We write on employee engagement for HR.com

“The capability and willingness to listen starts by designing approaches with engagement in mind.” There are many challenges facing HR professionals today, with trends like quiet quitting and the ‘great resignation’ requiring a new approach to employee relations. Our vice president of customer success, Marcus Pemberton, writes for HR.com about How Text Analytics Can Help Businesses Build Employee Engagement Strategies.

In the article, Marcus covers how the right text analytics approach can help to bolster employee listening and better listen to an entire population, rather than just a vocal few. He writes: “Text analysis tools leveraging AI can help people managers to make sense of unstructured text data and unearth the key insights contained within.”

He goes on to cover some of the insights that human resources teams can glean from text analysis, beyond the employee survey. But, without taking action, this type of data can go to waste very easily. He gives an example of how using this data can help implement strategic changes, such as shifting the language used to discuss hierarchy within a company to be more inclusive and identifying words that contributed to the formation of unwanted silos within an organizational structure. 

Using employee text data effectively requires a plan. He says: “It’s important to note that, while collecting data is a crucial first step, it can be too easy to just scan comments, or simply to keep a mental note of what came up in a focus group. As a guideline, numerical data is most effective as a rough tuning device, to identify and prioritize. But text analytics then enable you to fine-tune analysis and build a clearer picture.” 

By covering some detailed examples of employers that have used text analysis in building their internal policies and employee engagement strategies, Marcus helps to bring this concept to life. At a fundamental level, this detailed level of analysis on employee feedback and language can help businesses take a big step toward creating a more equitable company culture, while also helping employees feel a sense of belonging, success and loyalty. 

He concludes the article with: “Ultimately, the capability and willingness to listen starts by designing approaches with engagement in mind – maximizing the value found from involving diverse perspectives and helping to foster ownership and emotional commitment to changes and evolutions, while strengthening culture along the way.”

You can read the complete article here.