Stalk Your Employees!?

5 little known ways to learn what matters to your employees

Did you know that there’s a job where people are paid to root through the trash to learn things about consumers? Companies use this method to shadow their target customers. Their ultimate goal is to learn more about their audience preferences, consumption habits and more. 

Digging through the trash in the office might be extreme behavior — although, to be frank, over the years I’ve discovered a number of compelling tidbits by skimming abandoned printouts and faxes before stuffing them in the recycle bin.

Leaders, members of HR and internal communicators all need insights on employees. We’re more likely to gather that intelligence via engagement surveys, feedback/suggestion boxes and focus groups. Other common methods vary, depending on the company and work locations. 

How can you find out more about your employees’ preferences, behaviors and habits so that you can use that knowledge to improve the communication you deliver?

We have to regularly employ new methods to learn more about employee preferences. Today, our approaches need to be more immediate and allow flexibility in how the feedback is obtained.

Here are five employee research methods to add to your employee insights toolbox. 

1. Turn Sociologist and Observe Them in Their Natural Habitat

The most successful employee communication manages to feel like a natural part of an employee’s day, not an interruption to it. That means it’s helpful to conduct some informal experiments by spying on employees as they go about their workday. Much of what you’ll discover would never show up on an employee engagement survey!

Sit in the cafeteria, break room or any place where employees congregate. While you’re there, observe what employees are doing.

More than likely, many people will be using their phones. What apps or programs are they are using. Last year, I happened to discover the popularity of SnapChat because I was observing app usage at LaGuardia Airport and noticed that every person around me was opening an app with a ghost on it. SnapChat was on the rise and nearly everyone in line with me was using it. The same thing is occurring right now with Pokemon Go. Before I started hearing the news stories about it, I’d noticed it’s popularity by observing people at a coworking center in New York City.

Some other things to observe in common areas:

  • Do you notice people looking at posters? Where? For how long?
  • Are people reading the tent cards in the cafeteria or breakrooms?
  • Are there areas where employees tend to congregate that could be new locations for signage?
  • How people are getting their work done — are they using their laptop or tablets?

Other research strategies to try:

  • While you’re sitting with someone in their workspace, are you hearing the chimes of notifications? Try to notice which notifications they look at first (instant message, text message, app notification, etc).

    • Which ones keep their attention the longest?
    • How quickly do they check for a message when a chime goes off ?
  • Have conversations. Ask people how they heard the last piece of important news that was shared. While the answers you uncover aren’t scientific, they are still valuable.
  • Fan out! Have several people at each worksite who are doing the spying for you.

2. Get the Data

Many of the contact points with employees involve technology. Whether it’s email, Intranet, instant messaging or anything else, finding out how people are using technology to access communication will be invaluable.

If you have IT team members who voluntarily provide you with technology metrics, you’ve got a superstar team on your hands. Be sure to take advantage of that regularly!

If your IT systems allow you to pull metrics on your own, learn how to take advantage of that.

Here are some questions and requests for your IT team that could prove to be useful insights.

  • Which sites are employees most frequently visiting?
  • What time of day do employees typically use [specified resource] (it could be a program, website, app, etc.)?
  • How do employees access [specified resource] via desktop, laptop or mobile device?
  • Which browsers do employees use? Which version? Although there is usually a corporate standard, you may be surprised at the number of employees who find a way to download their preferred browser.
  • What search terms are most often used on your Intranet, portal or other important site?
  • What time of day is your network busiest?
  • What is the login frequency to [specified resource]?
  • If you have an enterprise social media site, how many people have never logged in?
  • Is there anything interesting about how that data falls in terms of location, tenure or job?

3. Snoop Around Social Media

You can find insights on your employees’ interests and behavior on any social media site. But, there are two that can provide information that can be useful in terms of employee insights. 

LinkedIn

Although many companies have an active LinkedIn Company page, it is usually intended for prospective employees to learn more about the company.

Encourage your employees to follow your Company page on LinkedIn, if appropriate. Share industry-specific information and other details about your business that will be of interest to both current and prospective employees.

This offers two benefits:

  • You can determine the company updates that received more frequent engagement.
  • You can review the Company feed to see other content that LinkedIn users have engaged with. If a topic is trending, you can leverage it either through trendjacking or other purposes.

Facebook

Have you noticed that when you shop for something online it seems to follow you for days afterward? For Father’s Day, I visited Amazon and a few other sites to look at charcoal grills. For the next two weeks, my Facebook feed enticed me with the grills I had looked at, along with similar options.

Marketers have been able to target content based on your behavior — sites you’ve visited, topics you’ve liked, etc. This feature continues to grow more and more sophisticated.

Although as “internal marketers,” we can’t get quite as much out of these insights as a consumer marketer might, we can leverage this functionality on Facebook to better understand our employees.

Facebook’s Audience Insights

Audience Insights can provide information on groups of users so you can get a better idea of the kind of content they find interesting. For example, with audience insights, you can see:

  • Demographic information, including trends by age and gender, relationship status and job roles
  • Lifestyle and interest information about your target audience

Also, less helpful, but available:

  • Purchase information including online purchase behavior and which categories they’re mostly likely to buy in
  • Location data

For more information on how to use Facebook’s Audience Insights, check out our article on Linkedin

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4. Conduct Pulse Surveys

Pulse surveys are quick “temperature” checks on a topic. You can deploy a number of pulse surveys without introducing survey fatigue. Using frequent short surveys can yield more actionable data. This is because you are focusing on a targeted question or issue, you’ll be better positioned to put the feedback to good use.

5. Get Social With Online Focus Groups

The best feedback is usually shared via conversation. It’s difficult and expensive to pull representative groups together for focus groups. The online version solves that problem – and is effective at capturing insights.

The beauty of online focus groups is:

  • Employees can participate at anytime they choose (within the timeframe of the survey).
  • The experience feels similar to social media commenting, or sites like Reddit where there is a conversation happening but not necessarily at the same time.

In order to gain valuable information, be sure your online focus group has active facilitation that encourages employees to stay on topic and share relevant information.

Get even more tips during our upcoming webinar!

5 Best Employee Communication Secrets

Learn how to successfully engage with your employees every single time!

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 Thursday, July 28 at 4 PM EST.

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