Workplace Assessments
Workplace Assessment Activities
A Workplace Assessment is an effective process to enhance the performance and well-being of your employees. My simple five-step process can help you discover the strengths and weaknesses of your current workplace environment, and provide you the insight needed to improve it.
Step 1: Key Policies Review
the Assessment begins with a review of your company’s key policies that may influence its hiring process, culture, and behaviour of employees. The aim is for me to understand your company’s culture, values, and direction, to enable an assessment of the degree to which these policies correlate, support or detract from your envisaged message. I see time and again that many of these are given lip service by organisations, and when they are, employees can become resentful and fall quickly into the 24% of employees who may actively undermine the company. Values need to be physically manifested in the spaces in which employees work, and engrained in the culture.
Step 2: Hiring Process
We then review your Onboarding, or hiring, process, as this is usually the employee’s first impression of what it will be like working with your company. It also influences brand perception. Done well, Onboarding can have a 10x higher return on investment than traditional onboarding programs, and can improve the time it takes for a new hire to be productive by 25%. In Australia, traditional onboarding takes around 68 days for a new hire to reach full productivity (Kristine Dery, MIT, 2017). In the US, it’s around 90 days thanks to higher compliance requirements. The aim you and I have is to WOW your employees and help them feel a part of the team and get them up to speed as quickly as possible. A meeting with the HR Director/key hirer is beneficial in this regard.
Step 3: Culture Review
Every company has its own set of values, which help guide the culture and actions the company chooses to take. This step involves meeting with the leaders of the company (usually the C-suite, HR Director, and Office Manager together) to discuss their understanding of the current and desired culture, which will be assessed against my initial findings from Steps 1 and 2. This is usually a rather insightful meeting that leads to much enlightenment, depending on the degree of disconnect. What I’ve found is that when most companies try to improve their culture, they focus on what to fix. It’s better to focus on what’s working.
Step 4: Workplace Tour
Employees need access to environments that enable them to do their best work. Studies show that there are actually 21 workplace activities that employees participate in (Leesman Review no. 18, Sept 2015). We are moving away from working in a traditional, linear world, so our workplaces must adapt accordingly. A tour of the workplace – the physical space – acts as a type of symbol for the company and as a modern-day employee experience centre or a museum for the people who work there. This is why one of the quickest ways to ruin an employee experience is by the company not reflecting their values in the physical work environment. The layout of the workplace comes into play as it encourages (and also discourages) certain behaviours that can significantly boost your bottom line.
Step 5: Interviews with Key Personnel
Communication is key, and it’s often most effective when an independent third party is able to raise candid questions that may otherwise remain left unanswered. A short interview with key personnel (usually 5-10 people depending on the size of the company) to decipher the inner workings of the company, its culture, its positives, main barriers to productivity, and candid feedback, is sought. Answers can be de-identified as required. This enables the creation of an employee experience loop – a connection between the voice of the employee and the decisions the company makes. This has the power to enables managers and leaders to better make decisions that affect their people.
Workplace Assessment Outcomes
Your Workplace Assessment is usually undertaken over a 1-2 day period, followed by a written report submitted within 10 days of the in-person Assessment. The outcomes will be based on observations, interviews, and reviews of your company’s pertinent policies.
My findings backed by my 20+ years’ of experience within the corporate sector will be presented in a Powerpoint report that provides recommendations and the next steps to boost your company’s performance. As each company has its own challenges and opportunities, each report is bespoke.
Further recommendations for space utilisation studies, project management, change management, and the like, can be provided as required.
Participation Requirements
It’s important that executive support is provided for the long-term success of this assessment, as the recommendations and outcomes that arise will most likely require change to be implemented. For change to be successful, support from leadership and key influencers is paramount.
Data around performance and tenure may be requested to assist in the overall analysis of your workplace.
Cost of a Workplace Assessment
I believe it’s tough to put a one-size-fits-all pricing structure to your workplace assessment. This is why your happiness coaching is POA and is a per-day rate plus GST. Travel and expenses will be billed at cost.
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I’d love to help you and your company be the best it can possibly be. If you’d like further information, please reach out or email me at kylie@kyliebragg.com.
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