Change is the only thing sure in the world, they say, and in the past two years, we are forced to adapt to change with an amazing speed.
Whether we discuss big organizations or few-people teams, resilience quickly becomes part of our vocabulary, and we have the same response: fight-or-flight-or-freeze. But how much adrenaline is too much, and how does this affect us as individuals and employees in our organizations? How do organizations manage and perceive the phenomenon called “The Great Resignation” or “The Great Attrition”?
More than 19 million US workers—and counting—have quit their jobs since April 2021, a record pace disrupting businesses everywhere. This has also affected countries in Europe or Australia and seems to be spreading around the world. Many companies struggle to understand and react, but the reaction is usually disproportionate and sometimes even inappropriate.
What Actually Happened?
If the past 24 months have taught us anything, it’s that employees crave compassion and making work more human. People are not robots with tasks or responsibilities, and more than ever, people need to be seen as imperfect and have the space to feel imperfect. Employees are tired, burnt out, and grieving. During the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone has suffered losses. For some, it’s the loss of loved ones; for others, the loss of familiarity — missed family gatherings or coffee with friends, canceled vacations and postponed events, or going to the office every day. The sources of loss, big and small, influence our work and personal lives.
Now, employees want companies to understand this loss and see a renewed and revised sense of purpose in their work. Employees want to feel a sense of shared identity, of community. Yes, they still want pay, benefits, and perks, but more than that, they want to feel valued by their organizations and managers. They want meaningful—though not necessarily in-person—interactions, not just transactions. Most employees have questioned everything during this period, including the meaning of life and work. What is the new meaning that your organization is willing to offer for work? What is the purpose that your company is offering to your employees? Is your company vision only related to profit, or do you have a higher purpose?
The pandemic brings new opportunities and urgency, and the idea of being agile and always ready to change is very good for business. However, people need time to adjust and make peace with this sense of loss. Indeed, the prolonged levels of uncertainty will only add to the grief and anxiety that employees experience. None of us knows exactly what will and won’t be coming back in a post-pandemic workplace. Therefore, we don’t know yet what is gone for now and what is gone forever. This influences performance or productivity.
What Can We Do?
If companies make a concerted effort to understand why employees are leaving and take meaningful action to gain them back, they can turn things into their favor. By seizing this unique moment of uncertainty and offering meaningful purpose and identity, your company could gain an edge in the race to attract, develop, and retain the talent you need to create a thriving post-pandemic organization.
If you’re a CEO or a member of a top team, your best move now is to hit pause and take the time to think through your next moves. But don’t think through your next moves in a vacuum; include your employees in the process. Start thinking about implementing a performance management system in your organization and do it with the help of your people. If you want to keep people by your side, include them in your plans, include them in setting the performance standards, and show them that their insight is valuable.
As you implement the performance management system at the employee level, ask the following questions:
Do we have a toxic organizational culture? It’s very important to understand if in your organizational culture, you may have missed some points with toxic leaders. This could put people down before even having the chance to perform.
Do we have the right people in the right places (especially managers)? Many employers face the problem of having the right people but not necessarily in the right places. When it comes to managers, this problem can be particularly damaging, especially in hybrid environments, where new leadership skills are required. Skills such as coaching and training capability are very important to develop for managers since in the new reality of work, people need coaching more than ever.
How was our organizational culture before the pandemic? If you think that going back to the office means returning to the same culture, you may expect your people to leave very quickly. You should remember that although the needs of your employees have changed, your culture may not have kept up, and any prior organizational weaknesses are now magnified. Employees will have little tolerance for a return to a status quo they didn’t like before.
Is our organizational culture based on the idea of transaction? If your only response to attrition is to raise compensation, you’re strongly telling your people that your relationship with them is transactional and that their only reason to stay with you is a paycheck. Your talent in the organization will always have a better cash offer somewhere else. Our suggestion is to solve the problems of the whole person (not just their bank accounts) and the whole organization.
Are our benefits aligned with employee priorities? If before the pandemic you offered free parking or Christmas parties as special benefits, you might want to consider adapting and changing these benefits also. In a recent survey among people who left their jobs, 45 percent cited the need to take care of the family as influential in their decision. A similar proportion of people who are thinking of quitting cited the demands of family care. Expanding childcare, nursing services, or other home- and family-focused benefits could help keep such employees from leaving and show that you value them.
