New Tech Benchmark Report 2016 - Culture Amp People Analytics from New Tech companies 2016 | New Tech Benchmark Report 3 Whether you’re a New Tech company or from another industry,

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New Tech Benchmark Report 2016

https://www.cultureamp.com/


People Analytics from New Tech companies 2016 | New Tech Benchmark Report 2www.cultureamp.com

Since our first report in 2013, the annual New Tech Benchmark Report has become an important resource for people geeks within and outside the New Tech industry. Our 2016 report presents insights taken from our research with over 60,000 New Tech employees from over 150 companies in 2015.

Our ongoing work with many of the world’s fastest-growing disruptive technology companies and some of the world’s most talented employees uniquely places us to provide quality data and insights.

What’s New in 2016

Some of the primary questions we sought to address in the report are:

Has engagement changed in the last year?

How does engagement in New Tech companies compare with employee engagement in professional services companies?

What separates the most engaged companies from the least engaged?

What is driving engagement across New Tech companies?

How does role, gender, age and tenure affect engagement?

What are people in New Tech companies talking about?

This New Tech Benchmark Report 2016 is the first in a series of reports which will be released this year. Upcoming reports will explore links between employee feedback (including text analytics) and other business metrics together with further analyses of role, gender, tenure and age diversity in New Tech companies. We’ll also be releasing, for the first time, Benchmark Reports for Hospitality & Retail; and Professional Services. We’re proud to be working more and more with industries outside New Tech and excited about helping people geeks in these industries to improve employee engagement.

New Tech companies are disruptive. They are internet-based or focused on creating New Technologies.

“



Whether you’re a New Tech company or from another industry, the New Tech Benchmark Report 2016 is relevant reading. Understanding trends across the board can help organizations understand how their data scores compare with other companies in their industry. A finding we see confirmed over and over again in individual client work is that the factors influencing engagement and retention can differ greatly from workplace to workplace, however aggregated and anonymized data can reveal some interesting trends, as you’ll see in this year’s report.

We hope the report is of use to you and your company. If our team at Culture Amp can be of assistance, please get in touch.

people geek /’pi:pel gi:k/(noun)

A People Person typically found in People Operations, Recruitment or Leadership who gets excited about how data and insights can drive a better place to work in.

At Culture Amp we’ve been using the term ‘people geek’ for many years. To us, people geeks are people who spend their days enabling others. People geeks use technology to do this. Since we started Culture Amp, more and more sources, data and analytics have become available to help people geeks help people. We’re here to help you source data, analyze it, and measure the impact of your actions.

Jason McPherson

Chief People Geek Scientist Culture Amp

Buddhi Jayatilleke

Lead Data Scientist Culture Amp

www.cultureamp.com




Anatomy of a New Tech company

number of employees

Average no. of employees

have more than

employee headcount growth

survey response rates

400 75% 100

55%

70%

Average 6 monthly employee growth

Average

35%87% 90%

The top 10% are growing

The top 5% are growing

30% of surveys had a

response rate or higher

every 6 months

every 6 months

At Culture Amp we’re lucky to work with some of the world’s leading New Tech companies. Many of these companies are experiencing rapid growth. It’s fantastic to see them put the same focus on constantly improving their approach to culture and people that they do on other areas of their business. We’ve witnessed how powerful data can be in enabling some of the world’s best thinkers to understand what makes their employees engaged. Using this data, companies can make adjustments and measure the impact of their initiatives – constantly improving or correcting their course.

Many other ‘technology’ benchmarks are based on results from large established technology manufacturers and some are even based on panel samples of people who indicate they work at a ‘technology’ company. Culture Amp’s benchmark data is based on real company data collected with samples that have an average participation rate of 87%.

Participation in our benchmarks is completely confidential with only aggregated and de-identified data used for benchmarking. You can see the types of customers we work with on our website: www.cultureamp.com.

We’ve witnessed how powerful data can be in enabling some of the world’s best thinkers to understand what makes their employees engaged.

