User Sentiment / Customer Sentiment has over the last few years become a key metric used by companies across the globe to determine the viability and value of the products they sell. Most commonly, it is seen in:
- Rating systems in app stores (5 stars)
- Airports (happy faces)
- A numerical system (Net Promotor Score, NPS).
The rationale behind these systems is that a high rating means you have a greater number of happy customers and those customers will be more engaged with your products. As a consequence, they are more are likely to recommend your products to others, leading to overall growth.
The theory works so well for customers that enterprises have started implementing the same practices for employees. Enterprises began to spend big on internal user sentiment when they became aware that greater engagement is correlated to sentiment. Every enterprise cares about engagement for three main reasons.
1. Employee-driven recruitment
Employees that are most engaged in their employer are the ones that refer the best candidates. A good referral program helps, but it should be clear that an engaged employee is the only employee who is likely to give quality referrals. Engagement breeds a sense of belonging and pride in the business, in turn leading to greater advocacy. When they have such a great experience in the workplace, they’re more likely to want others to experience the same. These quality referrals are the key to expanding the most important element of any company—its people.
2. Employee loyalty
Not only are people more likely to refer quality people when they are engaged, they are also more likely to stay themselves. Organizations in the modern world have become even more location-agnostic as workers from around the world were forced to collaborate virtually to continue driving business outcomes this year. With the current work-from-anywhere (#WFA) strategy being embraced by more workers and the companies, the ability to change jobs will become increasingly simpler. The best way to succeed and transform your business will be to ensure your workforce is so engaged they don’t want to leave, but instead actively recruit other fantastic people to your company.
3. Profitability and growth
Given the importance of our employees, their engagement is the key to greater profitability and organizational change. Companies with highly engaged employees outperform their competitors by 147% and companies that excel at customer experience have 1.5 times more engaged employees than companies with poor customer experience. Yet, recent Gallup polls in the US show that engagement is back down from its previous high (35-36%). Currently, more than half of the US workforce is not engaged in their work.
Engagement gets you through the good times and the bad
Engagement is suffering because we’re experiencing an unprecedented set of changes. The rate of change is unlikely to slow down next year as enterprises ramp up activity to counteract the impact of the pandemic and look to also adopt new working styles.
An engaged workforce will ensure you thrive through this period of change and uncertainty and, crucially, give you an advantage against the competition. As noted by Gallup:
“…The recently published meta-analysis reveals that the relationship between employee engagement and performance does change during crises. In fact, during the past major recessions, improving employee engagement has proven to be even more important.”
Sentiment tools are necessary to monitoring engagement by collecting real user feedback. 1E’s Tachyon Sentiment, for example, enables you track sentiment, and even improve it over the time by unearthing frustrations, through pulse questions and intuitive metrics. It can target specific workplace adoptions or changes or be used as a pulse survey tool for more general sentiment feedback and gathering.
Now is the time to for you to take the culture of your organization by the reigns and drive the change that is needed to truly transform your business. Listen to your employees to understand them, support them, and take them on a journey of transformation unlike any other.
To learn more about how sentiment gathering can boost engagement, join our next webinar.
