Talent Management - October 2008 - (Page 51)

Increased response rates create options because they allow the luxury of smaller invitee lists and enable employee rotation through the process, thereby eliminating fatigue. Remember, not every employee needs to respond to get a statistically signiﬁcant sample. Signiﬁcance is achieved by approximately 300 respondents, even for very large organizations. Knowing response rates and required sample sizes provides the data needed to intelligently manage respondent rotation. Progressive organizations take regular feedback a step further by integrating employee feedback into business processes that directly impact employees. This promotes a corporate culture of active listening. Transactional surveys are normally small and targeted and therefore are perceived as benign, resulting in positive response rates. Capturing the employee’s sentiment at the time of the transaction, rather than a memory of the transaction months later, also provides more accurate feedback. Communities have emerged as a critical tool to build and maintain customer loyalty and satisfaction, but such communities can be an equally effective tool to improve employee feedback. Organizations such as IBM have found building thriving employee communities promotes a sense of shared experience and a sense of inﬂuence, which are important to build a strong bond in the organization. That bond creates willingness to participate in surveys. Add regular feedback processes to the community to create a shared employee voice, and take this connection to the next level. Community recruitment begins by clearly articulating to the prospective respondent the beneﬁt of taking part in the process and how much time they will be asked to invest. Having an established Respondent Bill of Rights that can be communicated during the recruitment process can help set the proper expectations. Once a respondent agrees to be part of the process — a double opt-in is best to ensure they are aware of what they are agreeing to — the next step is to build deep proﬁles of each respondent. This allows for more targeted feedback initiatives that focus on issues or concerns within speciﬁc groups or departments. Proﬁle data also can be collected from the organization’s HR systems and loaded directly into the proﬁle to shorten set-up time. The proﬁle is then leveraged to keep surveys short, as the standard demographic questions are no longer needed. An employee community can extend dialogue beyond the traditional survey process, delivering the elusive match of quantitative and qualitative research. Surveys provide the quantitative side of the process, and organizations can survey the entire community or elect to create panels from the community speciﬁcally for the purpose of feedback. These community panels are extremely cost-effective, and if done properly, have a great track record of increasing employee satisfaction and positively impacting retention. Qualitative research comes from leveraging collaborative community tools such as forums, wikis and blogs that allow for active dialogues between employees and between the organization and employees. While an employee survey may ask about speciﬁc programs DASHBOARD continued on page 56 October 2008 talent management magazine www.talentmgt.com 51 http://www.talentmgt.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Talent Management - October 2008

Talent Management - October 2008 Editor’s Letter Contents Human Performance Leading Edge Foundations The Three Pillars of Executive On-Boarding Role-Based Assessment: Thinking Inside the Box Who's Going to Speak Up for Health Care? Obey the Push to Automate Managing the Star Performer No One Wants to Work With Adopting a Mutual-Funds Model for Talent Management Hewlett-Packard: Simple Talent Management in a Technical World Team Effort Pays in Talent at London Business School The Employee Survey: What’s in It for Me? Why Most Managers Are Stuck Advertisers’ Index Editorial Resources Full Potential

Talent Management - October 2008

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