Research & Reports Archives

Manifest 2023 Recap: Attracting & Retaining Workers, Humans vs. Robots, Power of Diversity

The second annual Manifest: The Future of Logistics conference was held last week, bringing together some of the brightest minds in the supply chain space to discuss the latest innovations and trends in the industry. Here’s a recap of what we learned at this year’s event.

Attracting & Retaining Talent During the Supply Chain Labor Shortage

The current labor shortage is one of the greatest challenges facing the supply chain industry today. From truckers and shippers to manufacturers, companies are struggling to find the workers they need to keep their operations running smoothly and meet rising customer demands. In this highly competitive environment, companies are vying for workers in 3 key areas: compensation, purpose, and culture.

While compensation is still a major factor in attracting new talent, it is increasingly important for supply chain companies to zoom out and focus on their overarching employee value proposition. This means ensuring that company values and culture are aligned throughout the organization, understanding what workers are looking for in the current market, and taking a holistic approach to employee engagement (5 Ways to Engage Employees). Other steps in the right direction include upskilling workers in people management and technology, and developing effective strategies around recruitment and retention.

One company that is leading the way in addressing the labor shortage challenge is the toy manufacturer Mattel. When asked about their approach, the company stated that they “want to be the employer of choice” (Gregory Javor, SVP Global Supply Chain Operations at Mattel, Inc.). This means focusing on people and culture, employee engagement, finding out where the opportunities are throughout the different areas of their organization, and working closely with HR.

When organizations are looking to improve their employee engagement, one of the key areas to focus on is giving their employees a voice. By keeping a finger on the pulse of how workers are feeling and elevating their ideas, companies are in a position to stand above their peers and attract & retain the best talent. As Eric Rempel, Chief Innovation Officer at Redwood Logistics so aptly put it,

“The question is not ‘will people speak up?’ – the real question is ‘are you ready to listen and do something about it?’”

Harnessing the Social Side of ESG

In recent years, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) has become a hot topic among investors, companies, and consumers alike. While the Environmental and Governance aspects of ESG are well understood, the Social aspect is arguably the most complex, encompassing a wide range of issues from employee relations and diversity to working conditions, conflict, and health and safety. It is also an untapped area for a lot of supply chain companies as a way they can stand out to potential partners and new hires.

As younger generations are increasingly choosing to work for companies that align with their own values, the social side of ESG is becoming paramount for organizations to set themselves apart. This means building a strong company culture and being vocal about company values, both externally and within the workplace.

Businesses that prioritize the social aspect create an environment where employees feel valued and supported, which in turn leads to higher productivity and job satisfaction. In the words of Jagdish Repaswal, CTO at Point Pickup,

“People have needs, they have emotions, and they need motivation. At Point Pickup, we address this by building community and creating meaningful work.”

Diversity Creates Competitive Advantage

Closely related to the topic of ESG, diversity was also a major talking point at Manifest this year. The degree to which companies combine the 3 elements – environmental, social and governance – will determine the breadth of the talent pool they can tap into. And having a diverse workforce is more critical than ever, especially in the face of digital transformation and rising labor competition.

While new technologies are improving supply chain operations, the opposite is also true. With heaps of great talent joining the industry, the supply chain industry itself is also driving the development of new tools and automation technologies.

For companies to secure competitive advantage moving forward, having “more diversity and differing opinions will be key to innovation and attracting the best talent” (Patrick Kelleher, Global Chief Development Officer at DHL Supply Chain).

That being said, it is important to note that diversity should not come at the expense of a company’s moral and ethical beliefs. “You want diversity in background, experience, and skills, but not diversity in values,” as Oren Zaslansky, CEO & Founder at Flock Freight noted. By maintaining a clear sense of purpose and a strong set of values, companies can create a culture that is both inclusive and aligned.

The Human Side of Robotics

And as anticipated, Manifest was teeming with the latest tech – from robotic solutions to self-driving trucks and remotely operated machinery. Yet, amidst these incredible technologies there was space for conversation around the role humans play in our digitized workplaces.

On the topic of robots taking over people’s jobs, several speakers at Manifest made it clear that new supply chain technologies are designed to be human-enabling, not human-replacing. Rather, they focus on getting the most out of people and empowering workers to be more productive and efficient. By implementing human-centric technology, companies can also expand their talent pool and attract a more diverse workforce.

One company on the cutting edge of human-enabling technology is Phantom Auto, which provides a software that operates machinery remotely. This technology not only makes operations much safer but also creates new opportunities for remote work, opening up jobs to veterans and people with disabilities. Other companies are seeing new tech implementations, such as training and engagement platforms, increase employee retention.

Closing Thoughts

With any new technology, the key to successful integration will always be the people who are implementing it. Listening to workers’ feedback, understanding their concerns, and empowering them to give their brightest ideas will ultimately lead to a company that is resilient and ready for the future – the Future of Logistics.

DATE
February 7, 2023

CATEGORY
Employee Engagement
Research & Reports

AUTHOR
Evelyn Cools

Butterfly News Employee Engagement

Butterfly Among Global Leaders at 2019 World Government Summit + Global Dialogue for Happiness and Wellbeing

We’re honored to share that Butterfly will once again be joining an exclusive network of global leaders at this year’s World Government Summit as the Global Happiness Council unveils its 2019 World Happiness Report.

The summit, which takes place in Dubai from February 10–13, 2019, brings together world leaders, policy makers, academics, and key representatives from international organizations to help shape the future of governments worldwide .

The Global Dialogue for Happiness and Wellbeing has been a key forum at the summit for three years, and Butterfly co-founder David Mendlewicz has participated since the beginning. For two days of the broader summit, attendees will discuss how healthy and positive conditions enable societies — and workplaces — to thrive.

At Butterfly, we believe that developing tomorrow’s great business leaders is critical to fostering a more engaged, more productive workforce. Since 2017, we released our first Happiness Index report which explored workplace happiness and engagement trends across companies with 5,000+ employees in the U.S. and EMEA. We look forward to being a part of the discussion with the other 3,000 representatives — from the tech world and beyond — to share ideas and inspiration to help corporations and governments bring happiness to the world.

The World Government Summit is a global platform dedicated to the enhancement of governments around the world. The summit brings together world leaders, policy makers, academics and key representatives from international organizations from over 130 countries, creating an exciting opportunity to exchange innovations and experiences, and building strong networks of collaboration.

The events are in partnership with key international organizations including the United Nations, World Bank, IMF, OECD and the World Economic Forum. For more information, see https://www.worldgovernmentsummit.org

We will share highlights from the forum and the report here and on Twitter @butterfly_AI_

DATE
February 8, 2019

CATEGORY
Butterfly News
Employee Engagement

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

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Butterfly Featured in Panel on AI in Human Resources

Employee Engagement Leadership Lessons

The Benefits of E-Learning for Employee Training and Development

The National Research Business Institute found that 23 percent of the reason that employees leave their place of employment is due to the lack of development opportunities and training. This obviously affects the costs associated with losing talent, productivity, and recruitment expenses.