Employees want career paths and development opportunities. Can you provide it? Employees are looking for jobs with better, stronger career trajectories. They desire both recognition and development. Smart companies find ways to reward people by promoting them into new roles and into additional levels within their existing ones. This is one way companies can quickly reward and recognize people for good work.
How are we building a sense of community? Remote work is no panacea, but neither is a full on-site return. In-person connectivity continues to have massive benefits for your organization. But it will require considerable management attention to be right as health and safety concerns continue to evolve, particularly because employees’ needs and expectations have changed. For example, employees with unvaccinated young children may feel unsafe in large in-person gatherings.
One organization took an inclusive approach by sending out themed staycation packages: a movie night with popcorn and a gift card; a game night with family-oriented games, chips, and salsa; and a virtual spa day complete with face masks, tea, and chocolate. The company created a Slack channel for posting photos and stories, encouraging employees to share these experiences. Another organization encouraged connectivity among employees by offering coffee gift cards to those who signed up to participate in one-on-one coffee chats with employees they didn’t know—a perk that improved connectivity and helped people expand their networks.
Employee engagement should focus now more than ever on employee experience. If you want to learn more about employee engagement, employee experience, how to implement a performance management system at the employee level, and how to align the company’s values, strategy, and objectives with employees behaviors, follow our Certified Employee Performance Management System Professional course.
Organizations across the globe have seen many ups and downs during this pandemic period, especially from supply chain disruptions, demand dips, and steep increases in raw material costs. It has been increasingly difficult to predict on any front like customer needs, as well as the skill sets and retain employees. Energy prices, global competition, sudden imposition of restrictions on goods and human travel per country, the pace of digitization, and the amount to be invested in future technologies all have to be considered as well. Right from the last decade, the ability to proactively predict, monitor, identify, assess, address, and report emerging threats and opportunities was the need of the hour. However, the pandemic situation in recent years has thrown a real challenge to the techniques of environment scanning as the ecosystem has become too unpredictable.Coping with the uncertainties through the use of the advancement of technology is a good start. However, an employee’s motivation, retention, and wellbeing are softer issues that need to be tackled sensitively so as to keep manpower in a state to tackle challenges brought about by the pandemic. As a matter of fact, it is HR that really has the uphill task to keep employees on board and on the same page. HR policies in the organizations have been rewritten to impart flexibility in the system to ensure the wellbeing of employees. These quick, innovative actions from HR are again under the spotlight in the wake of the new COVID-19 variant.Business excellence initiatives – be it EFQM model, BSC, six sigma, benchmarking, or maturity models – should have a renewed focus on digital technology and how these technologies can be leveraged into HR processes. Apart from the ‘Great Resignation’ trend in the USA, there is an unprecedented churn in the technology sector; although it increases ‘hiring intent’, at the same time, it sends warning signals to HR, which calls for them to have a nimble response. The renewed focus of business excellence initiatives should be on the following issues:
Employees’ retention and wellness
Increased employee outreach
Devising policies for virtual hiring
Smooth transition between work from home, work from the office, and hybrid
Addressing the question of salary during a pandemic and post-pandemic environment
Most of the HR processes have been migrated online; now, HR needs to rely on cloud technology to do their tasks. For example, hiring interviews are now online, but there are different software available for recording and analyzing the interview from verbal and non-verbal perspectives. HR can use deep learning artificial intelligence to simulate the face and voice of key people – such as the CEO/COO for an awareness drive, special campaigns, training, or dissemination of information – without actually shooting the clip for each instance. One such firm that offers this kind of service is Synthesia, a US-based tech company that developed the project and has a wide range of training tools. A client can choose from the available range of avatars for online training to be added with data and content. In a short span of time, the chosen avatar or digital trainer equipped with a realistic voice and video will be ready. At the same time, the challenge to HR still remains for on-the-ground workers where human interaction is involved such as the medical industry, and one needs to vouch for innovative ways to see to a person’s wellness. Ensuring frequent testing, hospital tie-ups, teleconsulting with expert doctors, vitamin supplements, immunity booster diets, fitness programs, and support for dependent family members are key issues where HR has to play the lead role. In addition to having a technology-sufficient budget, it is also a prerequisite that HR has to plead with top management. The benefits ecosystem should now comprise of financial, medical, and wellness of employees. These are just glimpses of the changes that are happening, as well as changes that need to be brought into the HR system. Business excellence initiatives should take cognizance of such developments and try to address these in their respective instruments. Audits and assessments cannot be limited to diagnostics; it needs to be taken a step further to suggest prescribed technology/innovative practices which can help in employee retention and creative output from employees.
