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Last week our new website went live&hellip;.. hooray!&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ve been waiting for the opportunity to tell the world about how amazing Space HR and our platform for Employee Engagement is and now we&rsquo;ve finally done it. I&rsquo;ve got a website that I can be really proud of.&nbsp;
My new website helps me convey the proposition of the business, talk about our amazing technology and showcase some of the great work we&rsquo;ve been doing with some great clients! It feels like all the hard work is starting to make sense and pay off.
I&rsquo;ve learned some pretty incredible things whilst building this website. It&rsquo;s made me think about things that I haven&rsquo;t really thought about before and its tested my skills and my knowledge as a business leader. I had a website already which was fine, but this new one is critical. It&rsquo;ll set a precedent for all my future websites to follow because it&rsquo;s the first one that talks explicitly about the Space HR Employee Engagement platform.&nbsp;
So if you&rsquo;re building a website, whether its your first or your fifth, here&rsquo;s a few of things I learned. Maybe it&rsquo;ll help you avoid a few pitfalls that I navigated along the way&hellip;.
&nbsp;
<h3>1. Building a website is hard!</h3>
Where do you start - genuine question? Well you (sadly) don&rsquo;t start with design that&rsquo;s for sure! I started with a lot of soul searching. I started asking myself some deep questions about my business such as;
&gt; Why does Space HR exist?
&gt; How do we differentiate from the competition?
&gt; What do we offer?&nbsp;
&gt; What is our mission, our vision, our values?
&gt; Who are our target customers?
&gt; How do we benefit our customers?
Once I had this down, it became a lot easier to start writing from a position of conviction and understanding based on the business I wanted to create.
&nbsp;
<h3>2. Put your customer first&nbsp;</h3>
You&rsquo;re not trying to win awards, you&rsquo;re trying to win customers. (Although if there are awards going, I&rsquo;ll take a few please!). Write your copy with your customer in mind and answer the questions that they would ask. These could include;
&gt; Is this product for me?
&gt; Why do I need this product?
&gt; What am I actually buying?&nbsp;
&gt; What is the cost?
&gt; Why you and not your competition?
&gt; What do I do next?
Then break the answers down and serve them back on your pages. Pretty obvious stuff really (once you know that&rsquo;s the aim!). But don't underestimate how long (and how many versions), it might take you to get this right!
&nbsp;
<h3>3. Align with your Category</h3>
I also did a lot of competitor research, but not because I wanted to steal their ideas. I had to make sure I was aligned with my competition so it was easier for my customers to enquire/buy. I needed to think like a customer.&nbsp;
I asked myself the same questions as in point 2 above, to see whether they achieved this. I also put myself in the mind of a customer who gets two quotes through from two suppliers. How do you begin to compare the two if they&rsquo;re wildly different in price, product, proposition, service etc? Answer-you don&rsquo;t. Do some benchmarking, make sure you are aligned with your category. If not, you might end up being discounted or discredited by your customers.
&nbsp;
<h3>4. Building a product website is really hard</h3>
Underpinning Space HR, is a platform that&rsquo;s designed to build a more engaged team. This is our product and with it comes a lot more information that makes the job of building a website even harder. There was a lot more to think about in terms of showing the platform off and talking about the product features that really make us awesome.
Focusing on benefits rather than features was crucial, as was keeping the amount of information just right to keep my audience engaged and not overloaded with info. After all, I can explain more once they&rsquo;ve enquired!
&nbsp;
<h3>5. Write, re-write, burn it and write again</h3>
I must have written about 6 drafts of content for my new website and even then it there was a lot of iteration when it came to building web pages. The first draft involved writing everything I&rsquo;ve ever known about Employee Engagement ever! As you can imagine, it got pretty boring pretty quick and I gave up this approach. Then I did a whole draft of content that explained my entire proposition, but again it was boring.
Less is more when it comes to website copy, knowing what to include and what to leave out is where the real skill is.&nbsp;I&rsquo;m more than sure our site isn&rsquo;t perfect and I will continue to change my website as it develops. Keep iterating as you learn and your copy will refine into something that starts to sound like you.
&nbsp;
<h3>6. Be more genuine&nbsp;</h3>
Just when I though I was happy, I realised it just didn&rsquo;t sound like me. I took a hatchet to my last draft of copy and took out loads of things that either didn&rsquo;t sound like me or that sounded really boring and generic. Clearly I had to leave some more obvious stuff in there, but if it didn&rsquo;t speak to anyone, it probably got the axe.
I&rsquo;m still a small business and until I&rsquo;m a huge corporate, being genuine and unique is something I can continue to be. It&rsquo;s pretty brave to put a huge picture of yourself on your product website! But it isn&rsquo;t just a product, it&rsquo;s a product supported and loved by me!&nbsp;
To round this blog off,&nbsp;I hope you love my new website. It&rsquo;s been a challenge and an amazing experience getting it live. Have a proper look through it,&nbsp;please offer feedback and refer it to your network too!
&nbsp;
If you&rsquo;d like to know more about how Space HR deliver Employee Engagement to companies throughout the UK, contact victoria@spacehr.co.uk

Our CEO Victoria shares her experience on building the new site

The New Website Is Live!