“The only thing worse than training your employees and having them leave is not training them and having them stay.” – Henry Ford

The fact that learning and development is still a pressing issue is almost nonsensical. Companies, managers, employees, all have access to unlimited amount of information and can invest in learning management systems to help improve an employees skillset, even management decisions.
The benefits of e-learning for employee training and development are endless, but it’ll have to start with leadership to be proactive in getting a system that can address help employees grow. Here is how it can benefit a company:

Benefits of E-Learning

It’s an uber-competitive job market, and corporations are making the switch from hiring for experience to hiring people with growth mindsets. The reason being is that the world of work is progressing so fast, with all the new system and technologies out there, that it’s important to keep up with the competition.
We, as a society, have truly become a knowledge economy in every sense of the term. The majority of the work that we do is being done is for to incorporate human knowledge into machines. This fact has led to a rise in education tools for enterprises, leading us to have smarter, more innovative employees that are changing industries.
Having a knowledgeable group of employees and managers is a legitimate competitive advantage over other companies. You are embracing a growth mindset as an organization, and you are welcoming the exchange of information and proposal of new ideas; making you a more progressive and forward-thinking organization.
Aside from having a competitive advantage, studies found that companies that invest in training and development had increased employee loyalty. This stems from the employees feeling like the organization is investing in them — this decreases employee turnover and engagement.
The downside? If learning and development aren’t prioritized, employees will feel stagnant, making them feel disengaged. If you’d like to get a deeper understanding of why challenging an employee to learn new things is a good thing, here’s a simplified chart that explains how high skill and high challenge tasks create flow:
Finding flow and mastering new skills is one of the main benefits of focusing on training and development
See, if a person is not being tested, they’ll quickly get bored with their work; employers have the responsibility to assist their employees with developing their skills and give them challenging tasks that allow them to grow as employees and help the company solve complex problems.

How E-Learning Impacts Employee Engagement

Engaged employees drive innovation and push the organization forward. They will be the catalysts for change and help come up with new ideas for the organization.
When you invest in training and e-learning systems for these engaged employees, they’ll be able to improve processes, be more efficient, and obviously use the training to develop their skills, and hopefully, teach their peers.
This small investment pays dividends, as employees become both knowledgeable and happier.

How To Choose an E-Learning Program

Right now several companies offer learning platforms for enterprises.
On average, companies that have learning and development departments tend to spend about $100 a month, per employee, to help train their employees.
Before doing more research, I’d strongly recommend you read this by the folks over at Linkedin, as they make their case for E-Learning:

As far as budgeting goes, it’s worth spending a significant portion of an L&D budget on a learning management tool, but you should make the decision based off of the needs that you’re looking to address.
For employees, you should definitely invest in having e-learning tools that will primarily focus on developing their hard skills and helping them grow as workers.
For managers, it’s important that they focus on soft skills, as their interpersonal skills will be a big factor for the success of their department and their relationship with their employees.

E-learning to Train Employees

Right now, e-learning is being used to work on employees’ hard skills.
Services like Coursera, Skillshare, and hundreds of industry-specific learning tools (think Codeacademy) are being used to help people work on their skills.
When selecting an e-learning tool for an employee, think of their job description, the upcoming challenges that the business will face, and straight up ask your employees if they would be interested in learning the skill.
You can always customize a quick survey to see if there’s a skill or course that would benefit all the employees of a department and have them all take it together.
There are plenty of ways to approach an e-learning selection, but the main thing to do is just ask employees what they would like to learn, and as long as it has potential to help the company and department out, let them have at it.

E-learning to Train Managers

The type of e-learning tools that you should pick for managers should be one that has general management topics, to perfect their soft skills as leaders.
Management is obviously more reliant on soft skills, so teaching managers to handle rough situations and preparing them for the worst is probably best.
For example, Linkedin Learning’s management courses offer content around a wide variety of different management topics.
The next phase of Butterfly is to use artificial intelligence as a coaching tool for managers.
Right now, we serve as a pulse survey tool and have some content being pushed out to managers, but we intend on opening the floodgates and having content sent to managers as certain data trends from the pulse surveys start catching different trends.
Example: If employees, as a whole, are disgruntled and the data around employee happiness is trending downwards, we will proactively send a manager content (based off of the engagement sub driver) that addresses the issue at the office.

E-Learning Could Be The Future Of Executive Coaching

Right now, executive coaching is very niche. Companies hire independent consultants, or coaches, that come in and help executives or high-value employees to help gain self-awareness.
This is usually done through a lot of investigative work, 360-degree feedback, and the coaches act as a therapist of sorts, to find out what is making the executive stressed.
The future of executive coaching will be a bit more proactive than reactive. Instead of having to reach out to consultants to help an executive out, there will be enough data, through pulse surveys and cloud-based 360-degree surveys that’ll enable us to virtually coach high-level executives with content.
Right now, e-learning for executive coaching isn’t widely embraced, but if the success and rise of e-learning for managers and employees are indicative of anything, it’s that the next step of online learning is to teach executives how to run successful, transparent, employee-centric organizations.

Do You Believe in the Benefits of E-learning for Employee Training and Development?

Have you instituted an e-learning system at your office yet? If not, is it something that your company is looking to invest in? Let us hear your thoughts in the comments below!

DATE
March 19, 2018

CATEGORY
Employee Engagement
Leadership Lessons

AUTHOR
Jeffrey Fermin

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Create Socially Responsible Organizations With These 3 Scientifically-Backed Ideas

Employee Engagement Work / Life Balance

The Importance of Both Work-Life Balance and Employee Engagement

The modern day workplace is becoming people-centric, meaning that companies are putting more emphasis on improving things like work-life balance and employee engagement.
Why? There are two main reasons: one is that it affects a company’s bottom line; making a company more innovative, productive, and helping its bottom line. The other is the fact that modern-day employee is looking for a job that is fulfilling that can help them grow as people.
With all this, what feels like sudden change going on, is your company truly doing its best to adapt to the times? Sure, it might be tough to get new engagement and work-life balance initiatives going, but they can help your organization prosper. Here’s how and why you should look into it:

Why Work-Life Balance Is Important

Last year, France passed a law stating that companies with over 50 employees are required to guarantee employees a “right to disconnect” from their e-mails/work outside of their office hours.
The minister of labor, Myriam El Khomri, took note that employees are more connected during hours outside of the office and that there are no boundaries between personal and professional life — she went on to justify the new law by citing the country’s burnout, stress, and turnover problems as one of the main reasons why this law was needed.
Unless your country has laws set in place to encourage balance, it’s important, as an organization to make these changes. There are a lot of business reasons why starting work-life balance initiatives makes sense, but let’s start off with the primary factor of why it’s essential. The people.
Work-life balance affects the overall well-being of employees.
When an employee can balance things out with their work and life, they’ll be able to allot more times to their personal interests and needs. This makes people less susceptible to burnout, put more focus on the things that matter (both at work and in life), and lessens stress — allowing employees to be healthier, both mentally and physically.
Here’s a small video describing the benefits of balance:

Yes, some employees can focus on work-life balance around their company’s schedule, but employers are assisting with promoting balance.