Modern customers have a clear view of how the business treats them. Therefore, a customer’s voice defines a company’s reputation. A recent statistic developed by Bain & Company through a Customer-Lead Growth diagnostic questionnaire shows that 80% of businesses believe they deliver superior CS; in reality, only 8% provide it.
Organizational excellence is a result that comes from individual and team excellence; businesses are based on humans. If we compare a business to an orchestra, the musicians should play from the same sheet of music. Also, they should increase their performance both individually and as a group. Each of them has a significant role and must follow their conductor’s instructions. What will it happen if each of them plays from a different sheet of music?
This article will present an overview of the inbound customer service concept and the application of the concept to the performance management field.
What is Inbound Service?
The term was created by HubSpot in 2006 and used initially in the marketing field which eventually got applied to sales and customer service.
Inbound service is a modern process of finding potential customers organically by providing value, building trust, and more, focusing on customer retention rather than buying it as in the traditional outbound marketing approach. It supposes coordination of efforts of marketing, sales, and customer service.
The opposite methodology is the outbound customer service, focused mostly on reaching the clients using cold calls. It is focused primarily on lead generation and sales, then secondly on performing customer satisfaction surveys or offering initiative-taking customer service.
Inbound customer service is a win-win methodology that implies attracting, engaging, and turning your loyal customers into loyal advocates.
Tom Reilly affirmed in his book Customer Service is More Than a Department: It’s an attitude:
“If you define success as helping others achieve higher levels of success, you will have all the success you can handle. This is one of the great promises of business. If you believe that your first mission is to help customers achieve great things, they will ensure you achieve great things. Profit follows performance. To excel, you must put the customer first.”
Is Inbound Customer Service relevant for Performance Management?
Customer service should be a priority for the whole company, not just for the CS department. If the Performance Management System is based on the customer experience, the business will grow and prosper.
When businesses develop a sound Performance Management Framework with aligned tools, processes, and techniques, they will also build a Performance Management Culture. In this regard, every employee understands his or her role within the organization.
When CS Representatives are following the internal process over the customer wants, by using cold scripts and skipping human conversation, this will hurt business results and conduct to underperformance.
To develop a customer-oriented culture, being focused on having satisfied and engaged clients means to implement the inbound CS methodology as an extent to the Inbound Organization strategy.
How to measure what matters in Customer Service Performance
Let us suppose a business’s long-term objective is to increase customer satisfaction. It will measure performance by using KPIs such as $ Revenue per client, # Complaints received, and % Customer satisfaction. One of our initiatives is CRM software implementation.
If we apply the principles of Inbound methodology, we should focus more on innovative ways to grow and listen. This supposes that we have already measured and found ways of improvement, and already implemented a CRM software solution. The Inbound approach is a step forward in CS Performance Improvement and we should use the following techniques such as:
Conduct a Net Promoter ScoreEmail Survey to identify promoters by collecting answers at the end of your customer journey. This measures the larger customer sentiment.
Conduct a Customer Effort Score Survey to measure the entire experience. Collect specific feedback at key points of your customer journey, using the feedback asking feedback after post-ticket feedback.
Use a 3-point satisfaction survey using emotions: smile, angry or neutral faces. This survey should happen at key moments in the customer lifecycle.
Designate a feedback collector. The results should share at all company levels, cascading from top management down to employee level.
Compile a list of your potential advocates to find who your supporters are.
Design an advocacy activation plan to activate your advocates who will help your business grow.
