So, you’ve decided that employee engagement is important and now you want to measure if your company is on the right track. An excellent decision. But now what?

The first step is to decide if you are going to conduct an in-house study, or if you’re going to use a third party for your employee survey. More on the benefits of each option later.

One of the considerations of choosing a third-party survey provider is the cost of the employee survey. The cost depends on multiple factors, such as the number of participants and the level of involvement of the third party. Generally, you will need to budget anywhere between $3,000 and $25,000 for the basic survey. We’ve also seen invoices of over $250,000, but those are full-serviced outliers. Of course, you can check the current prices of TrustXP surveys too, but let’s dive into the factors that drive costs first.

1) Number of participants

The number of survey subjects, or employees, is the most straightforward variable. Depending on the number of employees that you’d like to survey, your costs will go up. Very often a vendor will charge you a price per employee. Indeed, there will be more data to analyze. If the vendor is doing that for you, the price uplift per employee makes sense. However, you will be doing most of the analyzes when the survey is finished.

2) Survey length

The short story here is; the longer the survey, the higher the costs.
The reason is obvious; it takes more time to design, program and analyze the survey.

There is an issue with charging for lengthy surveys. Generally speaking, a lengthy survey is less effective.
Respondent Fatigue is the scientific term for your employees getting sick and tired of yet another question, so they just answer anything to finish the survey. This results in poor data. There it is, the conflict between you and the survey salesman. You should want a short, effective survey that measures what matters. What you’ll get told is to expand your survey and measure as much as you can, because that costs more.
Pay attention to this problem when you start with your survey. Especially when you run regular employee pulse surveys, you should make sure that it measures what should be measured, but not all the fluff.

3) Reporting

Surveying your employees is one, getting the data and -more importantly- the implications is two. Depending on who you partner with, you will have different levels of reporting on your employee survey.

The most basic level of reporting will include a data presentation within an online environment, visualized in charts and graphs.
The next level of reporting will include what is in the basic level, added with an executive summary of the most important findings and some details on the process.
The most advanced reporting will include recommendations and cross-tabulations. Depending on your contract, these can also include industry benchmarks based on your organizational profile and practical guidance to improve.

Some organizations will benefit from the most expensive options in the market. However, it is our experience that the 80-20 principle applies here too; 80% of the companies can do with just 20% of the options that the market is offering. We will help you for just a fraction of the price that you find elsewhere. Head over to our pricing page and get started with employee trust surveys today.

Over the past year-and-a-bit TrustXP has worked with companies to improve employee trust. We are proud that we have been playing a minor part in creating happier and more productive workplaces. We have developed trust surveys and our simple survey tool, allowing us to help companies all over the world.

With the recent developments regarding COVID-19, we can’t express our gratitude to those amongst us who are fighting the battle outside of their house. Thank you.

The rest of us will work from home. And whilst this isn’t nearly as hard as the other challenges people are facing today, being happy and productive whilst WFH isn’t as straightforward as it seems. A new chair in a different whilst known place, new routines, a different way of communicating with your co-workers as well as distractions. And we’re not even talking about how to deal with your manager (or managing your team).

We asked ourselves how we can help. Our team created the TrustXP Work_From_Home survey, and from now on anyone can use it for free. It’s designed to create a happy and productive work experience for those who have to change their ways.

The TrustXP Work_From_Home survey covers the following items, based on literature and experience:

• Communication
• Processes
• Productivity
• (Work_from_home) balance
• Digital tools
• Equipment
• Inclusivity
• Trust

This survey will be free for any organisation that deems it useful. And as you might want to adapt to the answers, you can use it as often as needed to ask if your changes are successful. 

If you, your organisation, your team or even your client would like to use it, just drop us a line below. We’ll get the TrustXP Work_From_Home survey to you asap (do allow us some turn-around time!)

Photo by Gabriel Beaudry on Unsplash

An adjusted version of this post was written by Timen Baart and first published on LinkedIn.

