Finger On the Pulse: Friday Pulse and Workplace Wellbeing

Why is employee satisfaction important and how can you keep track of it? Here at Liberty, we’ve been asking ourselves this for a while now.

Workplace wellbeing has long been a priority at Liberty, but to ensure it’s as good as it can be, you need to connect with staff. Back in May 2020, our blog ‘Taking Care Of Our Employees’ Wellbeing’ gave some insight into how we were maintaining the culture, supportiveness and closeness of our team through lockdown and the challenges of working from home.

Now, we’ve just added a new tool to the mix when it comes to staff happiness: Friday Pulse. So, what does it do, and what are our insights so far? Let’s dive in.

An Introduction to Friday Pulse

Friday Pulse is designed to help businesses build a positive and productive work culture by tracking employee happiness. It works by asking staff to fill out mini questionnaires every Friday. All answers are anonymous, allowing staff to be completely honest about what‘s working and, more importantly, what’s not.

When it comes to how Friday Pulse measures happiness, there are five criteria:

• Connect: the closeness and connectedness of the team.
• Be Fair: whether workers feel they are treated with fairness and respect.
• Empower: how often staff get to use their strengths in their work.
• Challenge: how often there are opportunities for staff to grow and be creative.
• Inspire: whether staff feel proud and whether they feel their work is important.

The system keeps track of staff responses week by week, so businesses can see when there are peaks and pits. Friday Pulse isn’t just designed to hold data, though – as CEO and Founder Nick Marks explains:

“it’s also got to be useful, to be practical, so people can use it. I mean, it’s no good just measuring stuff and watching it decay or rise, you’ve got to help people have an intervention.”

Features We Love

There are a few elements of Friday Pulse we’re really loving.

Celebrations

The ‘celebrations’ feature gives staff members an opportunity to shout about things that have gone well. We’re finding that a real mix of celebrations takes place: from congratulating colleagues on promotions and jobs well done, to sharing great client results. There’s a feeling that the whole Liberty team is celebrating these moments together – albeit virtually.

Thank-Yous

This is another feature that really demonstrates the outpouring of gratitude and support in our team. Colleagues can ‘thank’ individual members of staff and leave a comment about what they’re grateful for. This section isn’t anonymous, which adds weight to the submissions.

Frustrations

Any tool for monitoring staff happiness has to be excellent at pinpointing pressure points and frustrations. As well as anonymous survey questions, Friday Pulse provides another outlet with the ‘frustrations’ feature, where staff can publicly explain where they are having issues.

When combined with the option to add ‘ideas’ notes (suggesting how the business can improve things), this increases the opportunity to address specific issues as they happen.

What Comes Next?

When it comes to Liberty’s workplace wellbeing initiative, the first step is developing a deep understanding of our team: their motivations, their needs and where they need support. Friday Pulse is helping us achieve this.

The important next step is how to transform this new insight into action. As our HR Manager, Emily Webb, says:

“With this information, we can alleviate pain points, and do more of the good stuff that keeps us all going. The intention is to improve the overall wellbeing of the people at Liberty, and happiness is an integral part of that.

Another really valuable consideration is the happiness that is brought about, by osmosis really – simply sharing and learning about the way that your colleagues feel, brings people together and inherently makes them happier.”

Why Is Employee Satisfaction Important?

Perhaps it goes without saying, but being proactive about staff happiness benefits the staff themselves and the business as a whole.

After all, workplace health and wellbeing affects more than just the office atmosphere. Studies have found staff happiness impacts staff retention, employee motivation and productivity. A recent University of Oxford study concluded happy workers are 13% more productive, in fact.

So as you can see, taking good care of your employees isn’t simply a moral obligation – it makes good business sense, too.

What Can You Do to Improve Workplace Wellbeing?

There are a number of small steps you can take towards improving your workers’ sense of wellbeing. If you feel you lack insight into how your staff are feeling, sending out an anonymous employee opinion survey is a great place to start. As we’ve seen, tools like Friday Pulse are also brilliant at creating a safe place for staff to be honest and communicate openly.

Our top takeaway is to use what you learn: listen, learn, and make improvements. This is the best way to make sure your staff, and your organisation, thrives. And with it Valentines’ Day being just around the corner, there’s no better time to start.