It&rsquo;s one of the golden questions of the corporate working world - does giving an employee a higher salary increase their engagement? While we wish a straightforward &lsquo;yes&rsquo; or &lsquo;no&rsquo; could conclude the matter, it&rsquo;s not all that simple.&nbsp;
Like most things in the world of work, there are a number of factors at play that affect engagement rates - salary is just one of them. In some situations, a higher salary can indeed increase employee satisfaction, but that&rsquo;s not always the case, as we&rsquo;re about to discuss.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>The Link Between Salary and Employee Engagement&nbsp;</h3>
It&rsquo;s easy to subscribe to the belief that paying your team more will lead to higher rates of satisfaction, and therefore engagement. Money can&rsquo;t buy happiness, of course, but it&nbsp;can buy a certain degree of comfort, and isn&rsquo;t that close enough?
Money worries inevitably lead to&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.spacehr.co.uk/blogs/how-to-spot-the-warning-signs-of-stress-in-your-team-and-what-you-can-do-to-help" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stress</a>, depression, sickness and workplace conflict - things no employer wants to see their team suffer from. A 2018 study by Salary Finance found that a whopping&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://us.salaryfinance.com/uk/blog/healthy-attitudes-to-mental-health-in-the-workplace/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">40% of UK employees had money worries</a>&nbsp;- an abysmal statistic that&rsquo;s undoubtedly been amplified by the pandemic. The study also found that employees who were stressed about money were 2.2 times more likely to look for a new job, and were 7.6 times&nbsp;less likely to complete daily tasks.&nbsp;
Of course, none of this is good for your work culture, productivity or employee engagement rates. But it would be a mistake to assume that handing out pay rises left, right and centre will solve all of your problems. More often than not, higher paid jobs lead to increased amounts of stress, as concluded by a study conducted by&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.agencycentral.co.uk/articles/2016-10/does-stress-rise-with-increasing-salaries.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Agency Central</a>. This is because employees who are paid more often bear the brunt of increased responsibility.
And if working conditions are already poor, their shiny new salary isn&rsquo;t going to make them feel any better.&nbsp;
The truth is, your employee engagement rates are affected by a number of factors, including working conditions, career progression, recognition, office relationships,&nbsp;as well&nbsp;as monetary reward. And although this isn&rsquo;t an all-encompassing list of factors, it gives you an idea of other components that are easily overlooked by employers trying to boost engagement rates.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>So How Can You Boost Employee Engagement Rates and Satisfaction?</h3>
<h4>An Increased Salary May Not Go Amiss</h4>
Although everyone has their own idea of a &lsquo;salary sweet spot&rsquo;, the polls suggest that&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://us.salaryfinance.com/uk/blog/healthy-attitudes-to-mental-health-in-the-workplace/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">most people aspire to earn &pound;44,500-&pound;58,500</a>&nbsp;per annum to eradicate money worries. Paying your employees more&nbsp;can have a positive impact on their productivity, happiness and engagement rates, but consider or workplace factors too.&nbsp;
<h4>Improve Communication With Your Employees</h4>
Like with any other relationship, communication is key to fostering healthy workplace connections and levels of satisfaction. Invite your team to&nbsp;tell&nbsp;you what&rsquo;s going on, rather than playing the guessing game (because it never works).&nbsp;Our easy&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 255);" href="https://www.spacehr.co.uk/platform" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">employee engagement survey</a> is the ideal way to capture employee feedback.&nbsp;
<h4>Consult Our 5-Step Strategy to a Highly Engaged Team&nbsp;</h4>
We&rsquo;ve done the hard work for you and designed a comprehensive strategy that&rsquo;s ready to implement into any workplace. Discover the first step by clicking&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.spacehr.co.uk/blogs/5-steps-to-a-highly-engaged-team---part-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>&nbsp;and get to work building a highly engaged team. For more HR resources and tips on boosting employee engagement rates, check out&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.spacehr.co.uk/blogs" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">our blog</a>.&nbsp;

