The role of psychological safety in workplace Health & Safety

Karen Rayner Employee experience, Engagement, Feedback, Health & Safety Leave a Comment

For many, ‘safety’ means physical safety: PPE, hazard registers and accident prevention. But psychological safety at work is just as important. “Psychological safety is a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.” – Amy Edmondson Psychological safety is what enables us to speak up, and to take calculated risks without the fear of reprimand. This matters to workplace Health & Safety initiatives for a number of reasons. Empowerment When people feel psychologically safe they are more comfortable making decisions for themselves. If there’s no policy or procedure for the …

Celebrating culture

Celebrating culture together, alone

Karen Rayner Employee experience, Engagement, Organizational culture Leave a Comment

Like many workplaces, Joyous has had a few team milestones since we’ve been in lockdown. Team lunches, birthdays, customer wins, award nominations, anniversaries… and it’s obviously not as easy to come together and celebrate those as it once was. We’ve lunched together over Zoom, we live-Slacked the awards announcements, we play party games on Friday afternoon, but it’s not quite the same. We’ve had to put just a little bit more effort into making things work. Re-imagining milestone celebrations For the first couple of two-year anniversaries this year we were in the office. There were (amazing) animal balloons. Virtual balloons …

Genesis launching in lockdown

Launching in lockdown: Genesis

Karen Rayner Engagement, Feedback, Leadership, Wellness Leave a Comment

The world’s changed a lot since we first started working with Emma-Kate Greer and Tamara Sallis from Genesis, an energy company in New Zealand. Genesis has over 1,000 employees spread across the country in a wide range of roles including retail, wholesale operations, delivery and customer service. It’s an essential service provider, so work continues for the Genesis team even under lockdown conditions – the electricity must flow. This week Emma-Kate and Tamara launched Joyous across Genesis, and used the launch as an opportunity to send Covid-19 check-in questions to the entire team. So to see how well the launch …

The Case for Happiness

The case for happiness

Michael Carden Employee experience, Engagement Leave a Comment

We have relegated employee happiness in favour of employee engagement. Are we missing something? History doesn’t care about happiness.  It’s easy to find information on living conditions for peasants both before and after the French Revolution – but good luck finding anything on how much happier they were after revolting. And even though the US Declaration of Independence makes the pursuit of happiness a fundamental right, little has been done to measure the success of this objective.  Turns out that happiness is hard to quantify. We even think about it in different ways. Thinking happy thoughts Biologists keep it simple. …

A hard truth about engagement

A hard truth about employee engagement

Jason Lauritsen Employee experience, Engagement, Leadership 1 Comment

There was a point in my career, probably 18 or 20 years or so ago, that I would have argued vehemently that creating a workplace culture that engages employees was vital to sustaining a profitable business. I believed in my heart that it was an imperative. At the time, I was an HR leader working at an organization where my CEO really believed (and invested) in the value of people not only as employees but as human beings with lives beyond work. For me, it was the perfect place to practice HR. While my CEO was pragmatic in how he …

Employee engagement: we need better answers

Employee Engagement: it’s time to demand better answers

Jason Lauritsen Engagement 1 Comment

One of the things that makes me crazy about the work of employee engagement is the sloppiness we allow around how we define and approach it. As I talk to leaders within organizations who are currently spending enormous sums of money on measuring and attempting to improve engagement, they struggle with basic questions like “How do you define employee engagement?” and “How does employee engagement drive your organization’s success?” If we can’t clearly define this work and why it matters, how can we ever expect to make a huge impact, let alone be taken seriously? We have to do better. …

Invisible employees

Engaging invisible employees

Karen Rayner Employee experience, Engagement Leave a Comment

You can’t be inclusive if you’re exclusive We’re all striving for an inclusive organizational culture. We want work to be a place where everyone feels heard, and valued, and everyone has the chance to contribute. But when we say ‘everyone’, do we really mean everyone? All people are included, but some are more included than others. A retail chain has a lot of moving parts. There’s head office, with HR and marketing and accounting staff. There are stores, with sales associates and security and inventory managers. There are warehouses, with stock handlers, forklift operators and truck drivers. There are people …