Work-Life Balance Leads Increases Productivity

A survey conducted by the Corporate Executive Board, representing over 80% of Fortune 500 companies, found that employees that believe they have good work-life balance worked 21% harder than those who don’t after researching 50,000 global workers.
Another interesting point from that study is that the research found that “boosting workforce productivity doesn’t hinge on employees actually participating in the work-life services offered by their employer. Employees just need to be reassured that the service is there and they have the option to participate if they want to.”
There is a psychological effect that occurs when employees feel as if their company cares about their well-being. It leads them to work more efficiently and actually leads them to perform better. Here’s a quick presentation by the folks at Engage For Success that explains how:

As far as on the recruitment and retention side: it’s proven that 1 in 4 employees who don’t have the support of a work/life balance plan from their employer, plan to leave the company within the next two years.
All this data proves is one thing, that simply assisting employees with their lives improves their productivity and makes them want to stay at your company.

Initiatives To Help Employees Achieve Work-Life Balance

Technology companies are setting the bar high for work-life perks, and larger enterprises are (slowly) starting to follow suit.
Though some of the more progressive perks may not be able to work in most workplaces (ex: a lawyer isn’t going to be able to go to trial remotely … yet?), it’s still worth seeing what some of the companies that are rated some of the best places to work are doing to keep their employees happy.
Here are a couple of ways to help employees achieve work-life balance

Flexible Work Schedule
Remote Working
Unlimited Paid Time Off — trust me, it’s not as crazy as it seems.
Extended Paternal and Maternal leave
Wellness Stipends

There are dozens and dozens of other perks that an employer can offer in order to improve work-life balance and increase happiness and engagement; just make sure to keep it as simple as possible, give employees autonomy to complete their work, how they want.
Why is all this stuff important to begin with? It’s quite simple: to improve employee engagement.

Why Employee Engagement Important

Every now and then it’s easy to forget that employees will always be the lifeblood of an enterprise. They are going to help an organization come up with products, services, close sales, execute ideas, they literally keep the company running.
With this said, low employee engagement in a global problem, as over 70% of employees consider themselves to be disengaged. This is causing up to $450B in lost productivity in the U.S. alone.
Which begs the question: How come employee disengagement is still a problem and why aren’t companies doing anything to solve the problem?
Well, instituting a work-life balance policy is one major step in the right direction. Giving employees autonomy, balance, and having a transparent culture, makes them feel more engaged and improves their output.

Engaged Employees Influence the Bottom Line

The role of an HR department is going to evolve into something different within the coming years. They won’t just be focused on hiring and retention, they’ll blossom into a data-driven labor optimization department.
Why is that? Well, companies with high levels of employee engagement tend to improve their operating income by at least 20%. A lot of this information can come from employee pulse survey tools that can provide you with metrics and analytics on engagement, happiness, and productivity levels of your company.
A lot of tools, like Butterfly.ai, include customizable forms that’ll allow you to ask questions to help delve deeper into some of the problems within your organization:

There’s a reason companies like Google, Microsoft, and HP, are introducing design thinking and people analytics, to help improve their organization. These companies are investing in their people, and seeing returns that are affecting their business, like increased productivity, profits, less turnover, and even improved absenteeism.

High Engagement’s Influences Creativity and Innovation

According to a study published by Gallup, 59% of engaged employees say that their job “brings out their most creative ideas.” Of the surveyed employees who were disengaged only 3% said the same.
Of course, it doesn’t take a large study to find out that the happier an employee is, the more likely they are to be satisfied with their work and engaged enough to offer new ideas and suggestion.

Just remember one thing: engagement influences innovation and innovation influences engagement. If you have the type of environment that is collaborative, innovative, and transparent, you’ll able to have an engaged office, and vice versa.
So take a step in the right direction and offer work-life balance perks. It’s a major factor in improving employee engagement, and, as you’ve learned, a great way to improve your bottom-line and innovation.

What Are You Doing To Improve Work-Life Balance and Employee Engagement At Your Office?

Are you planning on implementing a work-life balance initiative/s to improve engagement? Let us know in the comments below, and we can provide some insights and help!

DATE
March 2, 2018

CATEGORY
Employee Engagement
Work / Life Balance

AUTHOR
Jeffrey Fermin

NEXT UP

The Benefits of E-Learning for Employee Training and Development

Uncategorized

Five Ways to Acknowledge and Engage Employees

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

Acknowledgment by a manager means a lot for any employee, however, it means even more to the ones present on the frontline or part of a distributed team. Especially in these uncertain times, recognition from leadership can help make coming into work every day feel more worth it.

Read these 5 tips to incorporate acknowledgment into your management style and engage your employees.

1. Say Thanks. Simple, but incredibly effective; not forgetting to say “thank you” when someone closes on a project. It is very easy to forget some of the very basic gestures. Try to make it direct and individualized (via text, email, or safely face-to-face) to make every team member feel seen.
2. Listen to (and act on) feedback. When an employee shares their concern, highlights a process that isn’t working, or praises one that is, listen and act. Use a tool like Butterfly to quickly gather insights and gauge how employees are feeling. You may need to make changes you didn’t anticipate to show your trust and investment in your employees.
3. Join them in their day-to-day. Gathering feedback is incredibly important, but it can also help to see what they see and experience each day. Join employees in the thick of the workday to see the challenges and roadblocks that you might otherwise miss. Right now, things are changing quickly, so you may need to do this more than once.
4. Celebrate them. After thanking your team members, take time to regularly call out your team to the larger company. It is very easy for other colleagues, who aren’t directly connected to your team, to be oblivious to your team’s wins. So make sure to not forget to shine a light on your team’s important work and impact for the overall company.
5. Extend perks, if possible. While not everyone is in the office, it is easy to forget that perks that were once available to everyone, are now only for people back in the office. With the rise of the distributed and hybrid workforces it is of the utmost importance that you spend some time thinking about how to extend office perks to everyone across the company regardless of where they work.

In the end, any type of acknowledgment that shows your employees you understand and appreciate what they’re doing will go a long way.

Butterfly gives managers what they need to know about how their people are feeling right now and empowers them to immediately follow up. The loop is closed in real-time with team members getting meaningful, best-informed actions from their managers. Every manager becomes a leader who knows their people and drives engagement, removing one more burden from the shoulders of HR and creating a happier workforce.

