Engagement Archives - Page 8 of 9

Employee Engagement: The Pool Table Paradox

Happy employees drinking chai lattes, playing pool and table tennis, being creative and brilliant. That is the vision some have come to imagine is the ideal work environment. We have all seen the pictures from companies like Google, with chilled out developers working in converted phone boxes and sliding down the helter-skelter to their next meeting.

The reality is, of course, often very different. The practicalities of most office environments mean that these sorts of extreme designs are not possible. However, that does not stop people trying. The number of times I have seen a pool table or foosball table awkwardly shoehorned into a corner is incredible.

The reasoning behind this is often honourable. Someone somewhere has been given a bit of money to try and increase employee happiness, and therefore engagement, based on a poor employee satisfaction survey result.

It may seem a generous and forward-thinking idea, but it is often a poorly planned “knee-jerk” reaction that fails to address the deeper issues that may be affecting the feelings of the employees or why there may be a low level of engagement.

In reality, satisfaction and engagement surveys have certain issues that could affect the true vision of employee engagement. For starters, not all employees may believe they are anonymous, leading them to refuse to take part, fearing that “Big Brother” is watching. Others may take it as an opportunity to vent frustrations that are not directly related to their overall engagement with the company. Yet more may be too busy to do it, probably those that are actually the top performers! So, the survey never really represents to true levels of engagement across the whole company.

Imagine you find that a particular department has low morale. Do you really think that putting a pool table in the coffee room will lift that long term? Did anyone in their survey cite a lack of a pool table as their reason for being unhappy in their role? Of course not. You need to dig deeper and understand the root cause of the issues, then work to improve that. But you can only do that if the employees trust you, which is where things like a well thought out Employee Value Proposition (EVP) start to become so important!

The same can actually be said of many gamification implementations in companies looking to boost employee engagement. They are introduced to try and add some flavour, fun or competition to boost productivity or happiness. Just like the pool table, this often doesn’t address the core issues. In fact, with badly implemented gamification the issue could be compounded. If a company can afford to invest in that, why can’t they invest in something that employees actually want? That’s why it is so important to plan a gamification solution so carefully and why we put so much time into the user research at the start of any project. If you don’t understand them, you can’t possibly design something that will resonate with them and be accepted.

This doesn’t mean you should not install a pool table, but make sure that it is part of a structured plan to improve all of the factors affecting employee engagement, not just a patch with a “that’ll do” attitude attached.

03/10/2018/by Lara Jones

Customer, Engagement

Customer Loyalty: What next?

As digital continues to become the norm, retailers with “traditional” card based, point collection loyalty schemes are feeling the push to evolve. In a world where people carry a supercomputer with them at all times, the idea of a plastic card in your wallet can feel dated. Looking at the recent changes in the market, a number of retailers certainly agree, and are in the race to update and enhance.

Loyalty in the news

Sainsbury’s, for instance, having bought Nectar are looking to make their whole loyalty scheme app based. That is not the only change they are making either. In an attempt to move away from blanket discounts, they are looking to reward people based on their frequency of visits and how long they have been a customer. This is a big move in a world where most are used to just being rewarded directly in line with what they spend. It feels much more in line with the definition of ‘loyalty’ the average customer may have too. They are also testing a “choose your own reward” system to give loyal customers a new level of choice and personalisation.

In light of the news of Sainsbury’s and ASDA joining forces, it will be interesting to see what happens, considering ASDA have always shied away from loyalty programs!

What makes this even more interesting is that Waitrose recently cancelled a similar scheme. They gave their customers the opportunity to choose 10 frequently purchased items to get discounts on. However, the feedback they received showed them that many found this to be confusing. Waitrose has now simplified the system, choosing to move to a tailored discount system instead.

The moves aren’t just towards ‘simple, fast, digital’ though.

Tesco invested a great deal into updating their card-based scheme over the last few years, moving to contactless to create a better customer experience. In their attempts to simplify their offering, they have drawn anger from shoppers at how fast the changes are coming into place.

So, what does it all mean?

It is safe to say that these examples and the many others out there represent some large shifts in how loyalty schemes will work, but it is not the core mechanics of point collecting changes that are interesting. It is the potential reasons behind the changes that offer more insight.

