Ready to explore a new way to grow your business? Here are some tips, tools and stories to help you on your way.
Here at Milford, we've moved from being focused on employee engagement, to how we can get everyone involved in continuously improving our business. We aren't concerned with just "how do you feel" - we're actually getting to the underlying information that helps to strategically steer the organisation.
"When you make it everyone's job to drive the business forward, you get more a more involved and fulfilled team. That's what we've realised since using AskYourTeam."
Across the energy sector, there's been a cultural shift over the last decade. At Contact Energy, that meant an overhaul of processes and leadership around health and safety. The result? A huge change in organisational culture.
"AskYourTeam allowed Oil Intel to easily distinguish what areas employees felt needed to be improved.
Read how Smith&Smith achieved better productivity and business performance by taking the guesswork out of leadership.
"As a leader I don't guess anymore. I know exactly what to focus on to get the biggest improvements out of my team."
Read how Swanndri built a more collaborative workplace and accelerated their growth curve with AskYourTeam.
"It allows for everyone to have an equal voice, not just management or the vocal few."
Learn how the Canterbury Employers Chamber of Commerce built a culture of continuous improvement with AskYourTeam.
"It reinforces that continuous improvement is a really important part of any business."
Find out how Pipfruit NZ built a more confident and connected membership with AskYourTeam.
"I haven't found any other system that offers a more comprehensive methodology to survey our members."
Deloitte Fast 50: Fastest growing technology company
Chris O'Reilly said the company's success has been driven by the pull factors of the Hawkes Bay lifestyle, which have helped attract the right talent.
Why resilience and mental wellbeing have never been more important
Most employees won't put on a public display of their grievances for fear of being labelled difficult or missing out on future opportunities, they simply take their frustrations home instead. And it's a slippery slope into low job satisfaction and poor overall health.
Are wellbeing and employee productivity mutually exclusive?
A healthy workplace is incredibly good for business as it creates a positive culture where things get done. Targets are achieved, new strategies are planned and brilliant ideas come to fruition - helping your employees be their best has never been more important.
Leveraging technology to enhance a human workforce
Most of us can feel certain that the robots aren't coming for our jobs just yet. Yet, the same technology is also opening exciting opportunities for us to focus on leveraging the strengths that set humans apart.
Success through meaningful involvement
There is a growing realisation at the most senior level of New Zealand business and public sector leadership that we could operate better by becoming more diverse and more inclusive. Not because diversity is a compliance thing, because being a diverse organisation means being a smarter organisation.
We're doing diversity and inclusion wrong
It's the greatest untapped source of increased productivity for Kiwi organisations, yet very few have managed to successfully harness the benefits of diversity and inclusion. Why aren't we doing better?
Four tips to secure top survey uptake
Whether you're launching your first or fiftieth survey, giving your people the freedom to speak up in confidence without fear of judgement is key. Here's our Client Services Specialist, Kelly's, four tips how to drive top survey uptake time after time.
The Three Cs for creating a culture of involvement in your workplace
We have a very clear, one word understanding of what makes a great workplace culture. Involvement. When everyone in an organisation feels involved in running the business, then you have a great workplace culture.
Are the robots really coming?
There's no doubt the future of HR will be tech-enabled. Every HR professional is either using a tech feedback tool or looking around for one to implement. Chris O'Reilly explains.
2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends - Report Summary
Here's our summary of the 2019 Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends report: Leading the social enterprise. Reinventing with a human focus comes with a bold call to action: now is not the time to tinker at the edges of your organisation— it's time to reinvent it.
Invisible Women: Exposing data bias in a world designed for men
There are many areas where women are making waves in the business world. But there are still pockets which are affected by unconscious bias and areas where there is a knowledge deficit.
Keeping the Human in HR
While modern software and new apps aim to automate processes, make recommendations for leadership training and predict staff turn-over, there is a danger of focusing too much on the technology to do the work.
The Impact of "Big Data" on HR
Big data is not a new paradigm. It encompasses many interrelated disciplines fuelling a demand for people with entirely new skillsets. Dave Robertson explains.
3 Tips to overcome survey fatigue
Survey fatigue can occur, when people are required to participate in traditional surveys, but never get to see any action as a result of their endeavours. Here's how you can prevent it from happening in your organisation.
Goodbye old school hierarchies, hello team mates
Finding balance and stability in our changing world is a massive challenge for business leaders. We must harness the power of teamwork for modern agile organisations to thrive and prosper.
We might not be running nuclear attack submarines, but we can all learn from Captain David Marquet and the USS Santa Fe. The best way to run a ship or an organisation is to make sure your team feels involved, invested and empowered to trust their own decisions.
Designing a better employee experience
Organisations should move beyond thinking about experience at work in terms of perks, rewards, or support, and focus on job fit, job design, and meaning—for all individuals across the whole organisation. Andre Clarke explains.
Three golden rules for successful change management
A common belief is that communications is at the core of successful change management. And indeed it is critical, but it's only one part of the machine. Jen provides her three golden rules to successful change management.
