Sentiment analysis
Communities management
August 24th, 2020

How to Use Employee Sentiment Analytics to Skyrocket Community Morale

by Grytics

Understanding employee sentiment - how employees feel about their work - is critical for boosting workplace morale, which in turn ensures that department managers reach their benchmark goals.

Without an understanding of staff sentiment, workers slip into indifference - mode, joining the 51% of U.S.workers who are not engaged. At the same time, they want to feel inspired!

When it comes to measuring employee sentiment, enterprise social network (ESN) data provides a wealth of information for boosting community spirit.

From Workplace from Facebook to Yammer, every day, punchy texts and rapid-fire messages circulate the org.

But how do you know if the community’s comments are positive or negative? Or if the latest onboarding group’s messages indicate a high level of employee satisfaction?

With the help of sentiment analytics tools, you can measure employees’ moods, allowing you to develop a positive workplace of engaged, successful staff - all within a few clicks.

What is sentiment analysis?

Sentiment analysis allows administrators to understand how employees feel about their work and workplace culture. And that starts with analyzing ESN communications.

However, it’s not easy to know the emotion behind a text-based message. Was the sender joking or being sarcastic? Did that clipped response mean they were irritated or just short on time?

Moreover, understanding the communication tone gets more complicated with a large organization’s ESN activity.

Organizations use sentiment analysis tools to decode text communications - to decipher the emotional nuances of conversations.

Here’s what you can do with employee sentiment information.

Boost engagement with sentiment analytics

Understanding and getting employees engaged can be a challenge. You may have super-engaged groups with people posting, commenting, and consistently reacting on social networks. But most likely, there’ll be team members and groups that hang back and provide little input.

Getting a read on sentiment can open up opportunities to tailor content that engages more employees in the most meaningful way.

For instance, a group with steady activity might show consistent positive sentiment towards a type of survey (e.g., a hump-day one-question poll).

Identifying the group’s positive reactions allows you to understand why the survey works. This opens up content opportunities for engaging less active groups.

Correct issues as they come up

Addressing issues as they arise is critical for building a productive and positive workplace culture. Overlooked or unknown problems can make employees feel unsure about their role and value.

Maybe a change in management has disrupted a group’s project workflow, creating confusion and frustration within the group.

Analyzing employee sentiment will help leaders identify and understand the problem so they can address it quickly. Moreover, they can use the sentiment findings to show team members where the problem lies and how to fix it.

Provide feedback that counts

Giving regular feedback to employees is a valuable tool for improving future work and boosting morale.

43% of highly-engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week,” reports ClearCompany.

Post-project feedback

As a project ends, department managers might sit down with the team or one-on-one with group members to provide feedback on the project’s ups and downs. The input will be more effective if leaders can switch their analytics from a statistics-based approach to sentiment-mode.

With a sentiment analysis of the project’s communications, managers can identify where mood changes occurred, what was happening with the project (such as production delays or team members not pulling their weight), and how to prevent similar problems in the future.

Feedback as praise

Employee recognition is a powerful (and easy) way to boost workplace morale and improve retention.

Sentiment analysis can help leaders quickly identify highly engaged employees, understand the depth of their activity, and reward them with a public shoutout (e.g., team leaders can create a Wall of Fame to acknowledge top contributors within the community).

Administrators can also gather the sentiment information in real-time, generate a graphics-centered report, and share it with appropriate leaders as promotion opportunities arise.

Conclusion

Analyzing employee sentiment is an important step for cultivating a fulfilling work community. Having a picture of team members’ moods helps leaders increase engagement, address issues quickly, and provide productive feedback.

Furthermore, with access to sentiment analytics tools, staff managers can connect with and motivate employees to do their best work.

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