DATE
January 5, 2022

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

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Tips to Keep Your Team Engaged from Afar

Uncategorized

Be Transparent to Engage Frontline Employees

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

In uncertain times, change comes faster than anyone can expect. For frontline employees, these changes will feel especially unexpected if their managers and leaders aren’t transparent.

Use these 5 tips to build transparency into your management style:

1. Share updates daily. Use texts, start-of-shift meetings or an email to inform everyone of any new policies or changes, big or small. If there’s nothing new, say that and thank your team for the work they’re doing. Doing this on a regular basis helps build stability.

2. Welcome and answer questions. An “open door” policy is crucial in uncertain times. Let your team know that you are there for them by encouraging questions and answering them with all the information you have.

3. Be honest. When you share daily updates or answer questions, do it honestly. If there are things you don’t know, say so. If there are things you can’t yet share with the team, tell them that, and let them know when they can expect more clarity.

4. Listen to feedback. This will help you understand what your employees want to hear from you. Use an anonymous pulse survey, like those from Butterfly, to encourage a safe space where they can rate the level of support and transparency they feel from you.

5. Manage change together. Involve your employees at all levels in building the processes that facilitate changes. Ask how they think things in your workplace should shift in reaction to new mandates as they are announced.

Be open, honest and willing to listen in an effort to build a transparent working environment. These ideas aren’t only applicable for the current moment; use them to help you engage your essential workforce today and in the future.

Butterfly gives managers what they need to know about how their people are feeling right now and empowers them to immediately follow up. The loop is closed in real-time with team members getting meaningful, best-informed actions from their managers. Every manager becomes a leader who knows their people and drives engagement, removing one more burden from the shoulders of HR and creating a happier workforce.

DATE
February 10, 2022

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

Manifest 2023 Recap: Attracting & Retaining Workers, Humans vs. Robots, Power of Diversity

Uncategorized

How to Over-Communicate Wisely and Engage Employees

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

Communication is the umbrella under which all of the most important actions a manager can take to engage their essential workforce live. Talking and listening are the bones of building a work environment where employees feel cared for and motivated to be productive, especially in uncertain times.

Incorporate communication into your management style and engage your employees with these 5 tips:

1. Share contact channels. Tell your team members where they can actually reach you when they need you. Give them this information and set the process up to work for you, too. If you prefer texts to phone calls, make that clear.

2. Automate feedback. Open another line of communication, and make it easy to manage. An engagement tool like Butterfly can automatically send pulse surveys as often as daily, encouraging employees to share their feedback and ask for support regularly.

3. Give regular updates. Set a day and time to send a text or email to your team. If you’re still working together in person, this could also be a meeting. This sets their expectations and becomes a third channel for communication.

4. Check in each shift. Any time that an employee is working, you should let them know that you are there to support them. If they have concerns, are feeling overwhelmed, have a solution to a roadblock, let them know you’re around to listen.

5. Be there. Non-verbal communication matters, too. Tell your team that you’re with them, you understand and you’re listening simply by showing up. Only do this, of course, if it is safe and recommended.

More than sending millions of messages that could interrupt the flow of their day, over-communicating is about establishing multiple effective channels and keeping them open. If your employees see this and know it, they can better engage with their job.

Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. We want to help you engage your essential workforce so that they can work effectively and safely, today and in the future.

To do that, we are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

DATE
January 7, 2022

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

Be Transparent to Engage Frontline Employees

Uncategorized

Tips to Keep Your Team Engaged from Afar

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

As teams begin to settle into the reality of working remotely, it’s vital for managers to keep investing in engagement.

Keeping your team engaged even when you’re apart doing more than boost productivity: it reassures them that you’re all in it together. Clear and dynamic communication will ease anxieties and help you all succeed.

Try these five tips and practices to engage your employees remotely:

1. Introduce Your Work Space

Especially in the early adjustment period, be transparent about working situations. Show them your desk (whether make-shift at the kitchen table or in a full-fledged home office) and introduce them to your pets, kids and family. Be the first one to say, “Pardon any interruptions,” so that they know you’re expecting and ok with real-life blending into work life.

2. Have Virtual Office Hours

Block off time on your calendar and set up a virtual “office” where your team members can come to talk with you. Office hours don’t need to be strictly about work; encourage them to come to you if they’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious or need a quick “water cooler” break.

3. Take the Pulse Regularly

Supplement team meetings and (video) face-to-face check-ins with automated pulse surveys from Butterfly. Get feedback instantly on working situations and ask for feedback about what’s working and what isn’t in this new reality.

4. Eat Lunch Together

In the workplace, it isn’t always feasible to gather together as a team and eat lunch — and it’s something a lot of teams take for granted! Schedule in lunch meetings where colleagues can virtually eat, talk and take their minds off of everything that’s going on.

5. Vocalize Gratitude

Another great practice for any work situation: share praise and thank your team members for their work. Acknowledge that accomplishing things in a remote environment can be really hard, and their ability to power through projects or meet new goals is huge. Say thanks privately and celebrate them publicly.

How are you staying engaged with your remote team? Share your stories with us at remote@butterfly.ai.

Butterfly gives managers what they need to know about how their people are feeling right now and empowers them to follow up immediately. The loop is closed in real-time with team members receiving meaningful, best-informed actions from their managers. Every manager becomes a leader who knows their people and drives engagement, removing one more burden from the shoulders of HR and creating a happier workforce.

DATE
January 6, 2022

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

How to Over-Communicate Wisely and Engage Employees

Uncategorized

How to Revamp Your Workplace to Attract Agile Talent

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

Agile transformation is the latest buzz in the HR industry. As organizations think about ensuring business continuity amid the ongoing health crisis, and more than 74% of businesses plan to shift to remote work in the post-pandemic world, the need to prioritize agility is higher than ever.

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However, transitioning to an agile workforce is often easier said than done. In fact, a Harvard Business Review study showed that even big-name companies failed to achieve an agile workforce and experienced organizational disruption. About 90% of the surveyed companies struggled with agile transformations even after successfully launching small-scale initiatives. But what is an agile workforce? More importantly, what makes agile talent important for businesses? Understand what agile talent is and how you can revamp your business to complement it using this in-depth guide.

What is an Agile Workspace?

In the changing corporate landscape, business leaders are realizing that a new approach to project management is needed. With social distancing protocols and a large percentage of employees working remotely, managers need to draw on the most effective resources to get the job done. An agile workspace is one that is designed to support and maximize flexibility, creativity, and efficiency. This means bringing the most qualified people together to work on a solution, whether they are on-staff or contract workers. Consequently, cubicles are being replaced by more open, flexible desk arrangements (open spaces, private spaces, and room for collaboration), and people are using technology to connect and collaborate from remote locations. The focus is on creating an environment in which people can be creative and do their best work.