Pulled apart – how HR actually deals with sexual harassment
In a time when attitudes towards workplace sexual harassment are shifting dramatically, we've heard from victims and learned about perpetrators. Here are the complicated experiences of HR professionals who have stood between them.
Workplace culture starts with involvement
Productivity grows out of involvement. If you want to build a more productive workplace culture, involve your people more meaningfully in your business.
How do we get balance in all respects?
How to get more women into senior roles? How to better celebrate the achievements of women? How to balance the demands of family and career? Jen McKay discusses how do we get a better balance in all respects.
Gender Balance in Business
Gender balance – how long will it be in New Zealand until we can honestly say 'we've got this'? It's a timely question as global celebrations for International Women's Day happen this Friday. This year's theme is #BalanceforBetter. What a great call to action!
Collaborative teams are units that bring together individuals with unique, disparate skill sets for a defined goal. Jude Manuel discusses how best to facilitate collaboration in an agile world.
How #MeToo has changed HR forever
The impact of the #MeToo movement has been far-reaching. What started as a campaign to build a conversation around sexual violence has gone on to permeate many aspects of our culture.
Beating the bullies
New Zealand has a shameful history of workplace bullying but there's a growing movement among workplace culture experts to stamp it out. AskYourTeam CEO Chris O'Reilly investigates.
Beyond engagement
Today's businesses are moving on from engagement, focusing instead on their employees' experience of work and tapping into what they think, says Jude Manuel.
Checking the pulse
A new breed of digital HR tools in creating a people-led business revolution and providing a content read on the HR health of an organisation.
What is this thing called workplace empowerment?
When a person is genuinely empowered in their job and involved in their organisation, they will become highly engaged, productive, loyal and keen to share their ideas and talk about what they do with colleagues by default.
Attraction and retention of millennials through learning and CSR
Business success depends on having an effective career development strategy in place, but what role does workplace learning,and CSR play in the attraction and retention of millennial?
Creating a culture that inspires employee loyalty
Helping senior leaders to understand that they are an integral part in inspiring employee loyalty enables them to acknowledge the value of other people's ideas and input.
From talent to team: HR's generational change
Talent is no longer regarded as a raw material in the economic equation to be retained for the productive working life of a human, but something to tap into according to the changing needs of the organisation at any moment.
Are you implementing a culture of empowerment in your organisation?
Genuine cultures of empowerment can only come about when leaders realise that empowerment isn't an act of benevolence toward those lower down the pecking order than them.
How to make Continuous Performance Management work?
Performance appraisals are widely unpopular with both staff and managers. People are now querying whether annual performance reviews and ratings are best serving the needs of organisations and individuals.
A time to reflect, redefine and upskill
In an age of disruption and transformation, career transitions are the norm. Equipping people with the skills to move on will differentiate an organisation in the eyes of those who remain.
The dictator is dead. Killed by technology.
The industrial age command and control leadership is dead. It was killed by digital technology that allows people throughout an organisation to have their say in how it should be run.
Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias
Unconscious bias is the great unsolved problem of modern HR and one of the intractable barriers to building a truly diverse organisation. Almost all people hold subtle biases based on gender, ethnic and other differences and we are surprisingly powerless to do much about it.
Digital tools create a people-led business revolution
In the past decade, the operations side of business has been revolutionised by digital connectivity. Now the smart businesses in every industry are looking for the next advantage by redesigning their organisations using a new class of digital tools and analytics driven data.
Wisdom from Women -New Zealand women leaders on leadership
What makes a great leader? Watch four inspirational New Zealand female leaders sharing their views and thoughts on the topic this International Women's Day.
Building workplace cultures where unsafe behaviour is not tolerated
The consequences of allowing bullying to survive in a workplace culture can be profound. From mental health issues to lost productivity and talent retention problems, bullying has the potential to undermine an organisation and cause serious harm to its members
Why the future belongs to HR
There has been a seismic shift from management by engagement to leadership by involvement that is changing the way we think about everything from the war for talent to how we build organisational culture.
Strengths and Weaknesses of New Zealand Leaders
Powerful new benchmarking insights have been made available for the first time from leadership survey AskYourTeam into the strengths and weaknesses of Kiwi leadership.
5 Tips for Transitioning from an Engagement Survey to AskYourTeam
After years of using a traditional engagement survey, Smith&Smith made the transition to AskYourTeam. Pati Bloor, Smith&Smith's People and Leadership Director, shares her top five tips for a successful transition.
AskYourTeam: A System Your Leaders Will Love
Throughout my years as an organisational development specialist, I've noticed leaders are sometimes less-than-enthusiastic about 'HR' initiatives such as engagement surveys. I think that's understandable.
Engagement: Does it Matter Any More?
In the early days of 'staff surveys' we measured staff satisfaction. We then deepened our questioning to understand what made our employees feel committed to go that extra mile or 'stay, say and strive'. It worked well for some organisations, but many have plateaued.
As leaders, it's easy to measure what we're comfortable with, instead of what will actually have the greatest impact on the success of our business. But without a systematic approach to measuring what really matters, your business is unlikely to reach its true potential.
