A Customer Story: A Happy and Satisfied Employee Is the Heart of a Successful Organization
In our volatile, unstable, and rapidly changing world, all organizations face dizzying challenges. How to achieve the most effective, flexible cooperation and the expected results are the keywords on every manager’s desk. The organization’s greatest asset is a satisfied, dedicated, and happy employee whose contribution is valued and whose opinion is heard and taken into account. That is why we measure satisfaction at the Statistics Estonia on a daily basis.
What should be the work culture that would support and encourage and give every employee the opportunity to develop, grow, and enjoy work? At Statistics Estonia, we have taken the three core values of our institution as our starting point – reliability, cooperation, and innovation. Keeping them in mind, we have tried to create a work culture that keeps employees, where, in addition to meaningful and self-developing work, everyone has the opportunity to have a say and offer solutions. Cooperation is the key word that brought many good initiatives to the agenda for implementing both smaller and larger changes.
All organizations struggle to retain their people and to attract new talent. The magic wand has not been invented, but good approaches and new tools have. One must have drive and courage to keep up with the world.
The fact that it is possible to be innovative in a state institution and thereby raise the entire work culture of the organization to a higher level has also been noticed and recognized from the outside in our case. A few weeks ago, the Estonian Personnel Development Association (PARE) announced our HR manager Annika Kitsing as an innovator with a heart for 2023. The jury praised Statistics Estonia for quick changes, which are usually quite difficult to carry out in state institutions.
Starting this fall, Statistics Estonia has been using a new and innovative tool for measuring employee satisfaction. While as a state institution, we have been used to measuring satisfaction once a year with a larger satisfaction survey, as an innovation we measure the working temperature every day. Our institution now has a tool that implements a unique technology, which helps to more effectively solve the problems of remote work and management, and directly monitor the cognitive experience of employees over a longer period of time.
The system provides an overview of how people currently feel at Statistics Estonia and evaluate their working life. Every working day, one question with two positive and two negative answer options is sent to the employee’s email or phone application – yes, rather yes, rather no, no. The answers are anonymous, but the results can be observed by each employee in comparison with his team. In addition to the rating scale, we encourage employees to leave comments and suggestions for questions.
“The working family of the Statistics Estonia has almost 400 members, which means that the needs and preferences of our people are very different. It is important that we can support our employees and offer individual solutions based on their work and the location of their work,” says Annika. The new satisfaction assessment tool provides an opportunity to measure their experience, commitment, and satisfaction and to make quick and operational decisions with it.
Annika adds that employees’ ever-increasing expectation of flexibility and individual approach requires organizations to take a fresh look at management. “Management is becoming more and more empathetic, personal, and aware. This must be taken into account and these elements must be applied in the best possible way. You have to skillfully consider how to create new opportunities with few resources and, in turn, grow the maximum success out of them. We can look fierce on the outside, but this good result must be felt by our own employees in every situation.”
To date, we have been using the daily employee satisfaction rating for almost two months. One question a day has provided an opportunity to directly discuss concerns and joys individually and in the team. It is safe to say that this innovation has made us understand each other better and make sense of our working lives. In today’s rhythm of life, this kind of immediate feedback is very important in the management of the institution and in understanding the remote work of the teams.
What has the daily measurement of satisfaction taught us?
- The launch of the new tool can be considered a success because, after 6 weeks of use, the response rate is still high (about 82%). Average ratings in all areas of working life are also high.
- The employees have pointed out several areas for improvement, but in addition to critical topics, the awareness of our institution’s strengths and the use of opportunities have also received significant attention. We see what we are good at and notice it more than before.
- We will discuss the results with the agreed regularity. We do not have to analyze the answers in teams every week, but if necessary, we can discuss problems that need to be solved quickly – or on the same day – and find solutions together. It encourages employees to speak up and motivates them to give feedback.
- When asked if our employees have reviewed their team’s results in the last 30 days, 100% of managers and 77% of employees answered yes. This result shows how important our people value the new tool and its capabilities and that we are on the right track.
