While there’s no such thing as a free lunch, there can be a free survey review.

• Sam. Great opportunity for me to survey employees. Got the distribution list and a big cheese sponsor to send it. • Cool! What are you researching? • Best sandwich filling. Easy, eh? • Ok(!) … what type of question are you using? • Free text • You know you’ll be picking out every Cheese/cheese/chese, every ham & cheese/cheese & pickle • Hmm. I’ll fix the options • Got a complete list? Predicted all the options? • I’m confident. So, off I go! • Wait! Are they choosing one sandwich? You get a clear answer, but less data Or are they choosing three? Could be forcing a false choice And are they ranking them? Or applying no limit? If everyone chooses them all, you haven’t learnt anything • *groans* Anything else? • Included an “other” box, type of bread, dietary needs… A simple question, many considerations. Solution: I’ll help. If you’re surveying employees, I’ll review your survey. Free. I’ll consider all this detail. That makes sure you create the best survey, and that means optimum data. Why? I like to keep fresh, I like to see what issues people are exploring – possibly not butties - and who knows, I may be able to help you in the future. hashtag#measurement hashtag#employeengagement hashtag#internalcommunications

Storytelling for HR

I watched a great webinar on this topic from David Green and Alan Walker. It intrigued me, as I wondered if story-telling is a natural style for many HR pros. Storytelling has a strong link to the ability to influence, and that’s part of the elusive “seat at the table”.
But the webinar broke it down really nicely. What I took away was the need to use people data to show effects on business performance and strategy. Simple example: if a volume recruiter gives candidates such a horrendous experience that they leave as customers – there’s a calculable cost of that.
You can set and test hypotheses around these business effects – and almost certainly discover other stuff along the way. You’ll be able to set the scene, frame the problem and describe the solution. A three-act play. That’s all a story really is – and people buy stories. They’re compelling, memorable, they put things in context and get people to buy-in.
But there was also an acknowledgement that using data, or mining/finding data, or developing the findings into a narrative – may not be in everyone’s skill set. That, at times, outside help might be needed.
That’s exactly what Reason Why was created for. If this is where you need a hand, get in touch. hashtag#data hashtag#stories hashtag#bernardcribbens

I *think* you can watch a recording here: https://www.chattalent.com/strategy/data-analytics/webinar-storytelling-with-data-for-hr-and-ld/

Mistakes are Good.

I was working with a big data set, and as I manipulated it, I made a stack of mistakes. Like, loads. This meant that by the end of the day, I hadn’t got very far. I was pretty deflated. Bummed. Miffed off.

So, I kicked the bin, made a brew, and I turned it around. And, actually, those mistakes were useful.
I’d identified my own errors. I wasn’t so lost in handling the data that I couldn’t see when it stopped making sense.
It restored my vigilance against complacency. We all know the mistake you miss is next to the one you find.
I haven’t repeated those errors. Well… I have, but I’ve identified them (and ones like them) more quickly and less damagingly.
Crucially, in having to backtrack and re-do a tonne of analysis, I looked again at my process. I improved it and made it quicker AND more reliable.
Some mistakes are funny, some ruin reputations. (Some are both.) It’s how you handle them that counts. Mistakes – especially when you often work alone – are inevitable. Brian Eno suggests: “honour thy error as a hidden intention”. So use mistakes to improve, to create the contrast to truly great work.
Embrace mistakes, love mistakes – it’s your brain’s way of nudging you to do better.

Not going the extra mile

When looking at employee engagement a lot, you’ll come across the phrase “going the extra mile” a lot too. It’s often cited as one of the benefits of employee engagement, or as a measure, or almost as a synonym.
I don’t like it. My association is always requiring more, without return. For starting early or working late. For an expectation of doing more than contracted. That’s not a fair deal. That’s the employee “going the extra mile”; the employer: “taking the p!ss”.
I love a lot of Engage 4 Success’s work, but at about 40s into their main video, an employee describes engagement as “… I’ll give you more of the real me. The one who stays late when it counts, the one who puts in the extra effort…”. Thanks, but no thanks.
Which I think is a shame, especially as the next line is “…the one who cares about what they do…”
That’s much closer to the real outcome of engagement. If you care, if you’re connected, if you’re involved - if you see the mutual benefit of doing this well - then the likelihood is you’ll DO it well. You’ll give it more thought, weigh a few more options. It’s not “that’ll do”, it’s “that’ll work!” It’s more brain than brawn; smart work, not hard work.
I’m looking for a new idiom to replace “going the extra mile”. Ideas? hashtag#employeeengagement hashtag#engagement hashtag#extramile