The Impact of Salary On Employee Engagement

After such a tumultuous year, millions of people across the UK are experiencing high levels of stress. In fact, research has shown that&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.stress.org.uk/national-stress-awareness-month-2019/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">74%</a> of UK adults felt so stressed in the last year that they felt unable to cope.&nbsp;
As it is an employer's duty of care to look out for the welfare of its workforce, it&rsquo;s imperative that stress is recognised and taken as seriously as physical health issues. Without adequate support, stress can lead to a myriad of physical problems, and will undoubtedly result in decreased engagement, morale and productivity by default.
Learning how to spot the signs of stress in your team is one of the best measures you can take to protect your team (and company, by extension). Read on to discover the four biggest warning signs to look out for in an employee or team member&rsquo;s mental wellbeing.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Taking more time off than usual or spending more time away from their desk</h3>
Stress triggers the autonomic nervous system&rsquo;s fight-or-flight response. And while many people assume this reaction is only applicable to dangerous, high-adrenaline situations, chronic mental stress will have a&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.nichd.nih.gov/newsroom/releases/stress" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">similar effect.</a> If your team member or employee is asking for a lot of time off, frequently calling in sick, or regularly showing up late to work, chances are their &lsquo;flight&rsquo; response has been triggered.&nbsp;
Allowing your team some flexibility to create balance in their lives may help to alleviate their stress.&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://resources.owllabs.com/state-of-remote-work" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Research from Owl Labs</a>&nbsp;has found that companies who offer remote working have a 25% lower turnover rate than those who don&rsquo;t.
&nbsp;
<h3>Loss of productivity or trouble concentrating</h3>
The incapacitating nature of stress is such that it often gets worse the longer it goes untreated. Chronic stress presents a vicious cycle in which the victim feels unable to cope with what&rsquo;s on their plate. As a result, their concentration and productivity suffers, leading to even higher levels of stress and worry.&nbsp;
Never underestimate the power of a conversation when it comes to mental health. Allowing someone to vent their worries to you can help them rationalise their problems and bring around a better sense of calm.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Abusing alcohol or drugs</h3>
We all need to blow off some steam during our time off. But if your team member is engaging in alcohol use a little too often, or is turning to drugs to cope, it&rsquo;s a sure-fire sign that something&rsquo;s wrong.&nbsp;
Try inviting them to do recreational activities outside of work that don&rsquo;t typically involve drugs or alcohol. Exercise is one of the most effective forms of&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.healthline.com/health/heart-disease/exercise-stress-relief" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">stress relief</a>, and the simple act of moving can help restore balance and clear the mind.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Negative behaviour towards others / deteriorating work relationships</h3>
Erratic or conflictive behaviour is one of the most common stress signals in the workplace. If it isn&rsquo;t addressed quickly and effectively, the destructive effects can create an extremely awkward environment for everyone on your team.&nbsp;
Workplace counsellors are great at helping you support employees who are acting differently under high levels of stress. If you think one of your team members is struggling to cope, it&rsquo;s important to take action before things get worse.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
At Ten Space, we&rsquo;re helping businesses look after their employees&rsquo; wellbeing by fostering a safe, secure and supported working environment, where all their needs are met. <a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(16, 60, 192);" href="https://www.spacehr.co.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Visit our website</a>&nbsp;to find out more about what we do.&nbsp;

How to Spot the Warning Signs of Stress in Your Team, and What You Can Do to Help

It probably doesn&rsquo;t surprise you to know that I&rsquo;ve been a real champion of Employee Engagement throughout my career. It&rsquo;s always appealed to me to understand and improve the connection and commitment an employee has with an organisation and its goals.&nbsp;&nbsp;
I&rsquo;ve always understood that highly engaged employees are more committed and more aligned to the goals of an organisation and that ultimately a business will achieve more with a more engaged workforce. What's not to love, right?!
Throughout my career, I&rsquo;ve also had the pleasure of working with quite a number of HR systems and platforms too. Some have been amazing in helping me to do my job better. Others have been something of a hindrance and made a simple process harder or more drawn out. Either way, technology and systems are generally good for a whole variety of reasons and on balance I&rsquo;ve found that using technology to follow a process always adds some value to a process.
When I launched Ten Space, I kept these two things in mind and set off on a journey of establishing methodology, process and technology to make a truly killer business proposition that I know companies will adopt and love. The Ten Space managed service will add value for all types and sizes of businesses and I&rsquo;ve had the pleasure of working with quite a few clients already that love our proposition, process, systems and expertise. I can honestly say that 6 months since launch, I know even more that I did before about Employee Engagement as well as running a business.
So with all this in mind I jumped on a call a few days ago and set about trying to win a new customer account. The customer had been introduced to us and had some knowledge about employee engagement. He runs a business with approximately 30 staff and had undertaken a full first survey of his team. He had the full sales and marketing pitch and I&rsquo;d gone above and beyond to support his free trial of Ten Space.
&nbsp;
The results were in and the feedback was great! Some real highlights for me were;
<ul>
<li>The engagement score was good - plenty of room for improvement but a great start</li>
<li>The team had absolutely loved completing their surveys over WhatsApp rather than boring old email</li>
<li>The completion rate was lower than expected but there were some reasons for this that could be easily addressed next time</li>
<li>Some really constructive feedback on our process that would help us to develop our offering</li>
</ul>
So armed to the teeth with positives, I was ready to ask her the killer question that every business owner dreads - can we get you signed up as a paying customer? I was thinking this was a slam-dunk. I was wrong.
&nbsp;
He said -&nbsp;&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t think so right now&rdquo;
A bit shocked, I replied -&nbsp;&ldquo;Oh. right. Can I ask why not?&rdquo;
He replied -&nbsp;&ldquo;I&rsquo;m struggling to see the value of this as something I need to commit to&rdquo;
My heart sank&hellip;.
&nbsp;
<h4>***PAUSE***</h4>
&nbsp;
It was at that point I realised that I&rsquo;d probably not talked about the most crucial part of employee engagement - consistency.
Consistency is critical to so many things in life. You don&rsquo;t get fit with 1 big workout, you get fit by consistently training and eating correctly. You don&rsquo;t grow a business by winning 1 big client, you do it by winning lots of clients and consistently improving your service and your offering for them .
Similarly you don&rsquo;t get an engaged team by sending out 1 survey. You send out the survey, you get the feedback, you review the feedback, you create a plan, you communicate the plan, you implement the changes&hellip;. Then you go again, and again, and again (and again) &hellip;.. and only then do you see the incremental changes that make your teams 20% or 30% more engaged over a longer term.
That consistency in effort also needs supporting with consistency in methodology. A consistent methodology will provide a consistent data set. Survey by survey you can analyse the data and improve based on findings over a period. Injecting technology into your methodology also allows you to reduce human error. It allows you to create a consistent tone to the survey and accurately record data to draw comparisons over time.
&nbsp;
<h4>***UN-PAUSE***</h4>
&nbsp;
Once I&rsquo;d explained this it became really clear to my customer that this was a marathon not a sprint. He understood that employee engagement was something to work at, but most importantly that the consistent approach provided by Ten Space, coupled with our surveying technology would make this process easier, more cost effective and yield far better results over time.
I&rsquo;m delighted to say that we&rsquo;re working with him and his team going forward as part of a long term strategy to improve engagement for the business!
If you&rsquo;d like to know more about how we&rsquo;re providing a consistent methodology to support our customers, drop me an email -&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(219, 62, 98);" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