“


https://www.cultureamp.com


total funding other external ratings

years since founded and stage

Average

Average age

are at

Younger than 6 years

Late Stage

Younger than 10 years

or acquisition

have exited

via

$115M*

8.5STAGE A, B or C 30%25%

30%

70%

20% IPO

1.5M

to 8B+ #

*This is a trimmed average to remove the influence of extreme outliers

#Based only on companies with known funding and not including unfunded companies

(N.B. Glassdoor average is 3.3)

Average Glassdoor Overall Rating

Average Mattermark Growth Score*

Average Mattermark Mindshare Score*

3.9927312

Data is sourced from a subset of Culture Amp clients who fit the New Tech description. All companies provided consent for data to be used anonymously and in return have access to Culture Amp benchmark data. All data was collected in 2015 and only includes companies with 25 or more employees. Growth and Total Funding information has been sourced from Mattermark.

*Visit www.support.mattermark.com/13622-Scores/growth-score and www.mattermark.com/mattermark-score/ for more details on these metrics.

Anatomy of a New Tech company


https://support.mattermark.com/13622-Scores/growth-score

https://mattermark.com/mattermark-score/

https://mattermark.com/mattermark-score/


ENGAGEMENT

Engagement (as an outcome metric) encapsulates some of the key positive psychological outcomes most companies want for their people. What company leader doesn’t want employees to recommend them, feel motivated and proud, and be focused on staying with the company?

Taking a look at the overall trends in New Tech company engagement scores allows us to see what motivates employees to become engaged or disengaged. It can also flag when there is an overall shift in the employment market or employee expectations.

From 2013 to 2014 we noted a 4% drop in overall Engagement scores, which was primarily due to a significant drop of 12% in employees who could see themselves with their company for a further two years. However, things appear to have stabilized over the last 12 months – we found the largest drop was only 2% and the overall Engagement benchmark was essentially unchanged. Of course these averages hide the fact that some companies did much better than this and some far worse, which we’ll explore later in this report.

What's Changed

*Note on Hooli. Hooli is a fictional New Tech company made famous in the HBO TV parody ‘Silicon Valley’. www.hbo.com/silicon-valley/about

“Hooli isn’t just another high-tech company. Hooli isn’t just about software. Hooli … Hooli is about people. Hooli is about innovative technology that makes a difference. Transforming the world as we know it, making the world a better place through minimal message-oriented transport layers. I firmly believe we can only achieve greatness if first we achieve goodness.” Gavin Belson, CEO, Hooli

Would recommend Hooli* as a great place to work

Motivated to go beyond what they would elsewhere

ENGAGEMENT SCORES

Not thinking about looking for a job elsewhere

Can see themselves still at Hooli in two years’ time

Engagement Score

Proud to work for Hooli

Engagement score

There are a few different ways that Engagement and other survey scores are commonly calculated and presented. This can cause a great deal of confusion when we are making comparisons between results from different sources.

At Culture Amp we recommend using simple and transparent methods so scores can be readily understood and replicated. We ask questions using a five point scale and the top two responses represent agreement and strong agreement. The scores simply represent the percentage of people who have agreed or strongly agreed.

83%

69%

88%

83%

70%

87%

86%

73%

89%

recommend

motivation

pride

future commitment

present commitment56%

57%

71%

58%

58%

71%

58%

70%

75%

201520142013


http://www.hbo.com/silicon-valley/about


NEGATIVE SCORE CHANGES

There were only two standout score drops in the year-on-year data. The largest drop was for perceptions of whether resources were being directed effectively or not. More and more this question is proving to have an impact on engagement scores and it is also often found to be a lead indicator of company performance. These types of questions are designed as a form of crowd-sourcing or on-the-ground ‘people intelligence’. Working to improve these scores can also improve company performance.

The next largest drop related to beliefs in the genuineness of company’s social responsibility initiatives. Walking the talk when it comes to your social responsibility commitments is essential. It may be worth revisiting your communications strategy to ensure that your people are aware of your company’s actions to meet its social responsibilities.