Why Talent Agility Matters
in the Digital World

Organizations can only accomplish what their people can accomplish—so attracting top talent is a critical part of success. The best workers are not satisfied with nine-to-five repetitive jobs; they want careers that will challenge them and in which they can grow and develop their skills. The agile workspace is the environment best suited to attract and retain this kind of talent.

How to Revamp Your Workforce
to Encourage Agile Talent

Here are some ways you can make your organization attractive to agile workers.

1. Go Digital

Use digital tools to foster productivity, creativity, and collaboration for workers who are on-site and those who are remote. “Most CFOs recognize that technology and society has evolved to make remote work more viable for a wider variety of positions than ever before,” said Gartner Finance Practice VP Alexander Bant.

Empowering your workforce with effective and efficient digital tools will help to attract and support agile talent. When going digital, it’s also essential to keep in mind that managers should be the first adopters of the technology to help them effectively manage their remote workers.

Technology managers should be aware of project management tools and time-tracking apps to help workers remain productive.

2. Embrace a Culture of Change

Agility thrives on flexibility. Before organizations can bring in agile talent to their pool, they must be willing to embrace a culture of change. This requires consideration of what they need to let go of, and what tools and processes they can integrate to achieve a higher success rate. While it’s nice to have standard operating procedures (SOPs) in place, the ability to adjust depending on the current needs of the organization is also critical. Data from McKinsey shows that 70% of business transformations fail because culture change was not effectively factored into the mix.

Image Source

With the unprecedented disruption brought by the pandemic, it’s all the more important for organizational leaders to nurture a business culture anchored on change.

3. Focus on Multi-Skilled Talent

The workforce is becoming more competitive, and agility and versatility will depend on the skills of each team member. Consequently, hiring multi-skilled talent is a cost-effective approach to agile talent management. Organizations can eliminate bulky organizational structures and can address setbacks as the workforce functions seamlessly between different departments and verticals. A workforce with agile talent and multiple skillsets also ensures that companies never have to rely on only one person to carry out a particular task.

4. Personalities Matter

Considering personality when hiring can help ensure an individual’s success and contribution to the organization. In addition to identifying hard skills, hiring specialists should also focus on desirable personality traits including empathy, motivation, self-confidence, and adaptability.

Organizations should also ensure the potential employee is a good fit for the company culture. Energetic, adaptable, and self-motivated individuals are more likely to function well in an agile workspace. Research has identified how personality affects how an employee is likely to adapt to agile working.

5. Encourage Collaboration

One of the common challenges that businesses face is dealing with bottlenecks that hamper productivity. Often, this results from the presence of work silos that isolate team members. By encouraging collaboration among different verticals, the organization can identify and resolve pressing and potential business challenges with higher efficiency.

Promoting agile collaboration ensures that people from different groups can work together to boost cross-team collaboration and organizational productivity. Collaboration also allows team members to have a better understanding of their roles and contributions, allowing them to become highly invested in the company’s success.

The workforce of the future will continue to be dynamic, and organizations must quickly adapt and build cultures that promote the growth of agile talent as an organizational methodology. When strengthened, this transition towards an agile organization can help alter the business DNA and propel it towards success. Don’t be afraid to push the boundaries of your business by exploring agile talent.

If you found this article helpful, please share it on your social media channels.

Author Bio

Dean Mathews is the founder and CEO of OnTheClock, an employee time tracking app that helps over 15,000 companies all around the world track time.

Dean has over 20 years of experience designing and developing business apps. He views software development as a form of art. If the artist creates a masterpiece, many people’s lives are touched and changed for the better.

When he is not perfecting time tracking, Dean enjoys expanding his faith, spending time with family and friends, and finding ways to make the world just a little better.

DATE
September 1, 2021

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Dean Mathews

NEXT UP

Five Ways to Acknowledge and Engage Employees

Quick Five: Transparency

Be Transparent to Engage Essential Employees

Recently, we shared six actions to help managers and leaders of essential businesses manage their frontline employees effectively. In this post, we dig into one of those actions — being transparent — and offer a few ways you can use transparency to engage your team.

In uncertain times, change comes faster than anyone can expect. For frontline employees, these changes will feel especially unexpected if their managers and leaders aren’t transparent.

Use these 5 tips to build transparency into your management style:

1. Share updates daily. Use texts, start-of-shift meetings or an email to inform everyone of any new policies or changes, big or small. If there’s nothing new, say that and thank your team for the work they’re doing. Doing this on a regular basis helps build stability.

2. Welcome and answer questions. An “open door” policy is crucial in uncertain times. Let your team know that you are there for them by encouraging questions and answering them with all the information you have.

3. Be honest. When you share daily updates or answer questions, do it honestly. If there are things you don’t know, say so. If there are things you can’t yet share with the team, tell them that, and let them know when they can expect more clarity.

4. Listen to feedback. This will help you understand what your employees want to hear from you. Use an anonymous pulse survey, like those from Butterfly, to encourage a safe space where they can rate the level of support and transparency they feel from you.

5. Manage change together. Involve your employees at all levels in building the processes that facilitate changes. Ask how they think things in your workplace should shift in reaction to new mandates as they are announced.

Be open, honest and willing to listen in an effort to build a transparent working environment. These ideas aren’t only applicable for the current moment; use them to help you engage your essential workforce today and in the future.

Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. We are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

DATE
April 28, 2020

CATEGORY
Quick Five: Transparency

AUTHOR
Katelyn Trela

NEXT UP

How to Revamp Your Workplace to Attract Agile Talent

Quick Five: Safety

How Safety Can Protect and Engage Essential Employees

Recently, we shared six actions to help managers and leaders of essential businesses manage their frontline employees effectively. Here, we’ll dig into one of those actions and share a few ways you can enforce safety to protect and engage your team.

Safety is a workplace imperative. Right now, those safety protocols look a little different than usual: from enforcing social distancing and metering capacities to providing protective gear and beyond.

Read these 5 guidelines for building and maintaining a safe workplace:

1. Follow and share local regulations. Check in daily on changes to recommendations and regulations about how essential businesses should operate. Be transparent with your team so that they can feel prepared and empowered early and often.

2. Forgive distractions. Understand that, even though these frontline workers are reporting for duty physically each day, their minds might be at home with their family, worrying about their health, safety and well-being. Ask employees to take breaks more frequently and encourage them to hold off on dangerous tasks if they are distracted.

3. Hear from your employees. Ask your team how safe and protected they feel. Automate and anonymize this process if you’d like, using a tool like Butterfly. Send them regular pulse surveys, where they can rate how supported they feel by management as well as how happy they are that day.

4. Change the pace of work. Based on feedback and observation, it might be necessary to adjust expectations and processes in the workplace. Maybe employees will need to work shorter shifts or rotate job stations more frequently. Instead of measuring productivity by quantity, look at quality.