The varying approaches and ‘snakes and ladders’ feel to the changes, arguably represent a market trying to get a read on their audience. What do the masses unanimously want? Choice? Simplicity? Digital? One of the main reasons cited for the changes is simplification of the service, a very customer-centric concept. Given too much choice, people can falter and feel overwhelmed (the Paradox of Choice). The average consumer needs to understand the point behind, well, collecting points and the rewards can’t feel so out of reach that they give up and disengage with the scheme.

The alternative, as some have chosen, is to create offers that are personalised based on past shopping habits. This still offers the customer value but does overload them with excessive or overly complex choices. It is also a step closer to rewarding people for being them. “Dave, we appreciate your contribution as a customer, so enjoy something you want.” Simple, but it is a way of letting people know their value, which is a powerful loyalty drive.

Loyalty & Engagement

This more holistic style of engagement and loyalty can still include the traditional points collecting and incentives, but that is just one part of the puzzle. We are seeing a shift towards businesses using their knowledge of the customer to create a better overall experience. Rather than just saying “Buy this and we will give you that”, they are saying “How can we make buying this a better experience for you?” This can take many forms, from the better use of the pure loyalty-based schemes to the customer service in the shops themselves, moving some of the responsibility for loyalty to the staff themselves.

Loyalty is not about money, club cards or even quality and service. It is about all of these things together designed around the customer. It is a relationship where the customer feels valued and feels they are getting value, where there is mutual trust.

True loyalty is like true love. It’s irrational, hard to find and needs constant effort to maintain!

22/05/2018/by Lara Jones

Behavioural Design, Engagement, MOTIVAIT

Intervention Engagement vs Effectiveness

It’s been a month now since the UCL Centre for Behaviour Change 2018 conference “Going Digital & Beyond” and I have been reflecting on a key theme that struck me as being so important and relevant in the work I do at Motivait. Mostly, it is the idea that intervention effectiveness and engagement have distinctly different sets of design and outcome criteria.

For any intervention, programme or solution to be effective in achieving its aims, it must be engaging for users (for this blog, I’ll focus on digital interventions). Whilst this is hardly breaking news, it is easy to fall into the trap of thinking user engagement and user effectiveness are the same thing and therefore only designing exclusively for one or the other.

The effectiveness of an intervention is determined by whether it positively changes desired behaviour(s) and delivers intended outcomes. Effectiveness is determined by a range of factors; from how the intervention is delivered, the population and context, target behaviour(s), the extent of relevant behaviour change techniques & psychological theory applied to the intervention content, to name but a few.

Using an example, if we take employee job-strain as a commonly experienced challenge for organisations, we may use the Job Demands-Resources model as a relevant psychological framework to understand and reduce job strain. Then, we could translate its principles into the content design of a workplace wellbeing app to help managers & employees learn how to reduce employee job-strain –let’s give it a name and call it MyWorkBeing.

While the intervention’s content has been designed using relevant theory, it does not necessarily mean that this alone will attract users and sustain their engagement to the point where it is actually achieving its outcomes. In our made-up example MyWorkBeing app, it needs to be engaging enough, for long enough, to help employees’ change behaviours associated with job-strain, in the long-term, not just for a week.

There are multiple factors that influence engagement with interventions. Aside from variations in individual differences (e.g. motivation), these include the extent to which persuasive communications is used to attract users, to usability and UX, to specific engagement designs such as gamification elements and how specified they are in behaviour change techniques terms (i.e. the ‘active ingredients’ from behavioural science that regulate changes in behaviour).

So thinking about our MyWorkBeing app, it could include features such as onboarding tutorials to help users understand the apps usefulness, self-help education videos such as mindfulness, goal-setting, feedback and monitoring to cope with personal stressors, to the use of crowd-creation and crowd-rating mechanisms to generate and rate employee ideas on how the working environment could be re-designed to support wellbeing (e.g. better communal areas to incentivise social lunches, to work process changes).

When it comes to evaluating digital behaviour change interventions, it is important that engagement and effectiveness are evaluated separately without confusing their criteria. Engagement with digital interventions is considered to be measured in behavioural terms (amount, depth, frequency of use, etc.) via system analytics and in subjective experiential terms (attention, interest, vigour, satisfaction, etc.) via self-report measures.
Here we can observe what levels of engagement with the intervention, as revealed from the above metrics, is bringing about the desired changes (i.e. effectiveness criteria); this is referred to as the ‘optimal dose’.