POSITIVE SCORE CHANGES

There were two questions with a change of +3% or more. The first indicated that people were 5% more likely to feel they were supported in the use of flexible working arrangements. This question moved up from an already fairly high level of 75% to 80% approval. Similarly, the second question, relating to improved ratings for managers keeping people informed, moved up from 74% to 77%. Interestingly we often find these questions are not flagged as high-impact questions in terms of increasing engagement levels. One interpretation is that support for flexible working arrangements and being kept informed is becoming ‘normal’ in New Tech companies – so performing well in this area is not considered an advantage.

Believe Hooli effectively directs resources towards company goals (funding, people and effort)

Feel they are genuinely supported if they make use of flexible working arrangements

Largest negative score changes Largest positive score changes

Believe Hooli’s commitment to social responsibility (e.g. community support, sustainability, etc.)

Manager keeps them informed about what is happening

2015 2015 2015 20152014 2014 2014 2014

+5% +3%-6% -3%

61% 61%

74%75%

55%58%

77%80%



KEY DRIVERS OF ENGAGEMENT IN NEW TECH

position question factor

1 Believe that Hooli is a great company for their development

learning and development

2 Believe there are good career opportunities for them at Hooli


3 Have confidence in the leaders at Hooli leadership

4See the leaders at Hooli demonstrate that people are important to the company’s success

leadership

5 Believe that Hooli allows them to make a positive difference

impact and honesty

6 Feel happy with their current role relative to what was described to them


7 Hooli’s leaders have communicated a vision that motivates them leadership

8See day-to-day decisions demonstrating that quality and improvement are top priorities

impact and honesty

9 Believe Hooli is in a position to really succeed over the next three years leadership

10 Experience open and honest two-way communication at Hooli

impact and honesty

We encourage people geeks to view the strongest drivers of engagement in their companies as a group rather than focusing exclusively on the top drivers. This is because, regardless of ranking, any of these factors can drastically increase or decrease engagement levels in a company. With our relative dataset we were able to apply statistical techniques to identify the commonly found themes of Learning and Development, Leadership and a third factor, which we have recently started exploring, termed Impact and Honesty.

Key Drivers of Engagement

Driver analysis is a family of statistical techniques used to determine how strongly variables are related to each other. In the Culture Amp platform, every individual’s responses (to every question) are statistically compared with how they respond to the engagement questions to determine which questions are most strongly related to overall engagement. Importantly, the things a company does very well, or not very well, are not necessarily the things that determine how engaged employees are.



To further understand what makes people feel this way about their companies we need to analyze the factors that impact or drive engagement. To understand what makes people more or less engaged in New Tech companies we analyzed data for 48 separate benchmarked driver questions (across over 150 New Tech companies and 60,000 people) to find the most consistent drivers of engagement. We then factor analyzed the top ten drivers to determine the primary factors or themes driving engagement.

Learning And Development

Learning and Development opportunities remain a high priority for employees. This is regularly reflected in the data we prepare for clients. Importantly, although one of the questions refers to career opportunities within the company (position 2), the other two questions (1 and 6) don’t necessarily simply involve ‘promotion’. Providing an environment where people can develop their skills and managing expectations of job scopes can help increase employee satisfaction in these areas.

Leadership

Whilst it’s often reported in media that an employee’s direct manager has significant impact on their job satisfaction, our analysis consistently reflects that other drivers have more influence. How high-level leaders perform — in shaping and guiding a company’s vision and mission — is often more important than the performance of the leaders people report to. Employees in New Tech companies want leaders they trust and have confidence in (3) and who can provide a vision that people believe in and are motivated by (7). However, in doing these things leaders must also make sure they take people with them and understand their importance and role in achieving success (4).

Impact and Honesty

New Tech attracts some of the most talented and driven employees in the world. The three Impact and Honesty factors which feature strongly in the 2015 data illustrate that satisfying the needs of employees to feel that they are having an impact (5 and 8) and being communicated with honestly (10) are likely to be a top priority for employees and employers going forward.