Employee engagement - why consistency is critical

Nobody likes negativity. And yet it often surprises me that so much exists when you look around at business marketing and personal branding.
Some businesses make money from it and some personalities thrive on causing negative publicity. None of this sits particularly well with me, nor do I find it particularly engaging. When I started Space HR I made a pact with myself that I wouldn&rsquo;t focus on the negatives.
It&rsquo;s easy to get drawn into thinking that providing employee engagement as a managed service to businesses involves solving negative problems that already exist. Before I started working with any real customers I had to put some copy together for a marketing pack to send out to some prospects. I laboured over it.
I looked at the competition and spent way too long putting some words together that helped people to understand the problems I was solving.
It read something like this...
&nbsp;
<h3>Spotting The Symptoms</h3>
Many of the companies we speak to suffer the same underlying challenges. These are often costly and include;
<ul>
<li>Regular recruitment, escalating salaries</li>
<li>Difficulty finding great talent</li>
<li>Poor customer feedback</li>
<li>Targets &amp; deadlines being missed</li>
<li>Lack of creativity, innovation and motivation</li>
<li>High sickness and absence</li>
<li>Good people leaving, average people staying</li>
</ul>
Letting these problems develop, embed and grow in any business can lead to much bigger problems down the line.
Initially I thought this was great! It identified the issues my potential customers might be facing and if this sounded familiar they&rsquo;d contact me - simple! But the more I read it back to myself and reflected, I started to think about how it would make me feel as a potential customer of Ten Space.
I might recognise some or even all of these problems in my business, but would this make me want to speak to Ten Space? Probably not - It&rsquo;s too negative.
&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m currently in the process of writing copy for my new website. It&rsquo;ll launch in the next few months and I&rsquo;m really excited by the prospect of moving quickly from &lsquo;what I thought I was doing&rsquo; to &lsquo;what I'm actually doing&rsquo; now I&rsquo;ve got real customers!
Using my new methodology and some employee feedback tech, I&rsquo;ve been working with a bunch of new customers over the last 6 months. Even though it&rsquo;s early days, I've come to realise that none of my customers are really experiencing the issues outlined above - and thank goodness for that. In fact it's been a thoroughly positive experience all round.
Some of the common characteristics I&rsquo;ve found with my customers have been;
<ul>
<li>They&rsquo;re all great business leaders already</li>
<li>They&rsquo;re all running great businesses already</li>
<li>None of them have difficulty finding or retaining great people</li>
<li>They are focused and great at what they do</li>
<li>None of them have issues with sickness and absence</li>
<li>They have a loyal customer-base and very limited customer churn</li>
</ul>
So, you may ask, why the heck did they want to speak to me? Answer - Because they wanted to achieve more with their businesses.
None of them had deep rooted problems, but they were all ambitious and wanted to get their businesses into the best possible shape for continued growth.
&nbsp;
Importantly they all recognised three key things that I knew already;
1. The prevention is better than the cure -&nbsp;There are no quick fixes, but a regular temperature check of engagement coupled with regular feedback is the ultimate preventative measure rather than trying to fix problems after they occur and the rot has set in.
2. Constant and consistent effort is required -&nbsp;A big effort once a year will achieve very little. It becomes a colossal effort that nobody enjoys and can often lead to lower engagement in your teams when nothing really changes. Keeping it simple and regular achieves better outcomes.
3. Marginal gains create major success -&nbsp;My customers recognise that if they get just one highly useful piece of feedback from the survey then they can achieve great things from it. We&rsquo;re not trying to solve the world's problems with each survey, instead we&rsquo;re trying to build an amazing business, one brick at a time.
&nbsp;
As I continue on this journey, I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;ll learn a whole lot more about what business leaders want from the Ten Space experience, but one thing is for sure, the way we promote Ten Space will focus on positive outcomes all the way!
&nbsp;
If you want to achieve more from your business, Ten Space can help. Drop me an email - <a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(219, 62, 98);" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