Using our example, what levels of user engagement with the MyWorkBeing app is resulting in reductions in job-strain related behaviours (e.g. lunching at desks, email access out of hours) and outcome measures (e.g. absenteeism, wellbeing self-report measures)? We could find that those users who set and regularly monitor their goal progress and frequently watch self-help video features, to have better outcomes compared to those who only engage with the crowd-creation & crowd-rating features.

The take away message here is that engagement and effectiveness are equally important and should both be designed for carefully and evaluated with their different criteria. Simply, if users are not engaging with something, it’s not going to be effective. By the same token, if people are engaging, but the content design (or some of it) is not relevant to users, it’s also unlikely to be effective.

03/04/2018/by Lara Jones

Employees, Engagement

Graduate Recruitment- Headaches & Hangovers

It’s open season in the world of applying for graduate schemes. In the background, Brexit negotiations and threats of a 2020 “brain drain” tinge the graduate recruitment market with nerves and uncertainty. Still, for now, the same huge demand remains for opportunities across the country. The same demand, the same competition, but also the same headaches persist for the recruiting teams. If anything, they’re showing signs of growing.

21^st Century Graduates

800 graduate positions were left unfilled in 2016, with graduates turning down or reneging offers that left a quarter of the UK’s leading employers with less intake than planned. The generations now reaching the employment market are faced with more choice and information than ever before, and many fiercely value the ethics and culture behind a brand just as much as what their starting salary could look like.

Graduate recruiters need to find ways to create emotional engagement to carry candidates through the early stages of joining and beyond. There are 101 reasons that could put graduates off moving forward with an opportunity. Old fashioned selection processes, myths around the profiles being hired, London is the only place that offers a competitive future….

Organisations can set themselves apart from the competition, not just by offering flexible hours or appealing holiday cover, but through effectively connecting with and preparing their candidates.

Budgets, budgets, budgets

Constraints on resources and budgets within HR and recruiting departments overall dictate that teams need to get creative and stay relevant to their target audience, without simply buying their attention or forcing them to a one-off seminar. Most recruiters now rely on social media more than traditional advertising but are also developing more direct partnerships with universities. But what if you’re not one of the widely recognised brands? How can you successfully reach the graduate population, and stand out with your approach?

The average cost per hire for a graduate is estimated to be £3,383. This comprises of £1,722 on attraction & marketing and £1,661 on selection & assessment. Fewer companies are planning on increasing their budgets around recruitment for the foreseeable future, which means it’s going to become more important to reach and attract the right candidates who could even develop beyond graduate level within the company.

Honeymoon vs Hangover

The numbers of students who see their first role as a stepping stone towards other opportunities is on the rise. 60% of students say they would expect to be in their first job for less than 3 years. So how to make them stay?

A large proportion of graduates feel they are underemployed and underappreciated in their roles which could be a factor in the rising trend. Is there a way to set and manage their expectations accordingly from the start, and demonstrate what it is really like to work in your company with minimum surprises? 69% of employees are more likely to stay in their company for at least 3 years after a great onboarding experience. It is essential to remember that first impressions count, creating a memorable and innovative approach to onboarding could be the key to unlocking a long-lasting employee experience.

For best ongoing success, it’s crucial all employees- graduate or senior- have a clear understanding of their role and what is expected of them, feel confident in their ability to perform and contribute, as well as feel trusted, connected and valued within their organisation. There are ways to deliver these needs and objectives, without subjecting new joiners to PowerPoints or uninspiring email attachments. It’s true what they say, you get what you give, so why not offer an experience that fills your young and impressionable employees with enthusiasm about the environment they’ve just joined?

13/03/2018/by Bill Paris

Employees, Engagement

Employee Engagement Infographic

Take Me There: Exploring the Experience Economy

A friend made fun of me recently as we looked at booking a weekend away. Within seconds of us deciding on a city, I’d started ‘the list’. “Remember to schedule in ‘have fun’ somewhere between 11am and 11pm” they texted.