A hybrid system of Inbound and Outbound Customer Service
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a big demand for delivering transformational experiences, especially when customers are passing through challenging situations. Inbound customer service teams will monitor the incoming live chat and incoming calls, while outbound customer service is more focused on selling and marketing, trying to reach customers via email, phone, or even by text messages.
The inbound approach is aspirational and future-oriented, and it can do more than generate revenue or reduce the number of complaints. It can include generating revenue using upselling and cross-selling. Since what matters is customer satisfaction and resolution speed, for inbound contact centers, outbound contact centers’ performance focuses on high conversion ratios.
In a hybrid call center, agents are responsible for both receiving calls and reaching out the potential customers; it reunites and centralizes all communication channels. For most businesses, it is important to use both approaches and deliver both proactive and reactive support for customers.
In today’s fast-paced digital environment, customers are changing their ways to do business at an exponential rate. If a company needs to survive in these conditions, it must fundamentally shift its thinking. Today, businesses should create relationships and increase ideas, which will help them have a competitive advantage, increase brand recognition, and grow market share.
The whole company should be a part of delivering an extraordinary experience for the customer, not just marketing and sales. Everyone must be aligned with the company mission, culture, and strategies to deliver value to the customers.
When implementing a Performance Management System (PMS) based on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), the organization needs to create a favorable context to plan, organize, coordinate, communicate, and control performance. Such endeavor implies multiple initiatives, resources, and most of all, employee engagement. However, challenges are inevitable. These challenges often arise from the mechanisms and relations by which the KPI Measurement Framework and KPI-related processes are controlled and directed.
As such, unclear definitions and overlap of roles and responsibilities and lack of ownership, commitment, or clarity in terms of target achievement accountability are some of the most common challenges that may endanger the achievement of strategic business objectives and goals. The root cause of these dysfunctions is that KPI governance structure has never been clearly defined or described.
KPI governance structure
There are multiple parties involved in governing and managing KPI-related processes, and all play a specific role in promoting, supporting, designing, implementing, and maintaining the KPI measurement framework. A typical KPI governance structure includes the following components:
Performance Manager – Responsible for supervising the entire process
PMO specialists – Support the persons involved in the process, analyze data and check it for accuracy
KPI owner – Responsible for KPI target achievement
Data custodian – Responsible for KPI results collection/ data collection
KPI owners and data custodians have two of the most operational KPI governance roles within the organization. While the data custodians are responsible for ensuring that high-quality KPI data is gathered and communicated to all interested stakeholders, the KPI owners are mainly responsible for the KPIs under their management, making sure that they are viable and measurable.
KPI owners’ role and responsibilities
Within a standard Data Governance Framework, a data owner is in charge of ensuring that processes are followed to guarantee the collection, security, and quality of data. Frequently in a senior or high-level leadership position, a data owner has a role in planning the data, supervising access to it, ensuring data security, and defining a repository to contextualize the data.
Similarly, a KPI owner is responsible for overseeing the process, function, or initiative that the KPI is monitoring. That person has access to the data, knowledge of how that domain functions, and, most of all, is empowered to make decisions on improving operations.
In a nutshell, the KPI owner is responsible for reaching KPI targets through the following actions:
Monitoring (looking at) the measure over time
Interpreting its trends and patterns and seeking causes for them
Communicating this information to people affected by that performance area
Initiating action to improve performance in that area
Following up to be sure that actions have the desired effect on performance
Data custodians’ role and responsibilities
Within a KPI governance framework, data custodians are involved in the design of performance data collection, receipt and storage, process, analysis, reporting, publication, dissemination, and archival or deletion of data. The daily processing and management of performance data are therefore under the control of appointed data custodians. The person assigned with such a role must demonstrate high levels of data literacy as well as skills in data management software systems and tools.
Other required competencies for a data custodian are as follows:
The ability to intuitively identify and recognize any variance from the data quality dimensions
Focused on the improvement and automation of the process
Can competently apply the behaviors and skills of managing change
Uses change as an opportunity to advance business objectives
Works to minimize complexities, contradictions, and paradoxes or reduce their impact
Unifies leadership support for direction and smoothens the process of change
We may say that the data custodians are the guarantors of a sound performance data gathering process. Because of that, the profile of such an individual should also cover an analytical mind, experience in measuring and reporting metrics/ KPIs, information technology skills (basic Microsoft Excel or more advanced data analysis tools, depending on the data architecture`s level of automation), and a strong sense of integrity and ethics.