How our first months in business shaped our proposition

Employee Engagement - It's not about solving problems

The flexible workforce and the gig economy is on the rise. In fact it's estimated that the number of freelance workers has increased by 25% since 2009. Thanks to the pandemic and economic crash, this is set to continue rising at an increasing rate.
Some businesses are finding they need to reduce headcount, or migrate towards a more flexible employment model to reduce their salary exposure. Others are innovative or fast paced businesses and need niche or hard to find skill sets, as such they outsource. Both are looking more and more towards contractors, freelancer and gig workers.
From a workers viewpoint, many thrown into unemployment have made the brave leap to become self-employed, some through ambition and some through lack of other options. Others are taking the opportunities that come their way and know they can maximise their value in the market place by being in control.
Whether you employ people directly or in a gig-worker manner, employee engagement can benefit your wider workforce too. Temporary, contract, and freelance workers are not robots and want to feel a connection to your business and your goals. They want to be recognised, challenged, inspired and looked after. If they are enjoying the work then they'll be delivering their best performance.
So whilst you need to make sure the lines of employment aren't blurred, there are some great engagement practices that make good sense for everyone in your business. Gig workers aren't with you for long (that's kind of the point) but you can make that time count.
&nbsp;
<ol>
<li>Share the vision and where you're heading. Everyone wants to believe in what they're working on. So sell them the dream! Make sure they know where they fit in and why their time and expertise is adding value to your business at that point in time.</li>
<li>Keep them updated, they might not be on your internal communication email round robin, or on the Slack group, but consider what they might need to know that would help them be more a part of the business or the team.</li>
<li>Value their expertise and make them feel appreciated for the contribution they make - just because you are paying their invoice, doesn't mean you can't provide great recognition</li>
<li>Provide great leadership, remove blocks, inspire them. Help them to do their best possible work whilst they are with you and leave a lasting impression of your leadership with them</li>
<li>Make them feel part of the wider team, make them feel included and valued. You can create a great blended team without having the same type of employment relationship with everyone</li>
<li>Provide them with challenges and provide development opportunities for them to grow with you, make it a memorable assignment and keep their interest high</li>
<li>Give them certainty if you can - know they'll be with you for 6 months? Great! Is it only 6 weeks? Tell them! Treat them fairly and transparently.</li>
<li>Pay them on time! 🙂</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;
If you have seen that your workforce is changing shape to include more freelancers and contracts, now is a great time to make sure you are building an engagement plan for your whole workforce, not just your employees.
If you'd like Ten Space to help with your plans, just ask! <a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(219, 62, 98);" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

8 ways to super-charge and engage, contractors and freelancers

So you're a month into 2021 and hopefully you've been working hard on engaging your team from the plan you created in our last blog (see: Step 4 - Action Your Plan).
But how do you measure your success?
Employee engagement can be a success outcome on its own (a "lag" measure). A happy and engaged team should be considered a great success for a business. But it can also be a "lead" measure too - it can be used as an indicator for other success measures in your business.
This week, we're going to explore this in more detail.
&nbsp;
<h3>Survey Your Staff</h3>
Regardless of whether you are using engagement as a lag or a lead measure, a great tracking tool is a survey. There are loads of ways to do this from emails, to building a form or using a survey platform. There aren't many survey tools designed especially for the Employee Engagement space.
A platform will position engagement with your team, track your success and identify areas of focus.&nbsp;If you want our expert advice on this, drop&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent;" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a> an email.
Most engagement survey platforms will give you a score of engagement after a survey - this can be used as your lag measure. Your engagement score can be tracked over time and you can see the impact that your activities are having on your overall engagement score.
Bake this measure into your success measures as a business. Sit it right alongside profit and sales and give it the importance that it deserves. This helps build a mindset of "engagement everywhere".
You can also use engagement as a lead measure too, to establish a link between engagement and business performance. Does an increase in engagement lead to an increase in sales in the following months, what do the trends tell you?
Establishing a cause and effect for your business can really keep the focus on engagement high in your business.
Here's some ideas on outputs of great employee engagement you might want to track so you can enjoy your success:
<ul>
<li>Absenteeism</li>
<li>Sales</li>
<li>Revenue</li>
<li>Profitability</li>
<li>Employee retention</li>
<li>Customer retention</li>
<li>Customer NPS scores</li>
<li>Productivity / efficiency / output</li>
<li>Time to hire</li>
<li>Internal talent moves</li>
<li>Diversity</li>
<li>Retention of top talent</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
<h3>Don't get too stuck on the numbers</h3>
Whilst measuring success is helpful, don't get too caught up in the numbers and start to miss the point. Employee engagement is a mindset, it's a way of working and operating. If you find that you've got caught up in your engagement scores and you've stopped thinking about how it feels to work in your business then take a big step back from your reports!
&nbsp;
<h3>Engagement every day</h3>
To drive success, employee engagement needs to be part of the fabric of your business. Here's some ways to do this:
<ul>
<li>Ask for engagement updates in your business updates. The quickest way to demonstrate that engagement matters is by asking about it. If you're calling your Sales Director, don't just ask about their sales figures, ask about employee engagement and what they've done to improve things</li>
<li>Making a change, big or small? Ask yourself / your team what the impact will be on engagement, if it's negative, how can you lessen it or counteract it?</li>
<li>Add engagement questions into your every-day conversations with your team, ask "how are you?" and really mean it.</li>
<li>Make a focus on employee engagement a non-negotiable with your people leaders, poor engagement = poor performance</li>
<li>Recruit people into your team who are going to make a positive contribution to engagement in your business - treat them as a culture contributor who will have an impact, so make sure it's going to be a positive one</li>
<li>Publicly talk about employee engagement and how much it means to you, be THAT person on social media who talks about how proud they are of their team.</li>
</ul>
 