5. Take care of your team. Make sure that they feel supported. Acknowledge their feedback so that they know they have been heard. If a team member gets sick, assure them that they will be paid for sick time while quarantined. Additionally, address the situation calmly with the people that they work closely with day-to-day.

The best way to create a safe working environment is to create supportive relationships with your employees. Approach the situation with an air of understanding and care. When a team feels supported, they will be more apt to pay attention to and abide by safety protocols.

Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. We want to help you engage your essential workforce so that they can work effectively and safely, today and in the future.

To do that, we are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

DATE
April 21, 2020

CATEGORY
Quick Five: Safety

AUTHOR
Katelyn Trela

NEXT UP

Be Transparent to Engage Essential Employees

Uncategorized

Here’s How to Motivate and Engage Essential Employees

Recently, we shared six actions to help managers and leaders of essential businesses manage their frontline employees effectively. Here, we’ll dig into one of those actions, motivation, and share a few ways you can motivate and engage your team.

Positive motivation is a huge driver for essential employees in the frontline workforce. While the current climate makes it difficult to build a calm and comforting workplace, it is vital that employees work from a place of strength rather than fear or stress.

Read these 5 tips to infuse motivational engagement tactics into your management style.

1. Learn what motivates. First and foremost, talk to your employees to find out what is motivating to them. Managing from motivation only works when you know what types of tactics and actions will actually make a difference for your specific team members.

2. Listen to ideas and feedback. Create an open forum and encourage team members to use it! Pulse surveys, like those from Butterfly, can go a long way. Regularly present frontline employees with a chance to share their mood, ideas and feedback. This shows that you care and are listening, and it motivates them to pay close attention while at work.

3. Introduce positive rewards. In many workplaces, productivity is measured and rewarded by how much can get done in a day—which may no longer be a viable motivation for many. Instead, impress the value of the work your team is doing. Stress quality over quantity. Reward them with support, encouragement and understanding.

4. Make changes. Remember those ideas and feedback you’ve started to gather? Use them! Make constructive changes to processes and expectations that will better serve your employees, based on what they’ve told you.

5. Acknowledge initiators. When employees actively engage with feedback and ideas to improve their day-to-day, acknowledge them! Credit the changes to them and thank them for their suggestions, both one-on-one and with the full team. For more acknowledgement tactics, read our earlier post.

Once you know what drives your employees to do their work proudly and with excellence, find different ways to encourage and cultivate those motivations.

Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. We want to help you engage your essential workforce so that they can work effectively and safely, today and in the future.

To do that, we are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

DATE
April 14, 2020

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

How Safety Can Protect and Engage Essential Employees

Uncategorized

6 Actions to Help Manage Frontline and Essential Employees in a Time of Crisis

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

Across the U.S., non-essential businesses are shuttering in response to the coronavirus pandemic. In turn, essential businesses are harboring the weight of consumer needs, helping to hold up communities by keeping vital systems (like mail and shipping, food and grocery, utilities and sanitation) running.

This new strain on frontline employees—whether back-of-house, at the register or part of the logistics and supply chain—is throwing workforce dynamics into flux.

Now more than ever, it is vital to support and engage these teams.
That support and engagement will look different for different teams, businesses and industries, but there are recognizable throughlines.

Butterfly was built for the frontline workforce, offering deskless teams a way to check in and share actionable feedback with ease. Based on our work with essential businesses and frontline teams across industries, we’ve identified six vital actions that, when mixed and matched, can help a business run effectively and safely both today and in the future.

1. Acknowledge—Recognize the people who are coming to work every day. In a moment like this, these employees are putting themselves at risk; if their managers and leaders don’t acknowledge that fact, it makes it much, much harder for them to be at work.

Make an effort to call this out. Thank employees for the service they are providing, both to the business and also to the public. Whether this is through a text message, email, group or one-on-one meeting (virtual or safely in-person), it will reinforce that what they are doing is big, brave and important. These messages can even be sent using software like Butterfly.

Similarly, acknowledge feedback from employees. These employees are in the thick of it, day in and day out; what they see and experience is important to understand and act on.

2. Motivate — Employees should never work from a place of fear or stress. In times like these, it’s not easy to build a calm and comforting workplace, but it is necessary. Use teamwork and togetherness to build a working environment in which stress and fear can melt away.

Motivation can run low when employees don’t feel heard or understood. Encourage feedback and ideas by setting up automated pulse surveys, like those from Butterfly, that employees can complete quickly and easily.

If team members pitch ideas to optimize workflow while abiding pandemic protocols, call it out when they are successfully implemented. When employees know they have been heard and their ideas have been adopted, they will continue to share suggestions for improving life at work during this unprecedented time.

3. Enforce Safety — Right now, safety protocols are imperative. A company that ignores social distancing, store capacities, calls to quarantine and other required health practices puts everyone in danger.

Diligently keep up with local regulations for essential businesses and follow quarantine protocols. If an employee calls out sick, managers must ensure employees feel supported if they need to take time off of work for illness.

At the same time, understand that distractions might be more prevalent in the current climate. Evaluate other processes throughout the store or warehouse to see where safety can be improved with temporary changes. Pose questions about what can be done to help employees feel more safe and supported using a feedback tool like Butterfly.

4. Be transparent—There is so much unknown in the current situation, where news moves at the speed of light. Create a workplace where employees can feel confident that they know as much as their managers and leadership teams.

Daily updates by text or email might be comforting for employees. Consider start-of-shift meetings to announce any changes to working capacity, operating hours or other processes. If things haven’t changed from day to day, use the time to remind employees of the latest updates.

Transparency is exceptionally important as many companies cut costs with layoffs, furloughs and reduced hours. Remember, these changes can have a huge effect on the lives of employees. Try to be as open as possible about developments like these.

5. Support —Put simply, different people experience change in different ways. Understand how team members are digesting and dealing with the adjustments to their work schedules and changes to their family lives. Then, assess how best to support them.

Spend time learning how employees are coping, how their families are doing, and what anxieties or concerns the situation is creating for them. Get a full picture of what they’re dealing with to better set expectations and understand the context of feedback they share. Butterfly pulse surveys can be set up to help gather this feedback in an easily digestible way.

Financially, emotionally, or in any other way possible, offer employees continuous support.

6. Over-communicate—There is no benefit to silence or opaque communications. Talk to employees daily. Let them voice their concerns, listen to their feedback, act on what they share and stay connected as much as possible.

Communication is the most important resource for the entire ecosystem at work in times of crisis. Automate one of hopefully many communications using a tool like Butterfly. Send a pulse survey out and get an instant gauge on the well-being of each employee—from how enabled they feel to do their job safely to their level of happiness day-to-day.

Armed with these six actions, we believe any essential business can successfully and thoughtfully connect with its frontline workforce during these unprecedented, tumultuous times. While we often stress the value of engagement on increasing productivity and reducing turnover, employee safety and well-being are what’s most important right now.