While some companies may hire specialized professionals, such as data analysts, other organizations may assign the data custodian roles to the existing employees.
Conclusion
Building a strong KPI governance team is a key part of the KPI-related processes and functionalities and of successfully overcoming the inherent challenges of implementing a PMS. Once the right people are on board, they need to be guided towards making the right decisions and focusing on the correct issues, ultimately making sure that information is being governed for a purpose that aligns with business objectives.
Google Sheets needs no further introduction, but let me make a reminder that it builds on arguably one of the simplest cloud-based storage solutions, Google Drive. That will help us build a basic data warehouse that will be connected to the visualizations, as explained later in the steps. Datawrapper is also a famous online-based data visualization tool that is commonly used by news organizations, but also can be used by any business, as we will see in the how-to section of the article.
How-to time!
The how-to section will be divided into two parts; the first on how to establish the system, and the second on how to use it afterwards. These two will be followed by a final part that includes additional tips to keep the system sustainable and in best shape. So, let’s get started!
Part 1: Establishing the system
Step 1: Create your Google Drive data warehouse
If you are not using Google Drive for file storage at your organization, you can easily do so by creating an account.
On Google Drive > Click: Go to Drive > Click: Use another account > Click: Create account > Follow instructions
GIF 1: Creating a Google Drive account | Source: Author
Create folders to categorize and build a hierarchy for the data files that you’ll add later. For instance, you can create a folder for each division in your company and then subfolders for each team within the divisions.
On Home Page > Click: New > Click: Folder
GIF 2: Adding a folder on Google Drive | Source: Author
In each folder, upload the relevant data files.
Inside the desired folder > Click: New > Click: File Upload
GIF 3: Adding a file on Google Drive | Source: Author
ORDrag the desired files/folders from your computer > Drop it in Google Drive
Give suitable access permissions to your team members to relevant folders.
Right Click on desired folder > From dropdown menu, Click: Share > Enter colleagues email addresses > Click: Done
GIF 4: Sharing Google Drive folder with colleagues | Source: Author
Step 2: Prepare datasets for Google Drive
As we will be connecting the datasets you’ve just uploaded to Datawrapper, we need to structure them in the way that the visualization tool can best read and interpret them. Here are a few things to make sure of:
There must be only one header row.
Do not merge cells.
Eliminate thousand separators as they will be automatically inserted on Datawrapper.
In the columns of values, do not mix letters with digits (You can add prefixes and suffixes later on Datawrapper, if you need to).
Inside the tables, do not leave any blank cells:
If the value is unknown/non applicable, put down a dash “-”.
If the value is zero, write a zero digit “0”.
Do not write any notes, source… etc. below the table in the spreadsheet. That can be added later on Datawrapper.
Step 3: Initiate your visualizations catalogue
Create a Datawrapper account.
On Datawrapper > Click: Login > Click: Create a new account > Follow instructions
GIF 5: Creating a Datawrapper account | Source: Author
Start creating one type of visualization for each type of data you have. The visualizations you’ll create will serve as templates for your colleagues when they start using the system.
On Datawrapper Dashboard > Click: Create New > Click: Chart
GIF 6: Creating a chart on Datawrapper | Source: Author
Connect the spreadsheet from your Google Sheets with the chart
First: Get a shareable link for the sheet | Go to your spreadsheet on Google Sheets > Click: Share > Click: Change to anyone with the link > Click: Copy link
GIF 7: Getting a shareable link from Google Drive file | Source: Author
Second: Paste the link in Datawrapper chart | Go to Upload Data page on Datawrapper > Click: Connect Google Sheet > Paste the earlier copied link in the text box
GIF 8: Linking Datawrapper to Google Sheets| Source: Author
Proceed with Check & Describe and then Visualize your chart. For the purpose of this article, we cannot delve into all the options in Datawrapper, but it is encouraged that you play around, as the interface is super intuitive, and have a look at this tutorial from Datawrapper Academy. Also see this tutorial on how to choose colors.