Key Drivers of Engagement



New Tech companies continue to perform better than other companies in having positive workplace cultures. The largest gaps in engagement were seen in the motivation component, with New Tech employees substantially more likely to feel they’d go beyond for their companies (a full 14% more than professional services employees). In line with previous findings, the smallest gaps were seen in future commitment indicators. New Tech employees scored slightly lower on this than professional services employees. Once again, the data reinforces that despite the higher levels of motivation, recommendation and pride, New Tech employees don’t necessarily intend to stay with their employers. New Tech companies will have to compete and remain vigilant to retain people.

In previous years we have compared New Tech companies with all other industries combined. To mitigate the risk of comparing different types of workplaces we focused this year on comparing with Professional Services companies. We think this contrast is interesting because we are comparing with other types of specialists and knowledge workers with similar numbers of full-time employees.

New Tech vs. Professional Services

Proud to work for Hooli

Would recommend Hooli* as a great place to work

Motivated to go beyond what they would elsewhere

Can see themselves still at Hooli in two years’ time

Overall Engagement Score

Not thinking about looking for a job elsewhere

69%

88%

56%

57%

71%

55%

79%

52%

58%

64%

pride

recommend

motivation

present commitment

future commitment

Professional Services

Professional Services

New Tech

New Tech 83%

74%



Demographic Trends in Engagement Levels

Do role, age, gender and tenure impact engagement levels? There certainly appear to be trends in how engaged different types of people are with the company they work for. We shouldn’t necessarily accept lower engagement scores simply because they follow demographic benchmark data, but context is useful.

As you’ll see, marketers were the least engaged people when classified by role. This is fairly common in companies where people performing these functions can be isolated, but as these groups are often small and autonomous, results tend to vary widely and they can often have very high levels of engagement too – just not on average. The highest engagement was found amongst people in People Operations – which is understandable considering their focus on engagement.

Engagement by Function

Further research also shows that the biggest gaps for these groups are usually on more specific topics. For example, we see engineers are more critical of their own companies’ products and services and action on innovative ideas - issues that may particularly affect them. People Operations teams in contrast are far less happy with the level of communication and understanding how their work contributes to the company’s goals.

Tenure is where we see some of the largest variations across engagement scores - beginning with a ‘honeymoon’ period in the first three months and then steadily declining until reaching a bottom somewhere between two and six years, with a slight recovery at around 10+years. What this means is that age and indeed many other factors are intimately tied up with these tenure-based impacts.

QUICKTIP Some companies focus on a single measure, such as an employee Net Promoter Score (eNPS) or employee satisfaction score to ascertain their company’s performance in engaging its people. As you can see from our results, even if a good engagement score is reported, there can be significant areas for improvement which don’t present in limited measurement.

It’s a good idea to not rely on a single eNPS or satisfaction outcome question, but to complement this with other questions on topics such as pride, motivation and commitment. As well as providing a broader outcome measure, using more than one question also increases statistical reliability.

People Operations

Support

Sales

Engineering

Legal/Finance

Marketing

74%

71%

70%

68%

68%

64%

85%

79%

74%

67%

62%

62%

63%

66%

< 3 months

3-6 months

6-12 months

1-2 years

2-4 years

4-6 years

6-10 years

10+ years



Engagement by Age Group

Despite reports in the media that millennials are much unhappier at work than other generations* our data suggests that the situation is not really that simple. 18-24 year olds are actually more engaged than 25-34 year olds and neither of these groups is really that different from the 35-44 year old group. There appears to be a slight increase in engagement levels once we hit the 45 year old plus groups but all of these results are also somewhat muddied by the affect of tenure.

Generally, the right people are rewarded and recognized at Hooli

Engagement Score

At Hooli there is open and honest two-way communication

Workloads are divided fairly among people where I work

Engagement by Gender

Although there were only minimal gender differences in overall Engagement levels, this can often mask the existence of substantive differences in other areas. This is true for any overall group comparison. For example, looking into the gender data we can identify areas where there are more substantive differences in responses from males and females – most noticeably in the three questions in the graph relating to recognition, honest communication and fair distribution of work.

