The ‘Engage and Elevate Conference’ hosted by Airmeet, saw industry leaders come together to discuss innovative strategies that focused on the enhancement of employee development and retention.
The session featured guest speakers Meredith Fish, VP of People and Culture at WorkRamp, and Jack Foster, CMO of WorkRamp.
The event was moderated by Ashwani Jain, who is the Chief Revenue Officer at Airmeet.
We’ve put together this article to bring you the key takeaways and all the valuable insights shared at the conference.
7 Takeaways From The Event to Inspire your Employee Engagement Initiatives
1. Unique Employee Engagement Programs
The speakers emphasized on the importance of structured feedback to understand the employee pain points about their growth opportunities.
This approach facilitates consistency and clarity in feedback across the organization, which is especially crucial in remote and hybrid work cultures.
Moreover, larger programs like WorkRamp’s “Lead and Learn” leadership sessions and diverse smaller engagements such as ‘spotlights’ and ‘Lunch and Learns’ have helped promote a culture of continuous learning and team alignment in the company.
These help in promoting sustained employee engagement and overall development.
2. Methods to Measure Team Productivity
To measure the efficiency, productivity and performance of the team, speakers Meredith Fish and Jack Foster shared some effective strategies.
They highlighted the need to track and measure employee engagement levels, with the help of pulse surveys and engagement surveys..
Meredith Fish stated that observing increased confidence and decision-making abilities among leaders, as well as positive feedback from engagement surveys, is a reliable method to measure success.
Further, analyzing the improvements in OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) and the discretionary effort that employees put in indicates their willingness to go beyond expectations to achieve success.
So how we’re looking at success is, are our leaders more confident? Are they able to be empowered, make decisions on their own, have more context going into real life situations to make judgment calls?
3. Enhancing Skills and Competencies
The speakers mentioned the importance of anticipating future skills that go beyond immediate training requirements.
By developing enhanced marketplace acumen, communication, and negotiation skills through training and experiential learning, employees can become experts in critical areas as and when required.
This forward-looking approach ensures alignment with long-term company goals and prevents employee skill gaps, as the business evolves.
This not only boosts employee loyalty and retention, but also improves customer engagement, leading to continuous learning and fostering a dynamic and skilled workforce.
4. Effective Pan-organizational Feedback Management
The speakers emphasized on the fact that a performance-driven feedback culture can be fostered using the S.B.I. (Situation-Behavior-Impact) model to ensure clarity and objectivity in feedback.
Pan-organizational feedback management is also crucial because transparency in sharing OKRs allows to hold each other accountable at all levels, from team members to senior leadership.
This collaborative approach supports continuous improvement and alignment across the organization. Integrating feedback into all training and development initiatives, ensures that all employees are equipped with the skills needed for career progression within the dynamic environment.
5. Boosting Morale and Engagement in Remote and Hybrid Work
Maintaining employee morale and engagement is important in both remote and hybrid work environments.
Each leader plays a key role in fostering this environment by connecting personally with team members to understand their career aspirations, challenges, and personal interests.
Beyond the mundane tasks, building interpersonal connections through regular one-on-ones that go into non-work topics like hobbies, interests, etc., is essential.
Encouraging interactions across teams, organizing fun activities like virtual contests or themed learning days can uplift team spirits and strengthen bonds. These efforts not only boost employee engagement levels but also build a collaborative culture, which is crucial for sustained productivity and employee satisfaction.
6. Empowering Teams with Autonomy
To strike a balance between providing clear direction and fostering autonomy among employees, both Meredith Fish and Jack Foster emphasized upon building a strategic approach.
Meredith advised starting with clear end goals while empowering employees to perform and execute in their own way. This is crucial for leadership development and team empowerment.
Whereas Jack, having seen success with this approach at WorkRamp, highlighted the importance of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), which align the individual and departmental goals with strategic objectives, ensuring clarity and accountability.
OKRs at the company level, for every department, as well as for each individual - it's a great framework for us to work off of, because that way we're able to see, what are we working toward that helps people orient the work they're doing, connect their work they're doing to more strategic goals. You're responsible for actually being accountable to that goal.
7. Blueprint for Quick Learning and Leadership Development
Meredith Fish highlighted the need for a program where the employees could opt into leadership training with self-guided courses, cohort sessions, and mentorship.
This initiative can shorten ramp times into leadership roles and clarify career interests.
At WorkRamp, individual development plans are created to personalize learning experiences with experiential learning like leading meetings or mentoring.
They also implement talent reviews using the nine-box model to nurture high potentials.
Jack Foster emphasized using AI for productivity and addressing the skills gap in future workforce challenges.
Conclusion
The discussion at the conference entailed several aspects of employee engagement, employee development and more. Healthy organizations invest heavily in employee wellbeing. These were just some of the transformative insights shared by the speakers at the ‘Engage & Elevate’ event to empower teams and increase success in today’s dynamic work environment.
If you’re curious to uncover more amazing strategies and tips discussed at this conference, check out the event’s recording here. https://www.airmeet.com/e/46edca10-0866-11ef-919d-23024b3168c7 .