Video is the killer app for EX

Why video is the killer app for creating compelling employee experiences

Serge van Dam Employee experience, Engagement Leave a Comment

Video is eating the world. It’s as true for companies as it is for consumers – and yes, this includes yours. Consumers and businesses are all responsible for the massive growth of online video. Consumer video traffic will be 84% of consumer traffic this year, up from 75% in 2014. And business video traffic will be 63% of traffic this year, up from 36% So it’s no surprise that more businesses are turning to video for HR processes; particularly those that are trying to transform the employee experience (EX) for the better. Employee Experience Objectives If we apply the lens of any contemporary human …

Voice of the Employee

Using Voice of the Employee to improve customer experience

Michael Carden Employee experience, Engagement, Feedback 1 Comment

Most companies understand the value of Voice of the Customer surveys. If you want to know how customers feel and what aspects of customer experience you can improve, you ask them. Makes sense. Voice of the Employee follows a similar philosophy. You ask employees how they feel and what you can improve. They’re most likely going to have some feedback on their employee experience that you can do something with. In the case of front-line staff, they’re also going to hook you up with some information on customers that you wouldn’t otherwise have. Which means VoE is not only good …

eNPS employee engagement

Using eNPS as an indicator of engagement

Kai Crow Employee experience, Engagement, Feedback, Leadership Leave a Comment

Employee NPS (eNPS) is based on Net Promoter Score® (NPS™) by Bain & Company, Satmetrix Systems, Inc., and Fred Reichheld. It’s commonly used as a quick indicator of employee engagement because engaged (and loyal) employees are more likely to recommend their workplace. NPS recap NPS measures customer loyalty by asking: ‘How likely are you to recommend this company to a friend or relative?’ The idea is that loyal customers believe so strongly in the company they’re recommending that they’re willing to put their reputation on the line for it. Friends and relatives are typically the people we feel most strongly …

Effective Leadership Styles

[Infographic] 6 effective leadership styles

Laura-Jane Booker Employee experience, Engagement, Leadership, Motivation Leave a Comment

Leadership style can make or break the success of an organisation, team, or project. While different leadership styles suit different situations, effective styles share one common trait – emotional intelligence (EQ). Daniel Goleman (an EQ expert) proposed that there are 6 effective leadership styles, each stemming from 4 key EQ competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills. Coercive/Commanding Lead by force Climate influence: This style has a negative impact on the climate and demotivates employees as it eliminates the opportunity for new ideas, reduces accountability for performance, and destroys the rewards system. Of the 6 styles, coercive is the …

Cultural intelligence

Leading diverse teams: the importance of cultural intelligence

Laura-Jane Booker Diversity & inclusion, Engagement, Leadership 2 Comments

So you’ve probably heard about emotional intelligence (EQ), a key tool in a leader’s toolkit. But what have you heard of cultural intelligence (CQ)? It’s equally important but it’s a largely unrecognised leadership tool. For those unfamiliar with the concept, here’s what you need to know: Components of cultural intelligence CQ is a person’s capability for successful adaptation to new cultural settings. Leaders with high CQ are culturally competent and have the skills, attitude, and behaviours to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings. CQ consists of 4 components. Leaders with high CQ will possess all 4 components. Cognitive …

How effective leaders get results

How effective leaders get results

Laura-Jane Booker Employee experience, Engagement, Leadership Leave a Comment

Leaders need to get results: whether revenue growth, return on sales, efficiency, profitability, employee satisfaction, or employee engagement. Quite the task! So how on earth do leaders do it? One way is by influencing the organisation’s climate, which can account for a third of an organisation’s financial performance. How? Glad you asked! Six ways leaders can influence organisational climate Permit Flexibility – give employees the freedom to experiment and take calculated risks to achieve goals without unnecessary restrictions and micromanaging. Flexibility promotes creativity, innovation, and accountability over one’s work. Create Responsibility – give employees control over their own work to …

We need to have a conversation about engagement

Karen Rayner Employee experience, Engagement, Feedback Leave a Comment

Numbers are easy*. Anyone can take an employee survey and make something of it: response rate is obvious, unhappy and engaged answers easily coded. We can chart results and turn them into reports and pretty infographics with a bare minimum of effort. 77% of employees hate the food in the cafeteria! 31% of millennials in Townsville stay for the beanbags! Numbers, saving us from too much thinking since forever. Unfortunately, numbers are also simple. Surveys in particular condense a whole heap of potentially mind-blowing information into a single, easily digestible figure. Say I discover that only 31% of employees think …