mumbai, we’d love to hear from you, as we will soon be hosting a series of events following on from G5A’s launch.

3 tips for improving your #hashtag

If you’re posting without a hashtag then you’re missing out on the opportunity to increase your exposure.

A hashtag is not just a tool that helps group social conversations, it brings together a vocal community of users by opening posts to be viewed by all accounts. When these users are brought together in the right way, the value of the hashtag increases.

Famously, Cancer Research UK found social users posting pictures of themselves with no makeup along-with the hashtag ‘#NoMakeupSelfie’ in order to raise donations for the charity. Impressively, in just 6 days over £8million had been donated through user generated hashtagging.

It’s not just charities that can benefit from a useful hashtag. Lancôme asked their followers to post ‘bare faced selfies’ for the launch of the DreamTone serum. Not only did they receive positive engagement on social platforms, but remarkably, the selfie gallery on the company’s website generated a 4% conversion rate for the product.

The power of a well thought through and executed hashtag has been proven time and time again. Here are three tips for using hashtags more effectively.

1. Give your hashtag a purpose:
You must be selective about the topics you’re associated with. Make a list of the 4 topics you want to become involved with and do some research into what thought leaders in those areas are already hashtagging. This will give you a baseline understanding of what’s trending in those areas.

2. A brand hashtag that resonates.
Choose one #hashtag that represents your brand’s values and also engages users to click-through or start a conversation. For example toilet paper brand Charmin uses #TweetFromYourSeat to open and encourage engagement from social fans.

3. #Don’t #overuse #the #hashtag.
Using too many hashtags actually devalues their strength. It can even cause further damage by causing a loss of followers and permanently damage your branding. Instead, Twitter officially recommends that you use no more than two #’s per tweet.

Some people use hashtags for fun, others to promote their brand, regardless, you want your posts to be simple and filled with useful content that engages the user to click on your link, visit your website or even buy your product. Hashtags, used correctly, open these posts up to a new audience.

#HappyHashtagging!

Image: CC/BY/2.0 Ognian Mladenov

Boy jumping to land safely in fathers arms

The Curious Incident of Trust in the Workplace

I recently went to the National Theatre’s brilliant performance of Mark Haddon’s, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime. The storyline revolves around a seed of trust that is planted, and then torn away, leading to devastation and destruction.

It made me wonder about our expectations of trust inside the workplace.

According to research by Dirks and Ferrin (2002), having trust in the workplace has been proven to yield economic advantage by enhancing effectiveness, efficiency and performance. However, trust is not a physical object which can be easily given and received. It is a belief in people’s integrity and goodwill that is hard to build and easy to destroy.

Adrian Furnham, Professor of Psychology at University College London, suggests we are currently in a “crisis of faith”. With whistleblowers, speeding train drivers, the financial crisis and corrupt politicians, why should we put our trust in anybody?

So what happens when this crisis of faith infects our workplaces?

There are three key issues that trust-free organisations face from their employees.

Engaging in counterproductive behaviour (Bies and Tripp, 1996)
Loss of the workforce as valuable employees leave (Robinson, 1996)
Reduced effectiveness of their work (Dirks and Ferin, 2001)

This cannot be good for success and productivity; the importance of trust and happiness in the workplace should not be underestimated.

So, how do we define, measure and encourage trust in the workplace?

In their recent white paper Searle, Hailey and Dietz state that individual’s perceptions are central to the concept of trust. There are four distinct qualities which leaders and co-workers should exhibit in order to gain trust from others:

Ability – “The extent to which this party is believed to have the skills or competence to do their job”
Benevolence – “How much they are regarded as caring genuinely about his or her well being”
Integrity – “Which focuses on other’s adherence to moral principles and high standards of behaviours”
Predictability – “The perceived consistency of others behaviour over time.”

These qualities should be aspired to by all employees, but more importantly, should be both actively nurtured and demonstrated by leadership. In doing so, you will create a trusting work environment, and happier, more productive employees.

The Creator’s Code with thanks to Hiut Denim

I’m a fan of David Hieatt’s newish venture, Hiut Denim Co., which sells jeans and only jeans, that are made in a factory in Cardigan Bay, Wales. Real British jeans. Huit Denim also has a periodical newsletter and this was in today’s edition – not sure who actually came it with the list as there is no credit, but it is good.

The Creator’s Code

1. Find your love.
2. Spend your life working at it.
3. Trust your instincts.
4. Ignore doubters.
5. Chase the work, not the money. The money will come.
6. Use your ideas to push this world forward.
7. Don’t let your ideas down: Execute well.
8. Work with great people. They are not always the easiest.
9. There are no short cuts. Do the work.
10. Great coffee helps.

Acting on feedback from an employee survey

Explain your business’s purpose through storytelling.

Mumbai – India’s Creative City

The Curious Incident of Trust in the Workplace

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