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Gain quick feedback from your employees with AI Chatbot Pulse Surveys

by
MeBeBot
on October 12, 2021

Are you struggling to understand the needs of your employees, especially over the past 18 months? With hybrid and remote work creating both physical and mental distances between organizations and their employees, how can you understand the needs of your employees? By generating instant employee feedback, high performing organizations can take action to identify work related challenges to retain their talent and prevent turnover…before it happens.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4 million Americans quit their jobs in July 2021. This mass influx of voluntary turnover at companies has been called the “Great Resignation” and it’s wreaking havoc in companies across the globe…especially as the economic recovery from the impact of COVID-19 is still underway.

The Harvard Business Review‘s recent research of 9 million employee records from over 4,000 companies in diverse industries determined that resignations were highest in mid-career employees, from the tech and healthcare industries. But, don’t despair…using a data-driven approach to understanding your employees is the best action to take to improving retention.

Here are three steps to effectively leverage data to improve employee retention:

1. Quantify the problem.

First, calculate your retention rate using the following formula:

Number of Separations per Year ÷ Average Total Number of Employees = Turnover Rate

Next, assess the impact to the organization of employee turnover, commonly the negative effect on the remaining team members, with the loss of skill sets, resources to share workload, delays in projects or deliverables, and overall impact to the bottom line revenues. For example, when an employee resigns, workloads are transferred to remaining team members, customer deliverables (and satisfaction) may be negatively compromised if delays occur, and at times, services engagements (with billable resources) or product deliverables (for release dates) may reduce overall revenues.

2. Identify the root cause.

So what’s causing employees to leave? What factors could lead to resignation? Typical reactions by management is that employees are leaving their jobs due to inadequate compensation, lack of pay increases, poor benefits, or opportunities for advancement. However, the “great resignation” is about much more, as work-life balance with more flexibility, being connected to the mission/vision of the company and appreciation for their work are key factors to improving retention.

While exit interviews are opportunities to gain insights into employee turnover, it’s “autopsy data,” meaning it’s after the fact (the employee has resigned) and it’s too late to change the outcome.

Collecting real-time data from your employees is key. By segmenting employees by categories such as location, business unity, job function, and other demographics, you can gather the necessary data to better understand how work experiences and retention rates differ across distinct employee populations.

But how do you gather this kind of data?

MeBeBot launched Pulse Surveys, using our AI Intelligent Assistant, to gather instant feedback from your employees. The Pulse Survey question appears as a “message” from MeBeBot to employees (in Slack and/or Teams) and employees respond YES or NO to the Pulse Survey statement. It’s quick and easy for employees to provide feedback using MeBeBot in their “flow of work” (instead of sending out an email survey).

MeBeBot AI Chatbot Pulse Survey in Microsoft Teams
MeBeBot AI Chatbot Pulse Survey in Slack

This new feature allows our customers to generate the data they need by sending the Pulse Survey to employees (based on your organization’s various distribution lists) for a specific day/time, so that it can be scheduled in advance.

Our customers can either use the “10 employee satisfaction indicator” statements or create their own custom pulse survey question/statement (with YES or NO feedback options) to gather the real-time data and employee insights they need. Each survey is open for 7 days and the results are displayed within the Customer Admin Portal for HR to review or export (as a pdf or xls file).

With the ability to send out Pulse Surveys to specific groups of employees (with custom crafted questions or statements), our customers gain the valuable insights they need about their people to take action to prevent turnover.

Watch the video to see how easy it is to schedule and sent out Pulse Surveys, to gather immediate feedback:

Video of MeBeBot Pulse Survey

*As you can see in this video, by collecting feedback and insights into the needs of your employees, you can analyze the results and create the necessary action plans necessary to reduce turnover before it happens.

3. Develop personalized retention plans.

Now that you’ve begun to identify some of the the root causes of turnover at your organization, you can begin to create highly customized programs aimed at correcting the specific issues that your workplace struggles with most. 

By developing strategies and plans for acting on this “listening” behavior, you can take a phased approach to developing plans. Some industry leaders and analysts recommend hosting leadership discussions to identify some quick wins, town hall meetings to allow employees and leadership teams to prioritize initiatives that will generate the most impact, setting key metrics to measure progress, and leverage continual listening (pulse surveys) to iterate and evolve the plans.

Here are some other resources:

A Data-Driven Approach to Identifying – and Retaining- Top Employees

HR Leaders Share their Employee Retention Strategies Amid the Great Resignation

Employee retention: 10 strategies for retaining top talent

Four ways to Retain Talent during the Great Resignation

Ready to get started? MeBeBot’s Pulse Surveys can generate the real-time people data you need now to improve your employee retention.

Contact us today to learn how you can get started this year!