Just as it is for customer experience, sentiment data is critical for understanding employee experience. This makes voice-of-the-employee applications just as important to optimizing EX as voice-of-the-customer software is to guiding CX transformation.
With voice-of-the-employee software, companies can gather employee sentiment in the moment or at pre-defined intervals, such as quarterly or annually. Depending on how and when gathered, the data provides a window into how employees feel about their jobs, career development, the workplace, relationships with their managers and peers, corporate policy, trending topics, current corporate activities, and so on. Most companies understand the value of gathering employee sentiment data, as Metrigy found in its newly published Employee Experience: 2023-24 global research study of 499 companies globally.
Toward that end, one third of the companies are already using voice-of-the-employee software, while many more are either planning for adoption in 2023 (29.9%), have this technology on their roadmaps for as early as 2024 (14.6%), or are evaluating it. And of those already using, at least 70% are doing so to gather feedback from all types of employees—desk/office workers, customer-facing agents, and frontline workers.
Surveying at key journey moments, such as onboarding or job advancement, is most in use, for 64.0%. This practice most correlates with success, as well. Nearly 71% of this study’s success group, as determined by gains in employee productivity, retention, and satisfaction, are gathering employee sentiment at key journey moments, compared to 45.8% of the non-succcess group.
A second-best approach is conducting topical polls, our study shows. While more companies overall are gathering sentiment data via annual surveys (57.9%) and from enterprise social channels (38.4%), polling employees on topical issues meets with success more so than these two. Nearly 37% of all companies and 55.9% of the success group gather employee sentiment via topical polls, compared to a third on the non-success group. Further, surveying annually or at another set interval actually least correlates to success: 41.2% of the success group, compared to 66.7% of the non-success group.
Of course, gathering sentiment data is just the starting point—and a quick dead-end if a company does nothing more. Overall, fewer than half of companies are analyzing sentiment data and taking action on the insights gleaned, and only 40.9% are taking action plus circling back with employees to let them know of the changes implemented because their voices were heard. The success group does better in both cases: 61.8% gather, analyze, and act on employee sentiment, and 47.1% close the loop with employees.
Of those using employee sentiment data, most are using it both to influence near-term decisions or actions and to predict changes in key metrics, such as productivity, retention, and satisfaction. This latter is them more important of the two, for 54.4% vs. 45.6%.
Optimizing employee experience requires continuous improvement. And no company can get there without the ability to gather and use employee sentiment.
Clients interested in an outbriefing on our employee experience research can reach out to client services; others, please contact us here.