“The list” is where I- you guessed it- list out the key things to see, visit, eat in any destination I’m headed to. It’s begun to frequently take the form of a shared Google doc with whoever I’m going with, and yes, it does eventually start to develop schedule-like symptoms. Times where we might be leaving the hotel, when we could make dinner reservations, how long it could take to walk from one monument to the next and look there’s even a great ice cream place along the way for a pit stop at 3.17 on Friday.

Before you sign me up for a crash course in spontaneity, I should reassure you that I rarely ever follow ‘the list’ word for word. I’ll end up wandering around, see a street sign I recognise from my searches and remember that an interesting tea house/museum is nearby. In reality, this list is simply where I collect parts of a puzzle that I get to put together as I go along. My own personalised travel recommendations that I collect as I get excited about the upcoming trip. It’s inspired by the Facebook album I scrolled through, the Lonely Planet article I read, the Instagram pictures I pictured myself in. TripAdvisor recommendations, local food blogs, the hotel review that caught my eye because the building has an interesting back story. On my phone I’ve gone exploring, piecing together an experience I’d want to live. You could say it’s a millennial specific affliction. Really, it’s the same day-dreaming we’ve all done at our desks or on our daily commute. However, through the rise of social media and enhanced digital photography, we can now delve deeper into that “Wish You Were Here” feeling, and it’s something travel marketing professionals are really beginning to mine into it.

“I’m the Hero in this Story”

Recent research has pointed out that 80% of people trust the opinion of friends and family when it comes to booking a holiday. The survey found that people were less likely to use sites like TripAdvisor, Facebook or Twitter as primary sources for recommendation. Stats like these reinforce what we’re seeing across industries: recommendations and references are becoming principal purchasing influencers. The results or trends aren’t suggesting that the reach of social media should be ignored when advertising or sharing a message. However what that message conveys is important. Part of the work we do at Motivait is to reintroduce personal touches or user centricity back into processes and experiences. Our solutions rely on UX and UI research to make sure we design something that will tap into those emotional, intrinsic motivators. Why are people influenced by their best friend’s album from their #amazingadventure? Because when they see someone they personally relate to enjoying an experience, they can picture themselves enjoying it too.

Travellers, more than ever before, are able to engage with the stories and experiences of a place so that they’ve bought into their potential holiday before they’ve even booked anything. While tourism may have often been considered a stable and unchanging industry- people are always going to want a holiday- today’s digital platforms are offering an opportunity for organisations, councils, and national bodies to flex their creative muscles. People still want a holiday. But they can also now picture and curate the holiday experience they could have. And they would thrive on the chance to see themselves as the protagonist of that story or experience.

Better still, travel and tourism bodies can deliver experiences that connect with audiences they may have lost touch with. Museums or galleries that would have once got an eye-roll from younger generations, could present a story or path to follow that ignites the explorer within. Could a city famous for its lamb dishes offer a route where the vegetarian traveller can still come away giving it a 10/10 for gastronomy? The potential to connect with your audience can be limitless; as long as you remember to put them at the heart of the destination.

12/12/2017/by Lara Jones

Employees, Engagement, Gamification

The Importance of Being Onboarded

Onboarding is nothing new. If you have worked at any medium or large company you are likely to have been through it, but it was probably called induction. For many, it is a few days of icebreakers and PowerPoint slides explaining the company in more detail, various important departments and other information needed to get going.

If you are a gamer, you would know this better as the tutorial level at the beginning of the game.

In both cases, the end goal is the same, get a new person being productive as efficiently and effectively as possible.

The big difference is the delivery mechanisms used.

First Impressions Count

An employee’s first look at the “real” company happens during onboarding. This is the first exposure to other people they are likely to be working with, to the true corporate culture and to some of the more practical aspects of their new day to day life. It is also the company’s first opportunity to make them feel at home and like a valued new member of the team. Sure, they will know something about the company, they would have had interviews, done research, possibly gone through assessment centres, but this is different. It is a time where a company can ask itself the question “What do we want our employees to think of us?” If you want them to think of you as a company driven by a culture of “death by PowerPoint”, it might be best to stop reading now.