You will see this happening in many organisations across the globe. When the end of the month, quarter or year approaches, it will be time for office games. Don’t get me wrong; they can be fun. But are they the most appropriate way to motivate employees?

Leaderboards, half a day off for team drinks, gift swap competitions, and raffles. If you work in an office, especially in sales, you will know what I’m talking about.

These games are meant to get teams work just that little bit harder, to deliver a project a little earlier, or to push just beyond the quota.

Having something to aim for indeed increases productivity.

But office games aren’t always the best way. Studies show that gamification reduces overall motivation. And as Gartner’s Brian Burke advises: “Think of the audience as players, not puppets.” Office games dismiss the importance of the role, and of the professional.

What does work to motivate teams?

Every person has her own goals. A holiday, a promotion, a house, learning new skills, or working on cool projects with people they like.

Match these goals with the company objectives. As a manager, you are the link between your team and the company. Provide the trust that they can achieve their goal, and help them to get there. Besides motivation, it will increase happiness.

Photo by Sam Owoyemi on Unsplash

Today we’re announcing the partnership between TrustXP and the international Institute for Health Management and Quality; IHMQ.

IHMQ recognises the need for trust in well functioning organisations. That is why they will make trust measurements, trainings and improvement part of their current offering; tools and services that enhance the health and well-being of the workforce, combining the principles of quality management, health promotion and organisational development.

TrustXP is proud to be chosen by IHMQ as a partner on a similar journey. Trust impacts health and well-being in the the workplace. The business case for company leaders is obvious. Visit IHMQ.org for more information.

It is probably the most ask question amongst managers. Rightfully so; Gallup research shows only 34% of employees in the United States are so called ‘engaged’. That number has barely gone up since employee engagement was the first time they measured it, in the 1990’s.

So if our employees aren’t engaged, and engagement isn’t going up, does that mean that it is impossible to motivate employees?

Luckily, the answer to that question is no.

Most often, we are not looking at the right ways to motivate employees. When a manager is asked how they try to improve motivation, the answer is often through gamification, or offering incentives for top-performance, such as a present or allowing a day off. And sure, that might help to get a peek performance during that one afternoon, but the next day motivation will be at zero again.

How to truly motivate employees

What moves the needle on employee engagement, and the related motivation, is employee trust. Trust that the organisation will provide all the goodness that the employee requires to reach their goal. Whatever that goal may be. We often view employees as production units; the worker is a tool to build, sell, market, and administrate. That is where the ‘people are a company’s most important asset’-concept is derived from.

But just for fun, try to ask your team member how they see themselves. One thing is for sure; not as an asset.

Every individual has their own goals. Their own objectives in life.

Make sure to respect those, and to provide an environment in which your employees can achieve their goals. You’ll see; you will get to a stage where motivation just happens. Where conflict is resolved, and where productivity and innovations come naturally.

If you want to know what you can improve, make sure to ask your staff what their trust blockers are. Or measure it, anonymously and accurately, through TrustXP. We love to help you with actionable advice!

Photo by Jordan Whitfield on Unsplash

Business leaders and HR are on tight budgets and have targets to hit. It’s impossible to jump on each new ‘hot topic’ in the market. It’s impossible to purchase every service and tool that are offered by enterprise sales reps from the next SaaS company. Ever had complaints from your employees about “yet another tool”, or “yet another training”? Besides, you can’t do that to your procurement department. And frankly, there are costs related to every purchase: it is your task to grow, not to go bankrupt.

The case for the introduction of a new topic into your organisation has to be strong. The main question to answer: Will it move the needle?

Trust will move the needle

Even though it’s often seen as an elusive topic, there are hard numbers that back up the importance of trust. Trust is present in every human interaction where we are trying to achieve an outcome, but are unable to control it:

Trust is the confidence in someone’s or something’s ability and intention to perform an action that will lead to value creation, without being able to control or enforce the action or the outcome. – Timen Baart, CEO TrustXP

Your employees are getting out of bed each morning to pursue a goal. That goal is generally a combination of the following:

• Money to provide for X
• Career progression and status
• Working on cool stuff, with cool technologies (work is fun)
• Being part of something bigger (including being with people you like)

Besides the work contract that they have with your company, through which they exchange time for a salary, these additional objectives are important. And that is where trust comes in; your employees need to trust that their goals can be met by working at your organisation.