Leadership is no longer about the visionary guru leading the charge. That idea belongs to a time when businesses operated in a slower world. Command-and-control leadership was the norm. Times have changed.
The traditional way of thinking about engagement is linear - employee engagement leads to improved business performance. But recent research is pointing to a much more circular model.
The engagement model has been flipped on its head.
The traditional way of thinking about engagement is linear - employee engagement leads to improved business performance. But recent research is pointing to a much more circular model. It goes something like this:
Performance drives engagement, which in turn impacts performance.
Consider the three factors widely understood to be the biggest drivers of engagement:
1. Work: Having the resources and skills to deliver challenging and meaningful work.
2. Autonomy: Freedom to make decisions; having a stake in business outcomes.
3. Manager: A manager who listens, encourages open communication, and respects individuals.
Do these factors directly impact employee engagement? Or is it more likely that they improve performance, which in turn drives engagement? We're unlikely to feel engaged if we're not doing a good job, or if the company we work for is failing. We all enjoy being part of a winning team - even better if we also feel that we're contributing to that team's success.
So does engagement even matter anymore?
There's no doubt engagement influences business outcomes. Its impact on staff retention alone is a very good reason to continue to invest in employee engagement initiatives. But it's just one of the many levers available to us to lift performance. Broadening our focus to encompass all of the factors that influence business success makes obvious sense. What's more, improving performance has the happy side effect of - you guessed it - increasing engagement.
What does this mean for traditional engagement surveys?
Measuring engagement on its own isn't enough. High scores on a traditional engagement survey probably tell us that the business is performing well. Low scores tell us that it isn't. So what? Why are we bothering to measure something that's not likely to be news to us? An engagement score is simply the canary in the coal mine - if it's not healthy, the business isn't either. But focussing on fixing the canary is missing the point.
As Josh Bersin of Deloitte Consulting puts it:
One of the issues we must address is the aging idea of an employee engagement survey. While such measures of engagement have been used for years, organisations tell us they aren't providing modern, actionable solutions.
A more effective way of driving business performance
What leaders need is a way to measure how the business is doing in every area that influences business success, in real time. But more than measurements, they need solutions.
We set out to address this problem by first analysing the world's top leadership models to identify the 13 'organisational success factors' that are common to the most successful businesses. These encompass leadership, performance development and culture, but also everything from strategy and business processes, through to communications and project planning. Then we built these into a complete survey system that involves everyone in identifying actionable solutions.
Don't just measure engagement - create it
The benefit of using AskYourTeam in place of - or alongside - a traditional engagement survey is twofold: It lifts business performance (our main goal), but it also creates engagement - both through improved performance, and through the very act of participation in the system.
Let's think back to those three drivers of engagement. Here's how AskYourTeam impacts each of them:
1. Work. By asking people what they need to be more effective and putting their suggestions into action, individual performance, pride and satisfaction in work is improved.
2. Autonomy. People are given the opportunity to influence business decisions and have a stake in the outcomes.
3. Manager. Managers demonstrate that they're listening and that they value their employees' expertise.
Focus on improving performance in a positive way, and watch engagement levels and business success soar.
Chris O'Reilly CEO & Co-founder AskYourTeam
Chris co-founded AskYourTeam as a way to make it easier for leaders to ask their teams the most important (and the least-asked) question in business: "How can I help you do your job better?"
Deloitte: Global Human Capital Trends 2019 Report
An intensifying combination of economic, social, and political issues is forcing HR and business leaders to learn to lead the social enterprise - and reinvent their organizations around a human focus.
Diversity & Inclusion: Anonymity key to overcoming unconscious bias
Diversity and inclusion are priorities for every HR pro today, but too often we shy away from conversations about the biggest barrier to creating more inclusive organisations - unconscious bias.
Download Discussion Paper
Deloitte's 2017 Human Capital Trends survey of leaders from around the world identifies the critical trends shaping the HR agenda.
Josh Bersin, Principal with Deloitte Consulting, on why the traditional employee engagement survey - devoid of modern, actionable solutions - has passed its used-by date.
AskYourTeam for Business
We analysed the world's top leadership models to understand what the most successful businesses have in common. Then we built an independently-verified system to help you get to the heart of how your business is doing in each of these make-or-break areas. Find out how AskYourTeam generates breakthroughs in business performance.
AskYourTeam for the Public Sector
We've created a system especially for public sector organisations that assesses performance against the Performance Improvement Framework (PIF) and Leadership Success Profile (LSP) models. Find out how you can take your organisation from good to great with AskYourTeam for the Public Sector.
AskYourTeam for Membership Organisations
No matter the industry or the size, all membership organisations face similar challenges around growth, retention, and nurturing active involvement from their members. Find out how you can create a voice for your members with AskYourTeam for Membership Organisations.
AskYourTeam for Local Government
In consultation with EquiP, we've developed a system especially for New Zealand's Local Government sector. AskYourTeam for Local Government optimises the underpinning processes of the Local Government Excellence Programme. Download the ebook to find out how AskYourTeam can transform your council.