&nbsp;
Ten Space can really help you make a difference in employee engagement levels. Whether your looking for some personal coaching to make you an engagement hero, you're starting from scratch or you're looking for an extra 10% of engagement, we'd love to be part of your success: victoria@tenspace.co.uk

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 5

By now you might have a huge wish list of things you'd like to implement this year.&nbsp;Or you might just have a few key initiatives that will help move you forward and build engagement. We're now going to look at how you can turn these into ACTION!
&nbsp;
<h3>Make engagement your priority</h3>
We've seen plenty of engagement plans created and discarded when "the day job" gets in the way. But the "day job" gets so much easier if you have a motivated, empowered engaged team all pulling in the right direction. So don't put this off, make your engagement plan a priority.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Include everyone</h3>
In week one we discussed that employee engagement needs to be everywhere in your business and run through everything you do. So if you have gaps in engagement you'd like to close, it can't just be a handful of people who are making this happen and it especially can't just be one leader / HR Manager.
Share your vision with everyone and make sure your managers and leaders are sharing . Make it clear you'll be measuring their success on employee engagement with a particular focus on what you're expecting from them.
&nbsp;
<h3>Assemble your team&nbsp;</h3>
As a leader, your vision and your mindset are vital to making this spread BUT let your employees be involved in the process. You need to assemble a team of people who can tell you what is important, what's going to make a difference and help you make it happen.
The key players you need in this team include:
<ul>
<li>The 'highly engaged' -&nbsp;the ones who love your business, love working there and can cheerlead for you</li>
<li>The 'disengaged' -&nbsp;the ones who are vocally disengaged and will give you the feedback you might not want to hear</li>
<li>The 'influencers' -&nbsp;those people who get things done and have great networks</li>
<li>The 'quiet ones' -&nbsp;use this opportunity to engage those who aren't as ready to share their opinion.</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
You now have a team who are going to help you improve engagement. They are there to share your ideas and observations from the previous weeks bring their own contributions. You can identify priorities, actions, timeframes and review periods. This is where you breath life into your action and plan and set about making it happen.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Get some quick wins in first, to gain traction and success. Identify what you can do that will visibly demonstrate something has changed.
&nbsp;
<h3>If you get stuck&nbsp;</h3>
From time to time you will encounter roadblocks, but if addressed quickly, they can be overcome. If you can't, you need to explain why. Demonstrate that you've heard it, considered it and explain what you can do / have done / can't do. Use it as an opportunity to build trust and transparency.&nbsp;
Ignoring things that you can&rsquo;t do anything about will undermine your efforts. If you&rsquo;ve taken time to listen to your team and asked for their contribution, ignoring their feedback can undo your good intentions.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Leading your team</h3>
In leading this team of change agents, you can use the principles of the engagement model to drive further engagement.
These include;
<ul>
<li>Creating clear direction and leading by example</li>
<li>Allowing people to be heard and making it easy for them to contribute</li>
<li>Delivering inspirational leadership to bring out the best in them creating an environment where they can succeed</li>
<li>Recognising (and rewarding if appropriate) achievements and success</li>
<li>Providing challenges that stretch personal development</li>
<li>Share success so your team become real ambassadors for your business</li>
<li>Create a safe environment where they can share their opinions, concerns and ideas</li>
<li>Listen to what they need to support them and go make it happen</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
Need some help creating your engagement plan, getting your team behind it, or making it happen? Ten Space can help <a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent;" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>.

