We recently caught up with a panel of experts to talk about wellbeing and how important it is when you want to effectively manage a remote team.
Daniel Spitty is a co-founder of performance analytics platform Everperform, a digital tool that gives managers smart insights into performance and wellbeing.
Here’s what Daniel had to say about wellbeing trends and how technology can help improve wellbeing-led performance:
Everperform was inspired by sports psychology and science and a desire to modernise the way we manage our people. Traditional management can often get in the way of performance, and now that the world has moved to remote working, the cracks are showing.
Basically, Everperform helps businesses measure, understand and improve people, by pulling in data from existing apps and using smart pulse surveys to carry out regular check-ins on teams. Everperform monitors for trends, sudden dips, or any of those triggers or causal factors behind performance and wellbeing.
2021 wellbeing trends
We know that small businesses have experienced lower wellbeing particularly over the pandemic.
We’ve also found from our analysis of over 300,000 data points across 59 firms, collected continuously over 12 months, that there were four main areas which had a strong positive influence on client impact in professional services firms:
- Getting fresh air regularly
- Thinking clearly
- Allocating required time to focus on what matters
- Dealing with distractions and refocusing quickly
Having the correct apps and systems in place to regularly ask questions around engagement, wellbeing and relationships can often yield more honest and accurate insights than if the managers in question had asked their staff directly. So there’s a huge benefit of using apps to collect and analyse this data.
Using the right tools
Using Everperform in conjunction with WorkflowMax is about having the tools to create better communication and relationships between managers and employees. We find that Everperform can be really instrumental in identifying employee’s strengths, working with them to create a development plan and making them feel really engaged and like they're getting the crucial feedback they need. We can also use it to step in as managers when we need to have those timely conversations to try and catch patterns of poorer wellbeing and lower levels of engagement.
What managers can do to promote wellbeing-led performance
What gets measured, gets managed, and it’s really important to make sure you’re getting feedback from your team members and having conversations at the right time. Your business is probably collecting more data on employee engagement than you might realise and getting the right insights from this data can inform your leadership strategy to become more proactive and foster better communication and relationships between management and staff.
If you want to perform at your best, then you need to think and feel at your best. Things like belonging to a purpose, and being proud of the work that you’re doing and the impact you’re making, helps you to reach your personal potential. Achieving these things, wherever you work and whatever you’re doing, is the criteria for getting the best out of yourself. And if an employer can foster that care with each of its people, then the scoreboard will look after itself.
We see a lot of managers and leaders who are afraid of getting it wrong. Our suggestion would just be to ask the question, whether it’s through Everperform or just a conversation, because that shows your team that you care.