How can you use sentiment analysis to improve employee retention and performance?

Traditional employee surveys are becoming outdated. Workers don't want to fill out long, repetitive questionnaires every week or so. As a result, very few actually complete these surveys. It's better to collect data from tools that employees use every day (e.g., Slack, Discord). This way, there's no need for separate surveys. The data gathered this way is more trustworthy since it's less affected by biases. Also, it gives instant insights because it's in real-time. Using daily tools for data collection is more efficient. This method is direct and reflects the employee's true experiences. Overall, it’s a more accurate way to measure how employees feel and work.

Run a pulse survey biweekly to ask a few key questions. Run an annual engagement survey to delve deeper into the thoughts and feelings of your organization. Combine the results from both to create a comprehensive sentiment analysis. Make sure to present the results to your organization so they don’t get survey fatigue and speak about how you will improve the company based on the learnings you’ve gathered from the surveys.

You can consider below points for the further improvement: 1. Feedback Analysis 2. Identify pain Points 3. Proactive Intervention 4. Culture Improvement 5. Enhanced Engagement 6. Act on Employee Data 7. Collect Employee Details

First ask good questions, otherwise it doesn’t matter how much data you have - it will still be poor quality data. When asking questions ensure to have a mixture of closed and opened questions. Closed questions do help to establish scores and more specific detail. Open ended can lead for far more unexpected insights and understanding of certain truths held by employees which would otherwise be difficult to establish.

The whole idea of Sentiment analysis, is to evaluate human emotions and evaluate their experience in response to either products, services or certain aspects of human interactions. While most sentiment analysis is focused on Customers, just like most efforts on Customer experience is centred on External customers, I often always try to draw attention to the first Customers that you should cater for, which are your Employees. A rightly done sentiment analysis can help evaluate the experience of your Employees at your workplace and determine the level of job satisfaction and employee loyalty. The results from the analysis can help to inform strategies and plans to foster a higher level of Employee retention and high performance levels.

Analyzing employee data should be married with broader workforce listening tools. When you’re able to comparatively assess internal data with external data you’re able to paint a true picture of employee sentiment.

A topic modeling algorithm is a smart way to sift through large amounts of text. It can discover patterns and group similar words and ideas together. This helps to identify main themes or 'topics' in the data. Topic modeling can uncover hidden trends and concerns that might not be obvious at first glance. It can be particularly helpful when you have lots of data and you're not sure what you're looking for. Once it finds the topics, you can see what matters most to your employees. This method provides a clear, unbiased view of the main subjects in any large text data. It's a powerful tool for understanding what your employees' are talking about, in a positive or in a negative way.

The next step is to analyze all the data obtained from the interviews. As we are aware, this primary data is in the form of qualitative data. We must translate each statement into our defined topics and then categorize them into positive and negative groups. In some instances, this method can be augmented by the Data Scientist Team using AI to analyze sentiment from the interview results. For a simple analysis result, we can use Ms Excel to transform our quantitative data into various charts (descriptive analytics) and analyze it periodically. This allows us to make time-to-time comparisons.

Analyzing the sentiments from employee feedback, social media, and engagement surveys using NLP provides real-time insight into the workforce's emotional pulse. This data allows us to tailor interventions, enhance recognition programs, and address concerns proactively, fostering a culture of appreciation and responsiveness. By understanding nuanced employee sentiments, we can personalize career development, enhance job satisfaction, and consequently, improve retention and drive performance. In essence, sentiment analysis is a strategic tool that, when used effectively, transforms raw data into actionable insights for organizational growth and a thriving workplace environment.

What cannot be measured cannot be quantified. Hence analysis of Employee Pulse Survey data is an important agenda. The concept of NPS ( Net Promoter Score) is very interesting to find out the current state of mind of employees. NPS is a good tool where an organisation can have a clear data at organisation, department and individual level in terms of how many employees are promoters, passive and detractors for the organisation.

One thing I find helpful is: a. A pie chart can assist us in understanding the most crucial aspect for employees, enabling management to focus on it for future retention strategies. b. A line chart comparing results over time can track the sentiment trends among employees. c. The results of sentiment analytics can be utilized as an independent variable in inferential statistics. This allows for the creation of a modeling formula to identify various HR cases.

Interpretation should not be limited or confined to particular group(s). The insight or analysis should be discussed and consulted with multiple teams to understand perspectives from different angles.

Interpretation of data will give clear direction to the organisation about the current state and areas for improvement. I have implemented Net Promoter Score through Employee Pulse Survey which gave a clear picture about which employees are highly engaged, passive and detractors for the organisation.

Understandably, though there are systems which make this process more accessible to more people, trained evaluators are a major asset to HR teams using these methods to gain employee insights. We can, of course, provide basic insights and analyses, but long term trends, impact analyses after we have acted on particular issues, and other complex analyses are best performed by those with the training and skill set to do so. Bringing them in in the beginning to design the surveys is a best practice, as they can help to design the questions effectively to ensure that you are assessing what you intend to assess, accurately.

Engagement can be achieved through purposeful work, a sense of belonging and a clear path to development. Understanding where each employee stands on these three aspects helps determine their level of engagement. I've gathered valuable data from employee feedback suggestions and regular pulse surveys. Stay interviews have also proven to be a powerful retention tool. Re-recruiting current employees provides us with an opportunity to assess whether their current role suits them, and strategize how we can enhance their role through stretch assignments, mentoring, promotion, or new opportunities. Stay interviews are a core function of a retention strategy and anchor re-recruitment initiatives.

Once Employees Pulse Survey Report is published. HR Team, Senior Management and Departmental Heads should immediately act on it. HR becomes an enabler in executing it by revisiting policies, processes and developing a mechanism for constant monitoring of its progress.

I've always loved the prospect of the 'stay interview'. Instead of waiting until there is a problem, holding stay interviews allows insight into what aspects of an employee's role or experience could potentially lead to resignation. Being proactive is key. Employees need to feel valued and one way to ensure they do is to give them a voice and an opportunity to be heard.

Apart from Employee Pulse Survey platform, there should be other HR programs like “HR Connect with Employees”, “Townhall”, “Coffee with Senior Management/HOD” which will also help an organisation to understand their employee’s pulse.

I concure the valuable tips and suggestions. In addition I would emphesize on using multichannel approach so that to avoid survey boredom. You can keep it alive Only by being consistently picking up action items, execute them and go back to your people to tell them about improvments, at least Quarterly. It will gradually increase your people Trust over feedback processes. Also take actions that impact larger segment of the organization so that your little action even have higher impact and lift up the emotions and energy of your people. Be mindful of Ethical boundaries on data gathering and keep on communicating about it. If you can reverse decision of a potential leaver with these tips, you Got Success! Stay blessed

Provide options for anonymous feedback to encourage open and honest expressions of sentiment. This will help overcome potential hesitations that employees might have in sharing their true feelings, fostering a more accurate representation of overall sentiments

Leveraging sentiment analysis certainly helps both organisations and employees. 1) Gauge work life balance By integrating emotional context behind performance data for more meaningful performance improvements plans. 2) Aligned recognition with sentiment data reinforce the positive behaviour and foster the culture of appreciation