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 4

In weeks 1 and 2, I encouraged you to give some thought to the following things;
<h4>Week 1:</h4>
<ul>
<li>Your business goals for 2021</li>
<li>What you need from your team in order to achieve these goals</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
<h4>Week 2:</h4>
<ul>
<li>How well connected are you to your team? (Start an engagement plan by adding things from checklist)</li>
<li>How can you be a better leader? What can you improve about your business and yourself?&nbsp;(Continue building your engagement plan)</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
This week we're looking at the second half of the Ten Space engagement framework - Fulfilment and Wellbeing. This is where engagement gets really personal. Let's take a look at what each of these mean for your employees and your business.
&nbsp;
<h3>Fulfilment</h3>
Fulfilment is all about answering the employee's question "what's in it for me". It's about how well their role meets their personal and professional needs. This pillar recognises that the employment relationship is a two-way street and that employees are looking for much more than just a salary in return for their time and dedication.
Here's some of the questions to ask yourself in this area:
<ul>
<li>Do the rewards I offer the team, match the contribution they make? Are they fair and motivating?</li>
<li>Are rewards aligned to the right outcomes? Are they driving the right behaviours?</li>
<li>How much focus do you place on personal and career engagement? Are people able to grow in your business? Is this a priority?&nbsp;</li>
<li>Do you design roles and take an approach that allows work to compliment your team's lives? Are you thinking about flexible working? Part time roles? Remote working?</li>
<li>What would your teams say if you asked them if they felt challenged in their roles? Too much? Too little? Just enough? Is the work interesting for them?</li>
<li>Are they proud of the work that they do?</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
Task 4: Reflecting on the list above, is it a two-way street in your business?&nbsp;What else could you be doing? Add them to your notes from the week one exercise. Your engagement plan is starting to take shape!
&nbsp;
<h3>Wellbeing</h3>
Wellbeing is about whether employees feeling safe, secure and supported in their role. It can be both emotionally and physically. Employees will struggle to be engaged if they are worried that their job isn't safe; they are going through a difficult time and haven't got the support that they need, or they can't be truly authentic whilst at work.
Here's some of the questions to ask yourself in this area:
<ul>
<li>Do my teams feel safe and secure in their roles? Are they worried about their position or their future in the business?</li>
<li>Are there good support mechanisms in place if employees need it? Do policies and practices "do the right thing"? Do leaders know what support tools are available to them and are able to use them effectively?</li>
<li>How diverse is your team? Are you proud of the diversity in your team? Have you got more work to do here?</li>
<li>How inclusive is your business? Have you got more work to do here?</li>
<li>Are your employees able to be authentic and truly themselves at work?</li>
<li>Is there more you can be doing to support employee's emotional, physical and financial wellbeing?&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
Task 5: Reflecting on the list above, do you provide a safe and secure place for your workforce?&nbsp;What else could you be doing?
&nbsp;
<h3>Identifying solutions</h3>
If you've identified some gaps, you can work on solutions by thinking about the following things:
<ul>
<li>What feedback have my team given me that has indicated what solutions, improvements or changes they'd like to see?</li>
<li>Who can I ask / how can I ask them to know where I can make an impact?</li>
<li>Do I know people or businesses who are doing this well that I can get ideas from?</li>
<li>Do I need some expertise to help me?</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
If anything in here has struck a cord and you'd like to create your plan with the support of Ten Space, you can contact <a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent;" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 3

How BEAM Fieldwork increased their survey completion rate to 94% by creating action plans using feedback  gathered by Ten Space

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Following a successful HR career, Victoria saw the opportunity to build a pragmatic product for HR teams to fall in love with. Her mission to ‘create incredible workplaces through highly engaged teams’, is underpinned by the technology and service delivered by the Ten Space team. 

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Ten Space is a team of experts in employee engagement, experience and technology. Our powerful survey platform and service helps HR teams build winning businesses.

<div>Right from the start our goal was always very clear. We wanted to help businesses be the best versions of themselves.So we combined technology, support and resources for HR professionals and business leaders to gain incredible insight.We’ve built a product that’s really easy to build into your current framework and delivers feedback from day one.</div>

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<h5 class="heading mt-4 aos-init" data-aos="fade-down" data-aos-delay="40"> Take employee feedback to the next level</h5>If you're already gathering employee feedback but want to do more, we can show you how.

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Capture and utilise diversity data to enhance your culture. Capture diversity data in an efficient and safe way. Explore diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in your organisation. Ten Space supports your DEIB strategy. We can help you capture diversity data from your team in an efficent way to enhance your people data.

Elevate engagement. Retain talent. Supercharge performance. An engaged workforce helps businesses achieve so much more. The Ten Space survey platform captures the insights you need to understand employee engagement &amp; culture across your organisation. Take action &amp; drive change.

Create exceptional employee experiences. Optimise engagement. Supercharge your EVP. Let us take you on a journey.... Explore the experiences of your employees. Ten Space can help you to explore the journeys your employees take as they join your organisation, all the way through to when they leave.

Accelerate the performance of your teams to drive business performance. Explore what is driving, or holding back, your teams from delivering high-performance. We can help you explore high-performance in your organisation. Using our performance-focused surveys, we can help you uncover what is holding a team back from achieving their full potential.

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Ten Space fully supports your Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) strategy in the workplace. We offer comprehensive solutions to help you efficiently capture diversity data from your team, thereby enriching your people data. Additionally, our platform enables you to explore the topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within your workplace culture, providing valuable data and insights to inform and enhance your DEIB strategy.

Ten Space equips companies with the necessary resources, tools, knowledge and information to create the ultimate diverse and inclusive workforce. Our platform offers analytics and insights that enable organisations to develop and implement effective DEIB programs. From setting goals on equality to attracting diverse candidates during the hiring process, we provide solutions that address gender, race, ethnicity, and other dimensions of diversity.

Leveraging our data capture platform, we ensure that the process of collecting DEIB data is efficient, safe, and secure. Our platform is designed to capture data in a clean and organised manner, ready for your analysis and utilisation.

With our DEIB focused surveys, we enable you to capture the essential data and gain insights that support your DEIB strategy. We can explore general engagement across different demographics, or we can specifically focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as central themes, allowing you to delve deeper into this critical area of culture.

As a trusted third-party platform that captures feedback anonymously, we provide a safe space for your employees to share their experiences and provide valuable feedback. This anonymity fosters an environment of authenticity and trust, enabling you to build an accurate and comprehensive picture of the insights you need to drive your DEIB initiatives.

