In poll after poll, issues associated with their People – attracting and retaining talent, the lasting impact of the pandemic on our workplaces, and developing the next generation of leaders – dominate the list of concerns for executives in 2022. More than ever, leaders need to understand their people experience deeply. They also need to know how it impacts engagement, retention, performance, and the bottom line.
We know this connection exists, but how do we prove it?
At Perceptyx, we believe this process starts with a Continuous Conversation at Scale. When we say "continuous conversation at scale," we mean a virtuous cycle of engaging your people in dialogue, throughout the employee lifecycle, to drive meaningful actions. Done well, these conversations help leaders see how their people strategy drives their business strategy - and vice versa. Also, HR takes on an increasingly strategic role by providing the data on how these decisions drive business outcomes.
Our guide to Continuous Conversations at Scale is designed to help you understand, build, and sustain this ongoing exchange across your business.
Part 1 of this guide is the essential blueprint of a continuous conversation at scale. It illustrates how this conversation empowers leaders to go beyond simply listening to their people. It shows how having this conversation lets leaders integrate what they hear from their people with what they see in the business data. In this way, leaders can understand how this strategy impacts key business objectives.
Today HR leaders have a golden opportunity to provide organizational leaders with this bigger picture. Leaders want to know how employee experience impacts performance. The L’Oréal France CHRO, Benoît Serre, underscores HR’s strategic role in showing this. Serre states: “HR needs to take a stand and define a clear strategy for how to serve and manage the people in the organization, and at the same time support the business in the best way. You need to have a clear plan for how to target the most important topics.”
Organizations increase the scale of their continuous conversation when they include more people, more listening channels, and more moments across the employee lifecycle. Typically this level of scale doesn’t happen at once. However, as organizations add these components over time, they gain the insights needed to make smart people and business decisions with speed and confidence. Ultimately, it becomes a dynamic roadmap for driving better productivity and profitability now and over time.
Part 1 also shows how this conversation leads to an evolving cycle of dialogue and action. One of the biggest barriers to this dialogue is asking employees for feedback, but not acting on it. Therefore, Part 1 explores why leaders need to respond to feedback quickly, and then create meaningful action. Each step in the conversation is critical and represents a form of action. UCHealth’s Dr. Matt Gosney refers to this conversation as “a co-creative process, and this learning together is our guide on where to go.”
A continuous conversation at scale provides a treasure trove of feedback about the key factors influencing the people experience. However, leaders need to contextualize this wealth of input to put the feedback and action into context. Leaders gain this context when they integrate operational data with their people data. Then they can pinpoint what matters most and where to take action first. Also, they can see where to focus resources and energy to drive the greatest positive change for both their people and the business.
We invite you to download Part 1: The Blueprint of a Continuous Conversation at Scale, and discover how this dialogue drives the right action based on evolving human and business intelligence. Envision this blueprint as your guiding principle, and start moving in the right direction, regardless of where your organization stands right now. Prioritizing your people strategy to drive business outcomes is the best way to keep pace with our world today.
Soon we’ll be introducing additional parts to this guide: