HR research

JustToSay

​

HR perspective

Appreciation always needs to be individual, precise and emotional and its impact on organisations is huge!

Even without Covid-19 and remote working the topic needs to be improved on international environment of organisations, see for instance:

https://www.octanner.com/global-culture-report/2019/appreciation.html

https://www.gallup.de/183104/engagement-index-deutschland.aspx

https://www.oriontalent.com/recruiting-resources/blog/2/employee-appreciation-small-gestures-that-will-have-a-big-impact-on-your-employees

Job enjoyment & relationships are the key for employee motivation, see:

https://gapsterblog.wordpress.com/2013/10/22/emotional-factors-beat-bonuses-as-employee-motivators/

https://amazingworkplaces.co.in/celebrate-employee-appreciation-day/

​

​

​

​

​

​

Source: karrierebibel.de

HR perspective

Solutions till now always combine appreciation to rewards or the ways to express appreciations are complicated.

A separate solution where you can choose how to express appreciation would be great!

Even the results should be independently provided to maybe other channels.

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/letters-of-appreciation-to-team-members-examples-2059554

https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-the-5-languages-of-appreciation-in-the-workplace/

!!! Still many more research on the impact of appreciation next to our experience.

Source: https://readingraphics.com/book-summary-the-5-languages-of-appreciation-in-the-workplace/

​

Future perspectives JustToSay - HR “brainboard” (1)

• Scanning the App to save data about skills, competences, tasks to facilitate HR admin tasks and produce a reference letter out of it (German area- must have if you are change position or company)
• Forming interdisciplinary project teams out of participants based on emotional flow between them
• Using information of appreciation content to start new continuous improvement initiatives within the company
• transparency in company culture, possible positions
• Data about frequency of using the app could allow supervisors getting to know their employees in another -more private- perspective

​

• Link the collected “points” to benefit, retention, salary programmes
• Instrument to promote transparency in company culture, possible positions etc.
• Using JustToSay to strengthen EQ instead of IQ

​

Future perspectives JustToSay - HR “brainboard” (2)

​

• Comments/appreciation to be downloaded, or even direct feed to social media (LinkedIn, Xing) → active consent from sending side necessary
• Expanding feature to performance tool to replace the usual review - instead of asking for and giving feedback once a year, app to be used to capture it regarding also the wellbeing of an employee
• Skills and competencies matrix - people could choose not only values but also particular skills and competencies and rate/comment - again, could be used for performance but also for creating competency matrices/job description for specific roles (gathering business requirements) or to check the role against the original job description

• Probation period - a tool to track and measure the progress (e.g. appreciation from buddy)
• To be matched with personal development & health tools of a company

​

How would HR practitioners know employees are engaged?

We will know when we will see the user’s ratio of the employees!

The question is more about how to become engaged as a user of JustToSay App!

• Engagement throughout onboarding period
• Engagement throughout belonging to the company
• Starts with a “champion” / multiplier (role in our app) who is not directly involved to the person that receives appreciation
• On the other hand the tool supports managers because appreciation is not - as in the past - expected from manager to employee as a one-way-track, our tool is open in each direction

​

• advertisement needed within the usual companies collaborative tool
• advertisement needed of HR practitioners to support usage of the app (less quitting the job, less absentism etc.)
• Team leaders, decision-makers within the company are promoting the app (role model) and are encouraging people to post appreciation, positive values of a person through the app instead of verbal, phone, email- appreciation outside our tool
• work councils in e.g. Germany should support this tool, because it is based on positive feedback, appreciation is not an assessment of the person

​

​

Based on the flow of JustToSay, what data would be useful to HR practitioners?

Two types of data needed:

• System logs (if users are logging in)
• Outcome data: who gives/receives appreciation and how often?

At this step it is a feel-good-usage → need to see frequency of interactions.

Later on the two data types can be organised as well according to individual delivered data (duration of belonging/working for the company etc.)

0 = interaction: HR has to contact direct supervisor to analyse reason of no engagement, eventually employee can be contacted as well

1 = HR is sending appreciation for participating

​

Personas

JustToSay

​

Hellen

Quote: “I want to do my best and hope people will notice this!”

Walk of Life: mid 20s, living by herself with a dog; like running before work

Job title: Finance Analyst

Day-to-day responsibilities:

Resilient and happy to work hard to the well being of the team.

Hellen’s responsibilities relate to:

· Aggregating data to regular reports

· Analyzing data to provide trend and set up inputs

· Extracting data from various data bases and translating it into raw data for different simulations

Working pattern: (day, time) Monday to Friday 9:30 am - 7pm

Work environment: Open plan office; now working from home

What technology & device they use:

Hellen finds herself very comfortable in excel and powerpoint, she even tried to develop herself in Power BI. She would say she is very knowledgeable of several databases in SQL and other languages and uses internet browsers to access different online databases or search for market information. And this for almost all of her working time when she is not in meetings.

​

​

​

​

​

​

Pain points:

• Time pressure - esp. month-end
• Switching tools a lot to get my job done
• Seeing numbers more than people

​

Needs:

Something to make her feel less isolated and included as an important part of her team.

Something to take her out from the world of figures and make her feel human and appreciated

Something that will motivate her by giving her the confirmation that her place belongs in this company and in this team

​

Daniel

Quote: "motivated people are happy people!"

​

Walk of Life: 38 y.o, married, 2 children, has a Bachelor in Economics

​

Job title: Manager

​

Day-to-day responsibilities: Focused on the target results and achieving of those results in a cohesive team and at the same time preoccupied with the well being of the employees and having in the company motivated people who engage because of the motivation like a solid team and are willing to remain with the company.

He:

- organizes and supports the goals setting process and the performance management process

-is the contact person when an employee complains about behaviour of his boss or another colleague

- sets up targets and manages activities and team resources

-is responsible to contribute with her management style to the diversity inclusion program in the company

​

Working pattern, work environment, technology and devices used:

He is happy to use a computer and counts on software solutions that would take the administrative burden, of, like for example sending reminder messages or cummulating data for reporting, and refers to herself as an intermediate internet user.

He can connect through a VPN from her dial-up connection at home when she is not in the office and also uses a smartphone mainly to do business calls and answer urgent important mails. He uses emails extensively also on her laptop and uses the web to search for information on internet or to use the hr on cloud company application about 50% of her working time. The rest of time she spends in meetings or other face to face activities.

​

​

​

​

Pain points:

He only knows if an employee is happy when this person comes directly to her or when she runs the employee evaluation. But this happens not really on a constant base and the evaluation takes place once a year. in between he has not a real control and is short on finding sustainable and on-going methods to monitor the happiness of the employees and raise further motivation/happiness.

Employees are complaining about the behaviour or actions of other colleagues although they did not had a proper communication to solve the difference before coming to her for settling.

​

Needs:

He needs to function also as an enterprise feel good manager and for that he needs to have some kind of a system that would help her measure the happiness and motivation of the employees on constant bases and through different channels beside the oe provided by HR.

He would also like to have a communication software that would activate and maintain interaction between employees and simulate good communication and recognition feelings.

​

Design

JustToSay

​

Focus for now:

Theme 1: Interaction

• Reminder to interact
• Use channels you are comfortable with
• Zoom, Skype, online game, phone call, email
• Points collection
• News feed

Theme 2: Appreciation

• Reminder to express appreciation
• Types of appreciation
• In-app: Card, video, etc.
• Outside of app:
• Points collection
• News feed

Software Engineering

• Ruby on Rails (MVC-Pattern)

Model

• Employee (E)
• Appreciation (A)
• Values (V)
• Proven Values (joint table of A & V)

View

• Reminder
• Leaderboard
• Newsfeed
• Employee page

Controller

• Send reminders via Mail/Push notification?

​

Planning the Flow

Objective: Allow employees to send appreciation

BOLD are high value

1. Add users [Selfservice, HR driven]
2. Select user
3. Choose type (video, call, etc.)
4. Choose Value [templated and customised]
5. Add content
6. Send
7. Collect points [templated and customised]
8. Dashboard