We understand that your DEIB strategy is an ongoing journey, not a one-time event. That's why we help you regularly capture feedback and insights, allowing you to track your progress over time. By monitoring and analysing this data, you can demonstrate the impact and return on investment of your DEIB efforts, ensuring continuous improvement and advancement.

How it works

An engaged workforce helps organisations achieve their goals. Ten Space captures the valuable insights you need to build a positive culture through high employee engagement. Your people managers and leaders can easily identify and address those critical issues preventing high engagement and build a culture that everyone buys into.

Ten Space empowers organisations to unlock the full potential of their employee engagement strategy. By utilising our platform, people managers and leaders can leverage their knowledge, experience and approach to drive positive change throughout the workplace. Effective communication, addressing challenges and fostering a supportive culture are integral aspects of our platform, enabling you to build a thriving organisation that values its employees. With Ten Space, you have the necessary insights and data to prove the impact of your employee engagement strategy and continuously improve the employee experience.

"Ten Space help HR teams identify and resolve retention hotspots quickly. The data helps you improve every stage of the employee journey including hiring, onboarding, probation, reviews and exit interviews to continuously improve the employee experience and reduce retention risks"

Ten Space is the platform to gather regular employee feedback. Every month, your employees are able to offer the feedback and insight you need to create positive change throughout your organisation.

The Ten Space engagement model underpins the data. It ensures a consistent approach to capturing feedback that can be measured over time. Our platform helps you build the perfect question set to understand the real issues preventing high engagement. 

 Ten Space does all the hard work, saving you days of admin. Questions are sent via email, WhatsApp or SMS and responses are gathered back in the platform. No matter where your employees are or how they work, there is always an easy way for them to provide their feedback. 

See responses as they're being submitted. Our dashboards display real-time information for you and your managers to access valuable insights at any time. This allows you to spend less time collating data and more time taking the actions that matter to build higher engagement.  

The Ten Space way

Retaining your best people is all about understanding the individual and collective journeys they're on. Ten Space allows you to predict retention issues before they occur and prevent your top talent from leaving.  

The Ten Space survey platform allows leaders to seamlessly follow their employees' journeys within the organisation, gaining invaluable insights into their professional growth and development. The platform provides a unique ability to monitor employee sentiment through live data streams from surveys, enabling leaders to make informed decisions to enhance workplace satisfaction.

All of your employees are on a journey. Even before they work for you, they're building an impression of your organisation through the hiring process. Common experiences for all employees may include hiring, onboarding, probation, promotion and exit. Ten Space allows you to unpack the employee experience at each stage of the journey, helping you improve the experience for future employees. 

Ten Space provides a highly customised in-depth feedback loop to understand which parts of your HR initiatives and processes could be causing retention issues. Our platform sends our feedback surveys at critical times to gather sentiment and understand feeling. At every step, you'll gain a true understanding of how employees really feel and what retention risks exist.

Ten Space makes the process of collecting feedback really easy. Our platform allows you to build and launch custom feedback loops that can analyse specific journeys being experienced in all parts of the organisation. You can customise your questions to gain a deep understanding of employee experiences. And our AI summaries make it easy to analyse retention hotspots at all times.

At any time, your HR team can log into Ten Space and view our feedback dashboards. Our customer success team will hold regular reviews and insights sessions with you, so you feel fully supported. We'll help you to get the most out of the insights you've captured and support you in taking the next steps to further enhance employee satisfaction. 

The Ten Space way

Ten Space assists you in exploring high-performance within your organisation. Leveraging our performance-focused surveys, we enable you to achieve your goals and unlock the full potential of your teams. Our platform helps you identify the unique qualities that make a team exceptional, empowering you to replicate and build upon their success. Analysing performance culture team by team in organisations where performance matters.

Ten Space equips you with everything you need to drive team performance and achieve success. By leveraging our platform, you can assess and enhance the culture, communication, management, individual commitment, projects and processes that contribute to team effectiveness. Through comprehensive performance evaluation metrics and insights, you gain a deeper understanding of your teams and can make informed decisions to drive improvement and productivity.

Utilising our performance-based question sets we’ll help you understand how to assess performance in organisation. We guide you by asking the right questions to extract the necessary insights on performance evaluation for teams. Whether your team operates in creative, technical, administrative, or sales-focused areas, we tailor the process to fit your team's specific requirements.

We assist you in segmenting your team data, enabling you to gain in-depth performance insights and understand the trends that impact team effectiveness. Our intuitive dashboard helps you quickly identify key insights from your results, allowing you to focus on actionable steps and next moves.

Harnessing the power of Ten Space as a trusted third-party anonymous platform, we provide a safe space for employees to share any challenges, barriers, or catalysts that affect their performance. This way, we foster a climate of openness, encouraging individuals to provide candid feedback that can uncover valuable insights.

We can help you integrate communication and training needs analysis into your surveys, allowing you to gather ideas and solutions directly from your team members. By capturing this information, you gain a clear understanding of work expectations and where your team would like you to focus your efforts to improve performance culture. There are no limitations or holding back when it comes to taking action.

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