How to keep employees engaged in pandemic times

The past year was very unpredictable for many companies. Most of them found ways to adapt to the new conditions, and their projects thrived, as well as the industry they operate in.  We believe that the vast majority would agree with the fact that work from home improved our work – personal life balance. Not going to start a debate on that, as we would better share some insight on how we, as the HR department here at TEC, managed to stay connected to the team and also address some of the concerns that appeared during the time we couldn’t have our water cooler discussions or smoking breaks together.

We kept hearing about eNPS and how companies use it to make sure everyone’s happy. So, we thought we should give it a try; not because we didn’t have enough “forms for employees” ideas, but because we didn’t have one so short; not at that time, anyway.

Let’s go over a brief description of what eNPS surveys are

The employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) is based on a 0-to-10 rating of how likely an employee is to recommend TEC Software Solutions as a place to work, with 0 not at all likely and 10 extremely likely. eNPS scores range from +100 to -100.

Then, depending on the rating you’ve been given, you need to find out what are the core strengths of the company and the areas that can be improved.

The most important factor with this survey is that it is anonymous. On one hand, this fact provided us with many good jokes, but, on the other hand, we also got some great, honest replies and suggestions for improvement. Both outcomes gave us, the HR, purpose during a time when there was only so much paperwork to do.

Of course, we did not achieve great success with the eNPS at first, but we decided to stick with this survey and send it twice a year, in June and December, and compare the scores. This quantitative data,  together with the open answers, helped us get a better understanding of the team’s perspective.

These new insights, paired with a few ideas we got from past surveys, led us to a series of informal events split into 5 modules, covering all there is to know about the one core “ingredient” in improving any human interaction: being more emotionally intelligent. We had several other activities that came as suggestions through eNPS as well, ideas like game nights, team building activities, and even all staff events both for work updates and socializing.

How are eNPS and ISO linked?

This year, we got ISO certified, and since ISO’s mantra is continuous improvement, we adopted the same mindset.

Then, we took this approach and adapted it to our context. It already feels like we’ve come so far, but we need to keep measuring our improvement, as part of the quality management system.

Any improvement can be easily measured when it comes to numbers, but how would one measure the overall satisfaction of our team members? How would the management acknowledge that maybe some decisions were not taken in the employees’ best interest? The answer is the eNPS, because it tells you if your team members would recommend the company as a potential workplace to their friends.

Thus, we decided to use the eNPS score as part of ISO documentation, and keep improving it as we developed our understanding of what’s concerning our colleagues and discovered its potential.

Currently, our main objective in regards to the eNPS, is to improve the response rate, as our last eNPS dropped to a 47% response rate. The score is, however, almost excellent and we think that, as we increase the response rate, the score will get even more meaningful; we’re looking forward to our eNPS in December.

Also, we learned that the only way to make this survey work is to focus on the things that we can control, such as organizing the recommended events, certain coaching sessions, and so on. The point is, these surveys helped us be consistent with things that are not that popular, or had a rough start- so rough that you could easily decide it’s not worth the energy invested.

Receiving good feedback from one person in that regard makes our job so rewarding. What comes next? Us coming up with new ideas, or old, there is no point in reinventing the wheel, that satisfy people’s needs in regards to the work environment, communication, and basically, everything that an HR department has a relative amount of control upon.

Alexandru Olariu Human Resources Consultant