Research and Fake News

Look at this statistic. Damning isn’t it? There’s just one problem – there doesn’t seem to be a creditable source for it, despite it appearing in mainstream media. It appears to be fake news. This brings together research and inclusion, so I wanted to know more. It's an apparently sound piece of evidence, and quoted in many – often respectable - places. But always without a link to the original research. This is something I see quite a lot. It means there’s no evidence of how it was collected, with who, the questions asked or the tests conducted. That’s the price of speed of information. That’s how the world operates. 24 hour rolling news is “never wrong for long”. Trouble is, that’s not how it works at work. If you’re gathering evidence for a proposal or to support a change of systems in the workplace, you can’t afford to be embarrassed by dodgy facts. You can’t simply print a correction at the bottom of page 16. Found a killer stat? One that supports your case? One that inspires you to make changes? Somehow stats like this one have a habit of bouncing around being re-reported and re-parroted out. Just take time to go back to the original evidence, and satisfy yourself that it stands up. hashtag#inclusion hashtag#research hashtag#facts

I don’t believe in annual engagement surveys

I do, truly, believe in the greatest number of the most engaged people.

Annual surveys are percentages, dashboards, benchmarks. Just numbers. Which don’t tell you:

• why your employees think how they do
• what to do next

There’s three main problems:

• Lack of Voice:
  You canvas broad opinion from staff. But waste their energy answering YOUR questions. What would THEIR questions be? What’s most important? How would they innovate / improve?
• Reliance on Benchmarks:
  No external organisation is like yours, all are on a different journey. That benchmark is irrelevant AND perhaps grants permission to be average, not excellent. Who wants to be average?
• Measuring the wrong thing:
  You want greater productivity, more sales, better customer experience, longer employee tenure etc. Surveys measure elements of engagement (and don’t all agree). It’s Goodhart’s Law: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure." You try to improve the measure, not what makes you a better organisation.

AND they may not feel a safe space, don’t get leadership commitment, aren’t shared back openly and take too damn long.

I believe in employee opinion. But with human interaction, and with a true voice for how their experience can be better and how your organisation can improve.

What do you think? What’s your experience?

You should be dancing (yeah)

The e-mail pings. The phone buzzes, and skirls across the desk. It’s a new project.

How do you react? Freeze, flight or flight?

Or… do you step away from your desk and do a little dance?

As an employee in a number of large organisations, I wasn’t dancing. Some places, and times, were dancier than others, but in general, new work wasn’t something to get too excited about. Most often it just added to a to-do-list that already daunted me.

I didn’t feel that a new piece of work was a pat on the back. It give me that recognition or feedback that I was credible, expert or reliable. And however diligent I was, did I genuinely connect that piece of work and my next wage slip?

No. Too often new work was an inconvenience. That virtuous circle of work/purpose/reward was broken.

I run my own business now – and work can be a chore at times. Not all of it is glamourous, some can be a little rote at times. And a new piece might land when I’d planned another project, or was going to work on new business, or I was going to finish early of a Friday and slope off to the Beer Shed.

But every new piece of work is a celebration, and there is a genuine, actual, physical dance for each one. (And a bonus twitter gif too.)

Now, some of those dances are not much more than a shimmy-and-slide; maybe it’s just a days’ work, it’s not too challenging, the results won’t shake anyone’s world. But some of them are a full-on freestyle freak-out – it’s great work, I want to get stuck in, I can immerse myself in it and produce some crucial, insight-driven recommendations.

The purpose is back, I can see the link to reward, and the work is better for it.

I never realised how important it was that work might make me dance. Now, I can’t imagine work without it.