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more posts with quick tips to help you build on these ideas, addressing things like:

A. What are the best methods for motivating employees, from the register to the delivery truck?

B. How can you offer support as an individual manager?

C. What tips and tools can streamline these new engagement processes so we can roll them out quickly?

Additionally, we are offering access to our industry-leading engagement and communication tools, built especially for the frontline workforce, totally free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

DATE
March 31, 2020

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Katelyn Trela

NEXT UP

Here’s How to Motivate and Engage Essential Employees

Uncategorized

Ways to Stay Engaged When You’re Working From Home

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

Staying productive while working from home isn’t always easy. Sometimes distractions get the best of you; other times, you’re laser focused but quickly burn out.

1. Set Working Hours
When you’re at home, work and life blend together. Try to run your home like a workplace with strict working hours. Enforce this with your remote team using calendar tools, and also communicate it with others in your home.

5 Tips To Balance Remote Working While Your Family Is Also At Home, Forbes

Set your working hours & availability, Google Calendar

Learn more about work hours in Outlook, Microsoft

2. Maintain a Routine
Make lunch the night before. Take a walk around the block (if you’re able) while listening to the radio station or podcast you’d normally listen to on your commute. Change out of your PJs into comfortable working clothes. These routines help trigger “work mode” in your mind.

Structure Your Work-From-Home Day With These Routines, Lifehacker

3. Vocalize Ideas and Feedback
Communicate regularly with your colleagues and managers. If something they’re doing isn’t working for you, let them know! Encourage the use of tools like Butterfly (which we’re offering free for 90 days), which allow you to rate how you’re feeling and anonymously share feedback about what is and isn’t working with your manager.

4. Take Breaks
Stepping away from work is incredibly beneficial, whether you’re working remotely or in an office. Set a timer that alerts you regularly (try to take a break every 30 to 90 minutes). Step away from your desk — and screens, if you can help it — entirely. Take a walk, read a chapter of a book, do a few stretches, then come back to your workspace refreshed.

Take Five: 51 Things to Do When You Need a Break at Work, The Muse

5. Leave Your Workspace
Go back to that home-as-a-business mindset. When home is your workplace, try to still close your computer and leave your workspace until the next day. This can help you avoid burnout and define that work/life balance necessary for successfully working from home.

What’s your best recipe for working from home successfully, especially when there are other people there during the day? Share your story with us by emailing remote@butterfly.ai.

And remember, we’re offering our engagement tools and support to newly remote teams free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

DATE
March 25, 2020

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Katelyn Trela

NEXT UP

6 Actions to Help Manage Frontline and Essential Employees in a Time of Crisis

Uncategorized

Tips to Keep Your Team Engaged from Afar

.

As teams begin to settle in to the reality of working remotely, it’s vital for managers to keep investing in engagement.

Keeping your team engaged even when you’re apart does more than boost productivity: it reassures them that you’re all in it together. Clear and dynamic communication will ease anxieties and help you all succeed.

Try these five tips and practices to engage your employees remotely:

1. Introduce Your Work Space

Especially in the early adjustment period, be transparent about working situations. Show them your desk (whether make-shift at the kitchen table or in a full-fledged home office) and introduce them to your pets, kids and family. Be the first one to say, “Pardon any interruptions,” so that they know you’re expecting and ok with real life blending into work life.

2. Have Virtual Office Hours

Block off time on your calendar and set up a virtual “office” where your team members can come to talk with you. Office hours don’t need to be strictly about work; encourage them to come to you if they’re feeling overwhelmed or anxious or need a quick “water cooler” break.

3. Take the Pulse Regularly

Supplement team meetings and (video) face-to-face check-ins with automated pulse surveys from Butterfly. Get feedback instantly on working situations and ask for feedback about what’s working and what isn’t in this new reality. You can try our tools free for 30 days — just send us an email.

4. Eat Lunch Together

In the workplace, it isn’t always feasible to gather together as a team and eat lunch — and it’s something a lot of teams take for granted! Schedule in lunch meetings where colleagues can virtually eat, talk and take their mind off of everything that’s going on.

5. Vocalize Gratitude

Another great practice for any work situation: share praise and thank your team members for their work. Acknowledge that accomplishing things in a remote environment can be really hard, and their ability to power through projects or meet new goals is huge. Say thanks privately and celebrate them publicly.

How are you staying engaged with your remote team? Share your store with us at remote@butterfly.ai.

And remember, we’re offering our engagement tools and support to newly remote teams free for 90 days. Get in touch and we will set you up.

DATE
March 25, 2020

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

TAGS
Quick Five

AUTHOR
Katelyn Trela

NEXT UP

Ways to Stay Engaged When You’re Working From Home

List

Never Worked Remotely Before? Here Are 5 Five Ways To Be An Effective Manager

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

In light of COVID-19, the global workforce is shifting to remote work.

Nearly half (46%) of organizations across the world are asking employees to work remotely due to the outbreak, a recent study shows.

This is a new reality for many employees which will change every aspect of work. At Butterfly, we are experts in helping organizations ensure that remote employees are both heard and informed.

Our focus is on supporting managers as they communicate and connect with their employees, no matter where their teams work. On our own team, we have employees living across the globe, working together seamlessly.

Bookmark this high-level guide to help you optimize how to work from anywhere.

1. Facilitate Remote Access

For a lot of big companies, business can only be conducted over in-office networks using company hardware. If that sounds like you, here are the first things to think about and get ahead of.

a. Desktop workers. Make sure that all employees have a remote solution, whether that’s granting remote network access for their personal computers or loaning them company laptops for at-home use.

b. Home office challenges. Not everyone is prepared to turn their kitchen table into a workstation. Help your employees optimize the space they have and ensure that they have the tools they need, like keyboards, computer stands and a mouse.

2. Check-In Regularly with Remote Employees Using Butterfly
( We’re offering our tools and support free for 90 days)

Face time with co-workers and managers is critical in the workplace. Without it, conversation, collaboration and one-on-one time with colleagues take extra work.

a. Automate check-ins. Butterfly helps managers quickly assess how remote employees are doing and what their concerns are. They can anonymously answer questions about how they’re doing and rate their happiness day-to-day or week-to-week (if interested email us at remote@butterfly.ai).

b. Overcommunicate. Check in daily to start and always invite your team to talk to you. Use easy communication tools like Slack, Teams or Google Hangouts for quick questions. Avoid text or phone-based apps, as they can make work/life balance harder.

