In this article you will find out…
- What it means with an agile employee survey
- How an agile way of working is related to HR
- The benefits of our agile employee survey Flourish
We take it from the beginning. Agile or in English agile, what is it?
The agile way of working was described already in 2001, by a group of software developers, to start from small regular partial deliveries that are continuously evaluated. According to the software developers, the focus would be on the customer's wishes with the product and move away from an owner-oriented way of working. Today, the agile way of working is well established in many business areas.
But what does agile working methods have to do with HR?
Well, the underlying idea is spreading today to completely new areas, e.g. personnel care and business development, which is completely natural. What company doesn't want to be fast-paced and customer-focused in these times of digitization and disruption?
In the book "the agile company" the authors Lennart Francke and Göran Nilsson describe agile leadership in a good way. I offer here a short summary.
- In an agile company, horizontal management works best. It is primarily based on customer requirements, in contrast to the vertical management which is determined by financial guidelines from above.
- In agile management, committed employees are needed who feel that they can be involved in deciding, who have fun and who want dialogue and participation.
- In order for a company to be able to be run agile, there needs to be trust between the people in the organization. Trust often creates loyalty, and as a result, employees are more likely to stay with the employer who provides trust.
Agile employee survey, what is it then?
We at Quicksearch have worked with employee surveys for over 20 years. For example, we were among the first in Sweden to replace paper surveys with digital email surveys and we have constantly challenged the status quo together with our customers. It's the same now! After a period of intensive development work, we have now released a new form of feedback solution, an agile employee survey. Our new feedback solution, Flourish, is largely based on what Francke & Nilsson describe.
- When a company collects feedback through Flourish, employees are invited to participate in decision-making and make suggestions.
- Flourish is based on openness and trust between employee and manager, a way of working that leads to loyalty.
- Flourish maintains frequent contact with the employees to give the organization the conditions to detect problems early and be able to act on them quickly.
When we looked at research and drew conclusions from the relationship with our customers, we came to the conclusion that the traditional employee survey should not be replaced but supplemented with a more agile and direct version. An annual major employee survey gives HR insights to work with in the long term. Flourish contributes a more direct and relationship-building questioning that drives specific teams forward.
Would you like to learn more about agile employee surveying and get a live demo of our new feedback chatbot? Welcome to our webinar!