Females to Male Gap

-2

-9

-9

-8

67%

difference

Female

Female

Male

Male

66%

64%

46%55%

57%

56%

69%

70%

67%

69%

73%

73%

75%

18-24

25-34

35-44

45-54

55-64

65+

* e.g. http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/why-are-millennials-so-unhappy-at-work.html

Demographic Trends in Engagement Levels



We know that employee engagement impacts productivity and retention, and is often an indicator that the business is underperforming overall – but what is the real difference between the success of companies with the most and least engaged employees?

We took a look at some trends and as you can see, companies with scores in the top 10% of engagement scores significantly outperformed those with the bottom 10% of engagement scores. Whether the engagement scores are a result of underperformance, or underperformance a result of lack of engagement remains to be seen, but in any case, it’s worth measuring your company’s performance and taking action to engage employees.

What Difference Does it Make?

91%

1726 4.3351 3.1

80% 40%48%

Top 10% vs Bottom 10% Companies

The biggest gaps in their Culture Amp scores

The smallest gaps in their Culture Amp scoresVS

VS VS

more likely to recommend their company as a great place to work

Effectively directing resources towards company goals

Leaders who inspire confidence

Leaders that demonstrate people are important to the company’s success

Leaders that communicate a motivating vision

People feel they can make a positive difference

People feeling supported to use flexible work practices

Being able to arrange time out from work when necessary

Managers that provide useful performance feedback

Managers that care about people’s wellbeing

People knowing what they need to do to be successful in their rolehigher

Glassdoor CEO approval rating

top 10% companies

average mattermark growth score

average glassdoor satisfaction rating

engagement score

+45

+5

+39

+5

+36

+7

+36

+9

+35

+11

Top 10%

Top 10%

Bottom 10%

Bottom 10%

77%

88%

85%

86%

89%

32%

49%

50%

54%

76%

83%

83%

71%

88%

71%

78%

76%

62%

77%

49%



The Culture Amp platform allows people to make comments in response to specific survey questions and respond to free text questions. In addition to survey response data we also collect thousands of comments every week from New Tech employees. Here are some of the key trends we found across 500,000+ comments.

What are New Tech Employees Saying?

People are more likely to comment on questions they are negative about People who gave a negative response to a question were around seven times more likely to provide a comment on the question than those who were positive (11.3% versus 1.6%). The percentage of favorable scores among people who made comments were, at an average, 57% less than that of the population scores, across all questions.

The least contentious issue was pride in the companyThe question with the smallest score difference compared to the overall benchmark score was: “I am proud to work for Hooli” with 19% less favorable answers than the average.

People between two – four years tenure make the most commentsOne in four people in this tenure group made at least one comment. (The next most common frequent commenters were people who had been at the company for one – two years with just under one in five making at least one comment.) The most comments from people who had been at the company for two – four years were on the question: “Most people here make a good effort to consult other staff where appropriate.” They were more negative than average in their response to this question. Commenters in this group had the least negative scores for the question “I am proud to work for Hooli” followed by “My manager genuinely cares about my wellbeing”.

The most contentious issue was evaluation of job performanceThe question with the largest negative score difference among commenters, compared to the overall benchmark score was: “My job performance is evaluated fairly” with 53% less favorable answers than the average.

People comment more on tangible things The top three questions most commented on were:

– Our physical workspace is enjoyable to work in;

– Most of the systems and processes here support us getting our work done effectively; and

– I believe my total compensation (base salary + any bonuses + benefits + equity) is fair, relative to similar roles at other companies.

Interestingly these things did not show up as key drivers of Engagement. It seems these are more likely issues that a certain group of people may be vocally negative about.

Female respondents are more likely to comment21% of the female respondents and 17% of the male respondents made a comment on a question.

60% 2Xoverall response rate to open comment questions

as long as positive comments

Negative comments are

Our two most commonly used open text questions

key trends across open comment questions

Are there some things we are doing great here?