3. Organize a New Meeting Structure

Start by finding a good video conferencing software that works for everyone, and doesn’t take a ton of onboarding time. (Wirecutter from the New York Times recommends Zoom.)

a. Set expectations. Are pets and kids allowed? Is video required, or can meetings be audio-only for slower connections or crowded at-home workplaces? Slack shared some helpful guidelines to facilitate great remote meetings.

b. Be clear about roles. Decide in advance who is taking notes and how the notes will be shared. Set deadlines for action items in the meeting. Clear up any lingering questions at the end of the call

4. Discuss Work Flexibility

With the current situation, multiple people could be working from the same home at the same time. For families, kids could be home from school or daycare, changing the structure of the day. Be transparent about what you expect, and encourage employees to vocalize what will work best for them.

a. Adjust your email signature. A line like this is a good way to validate work flexibility from the top down. Here’s what we’ve seen most often (feel free to copy and paste): “I work flexibly to fit my schedule. If you received this email outside of your normal working hours, I don’t expect an immediate response.”

b. Use a working-hours feature on calendar. Both Google and Outlook calendars have “working hours” features, which let employees note when they are usually online and working. Ask your team to set these up in their first week of working remotely. That way, meetings, calls and deadlines can work around flex schedules.

5. Repeat and Iterate

Sometimes, the most well-thought-out plans don’t work as intended. For example, the video conferencing software is glitchy making meetings even more frustrating or remote access is slow. A lot of imperfect stuff can happen with a transition like this!

a. Make changes. Continuously check in with employees, managers and teams to see what’s working and what isn’t. Use feedback to make improvements. Provide people with the tools they need no matter when they ask. Take an understanding approach to the transition and learn from it!

***

Creating a successful remote work environment takes a lot of work from a lot of people and organizations need to be responsive as employees try out new tools and approaches. Butterfly is dedicated to helping organizations refine and improve their remote work practices given how important it is for companies to understand, iterate and make changes quickly.

We’re also invested in the success of remote teams across the employment spectrum. During this unprecedented situation, use Butterfly totally free for 90 days.

Questions? Thoughts? Ideas? Email us: remote@butterfly.ai

DATE
March 19, 2020

CATEGORY
List

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

Tips to Keep Your Team Engaged from Afar

Uncategorized

Butterfly Featured in WSJ as Innovative AI Coaching App to Help Young Managers

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

We’re really thrilled to have been featured in a great Wall Street Journal article about the AI-driven apps that help new managers grow into confident leaders.

The story focuses on how AI-driven coaching apps are “democratizing leadership training,” making it more accessible for new leaders — especially digital-native millennials — to fill the training gaps in their careers.

Butterfly came to be after our founders first became managers, pushed into leadership with no training and no guidance.

Now, our feedback-driven tools are using machine learning and AI to ensure other managers don’t experience the same stresses to the detriment of their teams.

“The app tracks feedback from users’ employees and uses machine learning to serve up curated tips and articles, says David Mendlewicz, co-founder and CEO of the New York-based company.”

The article helps reiterate how valuable tools like Butterfly are for new managers:

Nearly half (49%) of employees would rather receive training on the job as needed instead of in a broad-strokes formal class.
Repetition and reminders are effective at helping people learn new material or develop new skills, like leadership and management.

Read the full article to see the breadth of technologies redefining how managers hone their skills and develop into full-fledged leaders.

[Read The Story]

DATE
April 16, 2019

CATEGORY
Uncategorized

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

Never Worked Remotely Before? Here Are 5 Five Ways To Be An Effective Manager

Butterfly News

Employee Happiness Leads to
Business Success

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

Employee Happiness Leads to Business Success
Findings from The World Happiness Report and How You Can Apply Them

The World Happiness Report was recently released, citing strong evidence that an increase in workplace well-being brings about a 10% increase in productivity, on average.

Within a dedicated section, researchers conducted a meta-analysis of Gallup research to help validate the strong correlation between employee happiness and productivity. Butterfly is featured in one of the report’s supporting case studies. This report was conducted by the Workplace Well-being Committee, of which our CEO, David Mendlewicz, is a founding corporate member.

Here are a few top findings:

1. One study in the report issued simple daily surveys (like those Butterfly offers) to call center employees, which helped them see that an employee’s mood when they clocked in had an affect on their productivity. Companies can use our tools to communicate easily and regularly with hourly employees and keep pulse on employee mood.

Employee satisfaction showed strong correlations to profitability, productivity and loyalty in three key industries:

—Satisfied employees drove a 42% gain in profitability in the manufacturing sector
—Satisfied employees drove a 28% increase in customer loyalty in the retail industry
—Satisfied employees drove a 21% uptick in productivity in the services industry

2. This clearly indicates the importance of employee satisfaction as a direct contributor to performance. At Butterfly, our suite of tools closely aligns with this finding. We are making it simpler for managers and leadership teams to improve employee satisfaction and increase profitability.

3. The study also looked at how employee well-being affected stock market performance, studying employees working at top-rated companies alongside the long-run stock returns for those companies. They found that stock returns were higher for companies with happier employees.

Many of the factors that are considered in naming a company one of America’s best places to work — job satisfaction, attitudes toward management, company culture, etc. — can be measured using Butterfly’s pulse surveys.

4. Butterfly supported the report’s findings with a case study that showed that mood improved when surveys were given regularly. This suggests that providing outlets for feedback regularly could lead to a happier, more engaged workplace.

Overall, the report provides good anecdotal and statistical evidence that there are huge productivity and profitability benefits to keeping employees — especially hourly ones — satisfied and happy at work.

We’ll share a more in-depth analysis of the findings soon. Send us an email at info@butterfly.ai if you’d like to receive it, or if you’re ready to set up a demo.

DATE
March 5, 2019

CATEGORY
Butterfly News

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

Butterfly Featured in WSJ as Innovative AI Coaching App to Help Young Managers

Butterfly News

Butterfly Featured in Panel on AI in Human Resources

In our new series, Work & Roam, we’ll be following our Product and Solutions Analyst John Williams as he travels the world, working remotely from 5 countries. Tune in to see what worked (and what didn’t) for John during each stop, and to dig into how working remotely affects both the worker and the team back home.

Earlier this week, our CEO and co-founder David Mendlewicz participated in a panel on Artificial Intelligence, discussing the different ways it is transforming the Human Resources industry.

The panel, hosted by the French American Chamber of Commerce, touched on how to use AI and machine learning to improve operations on HR teams as well as turn feedback into leadership coaching opportunities.

David shared insight on how Butterfly’s pulse survey and dashboard tools can make those things happen. His insight touched especially on more blue-collar industries, where HR teams often overlook supply chain and frontline employee engagement.

Using data gathered through systematic and regular feedback, Butterfly uses machine learning to assist and teach managers how to improve and become better leaders. The panel also noted the importance of structured data in developing soft skills. Because Butterfly pulse surveys are powered by engagement drivers, the data collected is especially useful for managerial leadership development.

Get in touch if you’re interested in learning more about how Butterfly uses AI and machine learning to enrich the feedback loop: info@butterfly.ai

DATE
February 21, 2019

CATEGORY
Butterfly News

AUTHOR
Jacob Berry

NEXT UP

Employee Happiness Leads to Business Success