Onboarding does not stop in the first few days after the induction, though many may feel this way. A study for the Academy of Management journal found that the first 90 days of a person’s new job were essential for creating social connections and bonds to the company. If they felt supported during this time, then they felt more positive towards the company.

What Makes Good Onboarding Experiences

Baek and Bramwell of Cornell University conducted research into how you measure the effectiveness of onboarding. They concluded that one of the best measures of an effective onboarding experience was time to proficiency. They defined this as the time it took a new hire to reach full productivity within the context of their role.

For this to happen, a new employee needs to have a structured onboarding experience, with specifically defined outcomes, and an experience that is hopefully engaging to them. At the end of their onboarding employees need to have achieved four clear objectives for the best chance of ongoing success (Bauer et al):

Role Clarity; employees understand their role, expectations with it, how to perform in order to achieve expected results
Self-efficacy; employees feel confident in their ability to perform and contribute
Social integration – employees feel connected, valued & trusted
Knowledge of organisational culture; employees understanding and adjusting to company politics, social norms such as language, goals, values and history.

How We Approach Onboarding

Some are also of the firm belief that onboarding into a new company can (or should) actually start from the day a new employee signs on the dotted line. The time before they step foot on company property is ripe for helping them start to understand some of the basics about their new employer. Much of what would traditionally be done in a conference room over a few days, can be achieved online during the weeks they are waiting to start the new role.

Games and gamification are already being utilised in the attraction phases of recruitment, with games being created to simulate everything from a day in the life of a new employee to testing an employee’s soft skills.

Following that trend into the employment phase of an employee’s journey, we can make use of gamification to create unique and engaging experiences that keep them informed and interested up to and during their first few months of employment.

Creating these kinds of experiences takes time and expertise, balancing the needs and culture of the company with needs of the new employee.

We consider these weeks and months as a quest, creating a structure around what they need to learn and understand early on. Each stage or level of the quest represents new knowledge and experiences that will help them to learn. Focusing on intrinsic motivation, we choose mechanics that support the player’s with social connectedness, education and goals to focus on, all in an environment that promotes exploration and discovery at their own pace. To this we this we add mini-games and interactive learning materials all tied together with interesting narratives and storylines. This gives the players reasons to want to continue rather than just knowing they have to continue.

Good onboarding can lead to higher rates of retention in companies, some statistics quoting as much as 69% higher retention after 3 years for companies with great programmes. It gives employees the opportunity to feel at home and become productive faster. Don’t waste this key opportunity to create a more engaged workforce by relying on traditional or even default methods, simply because “That’s how it’s always been done”.

05/12/2017/by Lara Jones

Engagement, Motivation

Embracing Digital is only half the story

Everywhere we look these days we see digital transformation is a top priority item on the corporate ‘to do’ list. External comms to customers and prospects, internal comms to employees and partners – expanding the reach and accessibility of content farther and wider than ever before.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the third sector. A recent report published by the House of Lords Select Committee on Charities, Stronger Charities for a stronger society, devotes a whole chapter to the use of digital technology in the third sector, saying that the integration of digital technologies into people’s lives and the changing nature of communications, particularly through social media, have significantly changed the environment that charities can operate within. Read more

24/04/2017/by Manuel Alvarez

Engagement, MOTIVAIT

Time for some self-reflection

Lately I’ve been thinking back over my career to the times when I have felt most engaged. Having been immersed in the world of engagement and motivation for the last 6 months at Motivait, I’ve so far found that many people and organisations often have very different ways of determining or measuring engagement, as well as different methods of igniting it in the workplace. Some have been considering engagement surveys, others are revamping office layouts, or improving communication tools, or even encouraging more flexible working hours. Read more

27/03/2017/by Bill Paris

Behavioural Design, Engagement, Gamification

Designing Specific Engagement Solutions: Putting the ‘fun’ in ‘functional’

Nobody said that inspiring Engagement was simple or easy, quite the contrary. It is in itself a challenging, complex process. Before launching heads first into any project, the first stop is always to consider how all the pieces of the puzzle fit together to design a successful, meaningful solution.
Initially, participants can often show lack of interest for reality because they have learned, day after day, that situation does not add any real value to them (learned irrelevance). Read more

10/02/2017/by Juanma Hermoso

CATEGORY

ENGAGEMENT