Why you should care about employee trust; the numbers

When employees are trusting that the organisation provides them with (access to) their goal, they give so much back. Because employee trust is the root cause for employees to be engaged. (Employee engagement in itself is a lagging indicator, so why bother? But that’s for another blog.) What your employees give back makes the decision to focus on employee trust a little easier for business leaders. Rephrase: It makes employee trust a top-priority.

• High-trust organisations outperform the average annual revenue growth of their competition with 5% (6.72 vs. 11.66%), according to FTSE Russel
• High-trust organisations are 11 times more likely to innovate, as stated in the HOW report
• Gallup, pioneers in Employee Engagement, concluded higher profitability (+22%), productivity (+21%), customer ratings (+10%), absenteeism(-37%) and employee turnover (-25% to -65%) to be directly related to engagement, as well as fewer safety incidents (-48%) and quality defects (-41%)

To start with improving employee trust, you will first have to figure out what your current status is. Is your organisation trusted by your employees? Ask around and start measuring. Identify the area’s of opportunity, and start doing something about it.

It isn’t hard to improve trust. It does require your commitment. If you could use a helping hand, don’t hesitate to reach out. We’re here to assist you every step of the way.

Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash

We’re launching TrustXP, the new trust measurement tool

After months or research, I’m proud to announce that we are launching TrustXP: the trust measurement tool. Organisations of all sizes, across all industries now have the possibility to measure trust inside their workforce.

As consultants we have been helping numerous companies with their efforts to improve trust. It’s wonderful to see what happens to teams, departments and organisations when trust builds. The social and business benefits are strongly evidenced in research. But trust is quite an elusive topic. It seems difficult to grasp. And as Peter Drucker famously said: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it”. That’s why we built a tool that helps you measure trust.

TrustXP measures trust through surveys. A proven effective method, but with a different setup, questions, and more relevant conclusions than what you’re used to. With direct implications on revenue, innovation and profitability, and also on happiness.

Powered by expertise, rooted in research

Our methodology is created by experts, and is aligned to trust research and our industry expertise. We are also setting up a research panel to stay abreast leading academic research, developments and findings on measuring trust.

Our method

Every organization is different. That’s why TrustXP helps you to reflect your organisational priorities, whilst keeping statistically relevant measurements. You’ll be able to benchmark against your industry and similar size organisations, and against your previous results. And we’re in it for the long run. Define, Measure, Analyse, Action, Repeat, in a cycle that works best for you.

What we’re not

We are not a recruiting tool, and won’t put you in a “best employers of the year”-list. These lists don’t respect individual organisations, cultural differences and most of all, are not contributing to improving business or social value. They force employees to cover up their true responses in exchange for a socially preferred answer. Employees deserve a voice. They shouldn’t just be used as a marketing tool. We are not in that business. (What we do encourage, is to make employees so delighted that they will share their joy about their employer with everyone they know. You need to trust them to do that when they are happy;)

We’re committed to help you building trust in the long run. We’re starting with the basics of trust; employee trust. And we’re passionate about bringing you the best tools. Our roadmap is filled with additional functionalities, both on employee trust measurements, as well as all other areas of trust. (Some people told us it looks ‘impressive’ and ‘exciting’!) Follow us on LinkedIn, or drop us a note if you want us to keep you posted about our developments.

If you think your organisation could use TrustXP, let us know. We’re eager to help you out, whether you’re an employee, HR manager or the CEO. Feel free to email me at tbaart@trustxp.com so that we can set up an appointment.

Additionally, we’re always looking for trust experts and top talent. If you want to contribute to what we’re building, let’s talk. And if you are a change management, innovation or HR consultant, and you could use TrustXP in your clients org; you know where to find us!