Hint: You may need advice from a data visualization expert on what visualization type to choose for what type of data to achieve what purpose. Here are a few general guides for the most common types of data:
For timeseries data with one or two values, choose a line graph.
For timeseries data with more than two values, choose an area graph.
For a simple comparison, like comparing values over a few months, choose grouped column chart.
For a little bit more complex comparison, choose a single column chart with a filter above.
Publish your chart.
Go to Publish & Embed > Click: Publish Now
GIF 9: Publishing a Datawrapper chart | Source: Author
Create the previous steps to create one chart for each type of data as explained above.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully established your SSBI system with Google Sheets and Datawrapper!
Part 2: Using the system
Use 1: Creating new visualizationsUsers in your team will be able to create new visualizations by following the same previous steps that you followed in Part 1, except:
Instead of creating a new visualization from scratch, they can duplicate an already formatted existing one, and just change the data source.
First: Duplicate an existing chart | On Datawrapper dashboard > Click: Archive > Choose the closest chart representing similar data > Click on the chart > Click: DuplicateSecond: Change data source | Copy and paste the new data source in the duplicated chart’s Upload Data page
Republish the chart to get the changes in the new chart reflected.
Go to Publish & Embed page > Click: Republish
GIF 10: Duplicating a Datawrapper chart | Source: Author
Use 2: Editing or updating existing visualizations
Users can also edit or update an existing visualization
If editing or updating the data itself is what is needed, you’ll need to edit or update the source data spreadsheet, and then go to the connected chart on Datawrapper to republish it, so it reflects the new changes in the data source.
Go to Google Sheets > Edit/Update the dataset > Go to the connected chart on Datawrapper > Go to Publish & Embed page > Click: Republish
GIF 11: Updating a Datawrapper chart | Source: Author
If editing or updating the chart itself is what is needed, you can head directly to the chart, make your changes and republish as in the previous steps.
Use 3: Exporting and embedding visualizations
Now, once the visualization is created, it can be exported in both interactive and static forms, to be embedded in web pages, pdf reports… etc.
To get an interactive version of your chart, you’ll need to get its HTML code and paste it into the editor of your web page.
First: Get the code | Choose the desired chart > Go to Publish & Embed > Under Embed code for your visualization > Click: CopySecond: Paste the code in your web page | Go to the backend of your web page > In the text editor > Click: Text (Name and form below may differ) > Paste the code > Save the page > Should Appear on your front end
GIF 12: Embedding an interactive Datawrapper chart | Source: Author
To get a static version of your chart, you’ll just need to export it as an image, and then you can use it as any other image.
Choose the desired chart > Go to Publish & Embed > Under Export or duplicate visualization > Click: PNG
GIF 13: Embedding a Datawrapper chart as an image | Source: Author
Congratulations! The SSBI system is now up and running!
Additional tips
For this system to keep working efficiently and with as little flaws as possible, here are a few tips of good practice:
Make your data folders and files naming systematic and understandable. Then, name the connected chart with the same name of the spreadsheet. That will enable easier reaching for users in the future, using the search function on both tools.
You can let your team use the same account you created for Datawrapper, but that of course is not advisable. Instead, you can create teams within your account, and invite relevant members through email, assigning specific access authorities (in the same fashion of giving access on Google Drive). For more on this, you can see Datawrapper Academy articles on how to create a team and how to invite others.
Create a shared guide document with your team containing detailed steps, color codes and all standards for all the uses above (You are also welcome to embed a link to this article as well!).
As an appendix to that guide, add a part for the technical issues that faced your team when working with the system, and document how you solved them. Keep that part updated with every new issue coming up.
Assign yourself or one of your team members the responsibility of doing regular checkups on datasheets and newly created or updated charts, to make sure you are avoiding human errors and random technical ones as well.
Depending on your needs, you might consider paid plans of Google Drive and Datawrapper. Click here and here respectively to see what they have to offer.
That’s it! Thanks for bearing up with us all the way down to this point! Now before you go, we have one more thing to say. If you would like to discover new knowledge and the practical application of best practices used in analyzing statistical data, sign up for The KPI Institute’s Data Analysis Certification.