Are there some things we are not doing so great here?


www.cultureamp.com New Tech Benchmark Report 15

Understanding Trends in Comments

Love the culture, love how much we care about working together well - sample comment from the “people, place

and culture” cluster

Most frequent terms found in “people, place and culture” question comments cluster.

“We use statistical clustering techniques to analyze and group open comments into common themes. However, to provide proper context for comments we always link these to quantitative survey data so that we can more fully understand the context of the group of people who are commenting – this is where text analytics becomes a powerful addition to your survey data. We can then more fully understand the likely sentiment and associated trends behind the comments.

Here’s an example of what we found for our two most commonly used open text questions.

People

Flexibility

Value

Personal

Informed

Departments

Energy

Fact

Sta�

Easy

High

Home

Valued

World

Atmosphere

O�ce

Happy

Amazing

Nice

Together

MeetingsFriendly

Hours

CommunityValues

Family

Activities

Important

Balance

Goals

Fantastic

Leadership

Open

Genuinely

Social

Excited

Group

Smart

Helps

Big

Wonderful

Whole

Care

Building

Coworkers

Helpful

Members

Mission

Management

ProudEnvironment

Truly

Helping

TransparencyLife

Believe

Feel

Positive

Awesome

Best

Di�erent

AppreciateEvents

Enjoy

Hard

Work

Culture

Fun

Everyone

Team

Love

PlaceAre there some things we are doing great here?Comments about “people, place and culture” made up the largest cluster (20% of the responses) when people were asked what their company was doing great. People who commented on this question also had more positive responses to survey questions overall.

www.cultureamp.com




When it is clear that someone is not delivering in their role we do something about it

Hooli's commitment to social responsibility (e.g. community support, sustainability, etc.) is genuine

I see myself still working at Hooli in two years' time

We are genuinely supported if we choose to make use of flexible working arrangements

I am happy with my current role relative to what was described to me

+18

+16

+16

+13

+12

Benchmark

Cluster Score

Respondents were particularly positive about things such as poor performance being addressed and social accountability (see chart). The other main comment clusters we identified related to business direction, hiring processes, product, communication, benefits and training opportunities. Clearly some companies are getting these things right for many people.

“People, Place And Culture” Comment Cluster

Areas where people who made comments on the 'people, place and culture' cluster were most positive relative to people who didn't comment on questions in this cluster.


People

Culture

Place58%

57%

80%

72%

48%66%

74%

73%

93%

84%


www.cultureamp.com

Are there some things we are not doing so great here?The largest comment cluster for this question was centered around “management and leadership” (21% of the responses). Importantly, the use of the term management was more often, but not always, referring to higher management or leadership at a broader level than referring to the respondent's immediate manager.

We are not data focused enough and decisions are based more on what management thinks- sample comment from the “management

and leadership” cluster

“

QUICKTIP We recommend allowing respondents the opportunity to add comments to the quantitative survey questions as well as asking open-ended questions. This ensures that people can provide targeted thoughts prompted by quantitative questions (which are then linked to these responses) and that they can provide further comments and or tackle additional topics at the end of the survey. With these open-ended comment questions we recommend asking people something open but specific to get the best response rates and richer comments. For example, you’ll get a richer data if you ask ‘Is there one thing we could do to improve?’ versus asking if they have ‘any additional comments’.

Current

Processes

Lead

Meetings

Knowledge

Aren’t

Important

Resources

Poor

Direction

Certain

Bad

Position

Last

GrowthLess

Senior

Find

Focus

Understand

Leaders

Clear

Feels

Positions

Di�cult

Move

Sales

Members

Culture

Organisation

Everyone

Believe

Structure

Issues

Years

Times

Help

Hard

Doesn’t

Experience

Given

Top

Sta�

Support

Best

Enough

Di�erent

Business

Getting

Place

Little

Feedback

Process

Lack

Hiring

Right

Level

Department

Project

Leadership

Role

Decision

Management

Team

Manager

Communication

Trust

Goals

Leads Number

Told

Talent

Hire

Example

New Tech Benchmark Report 17


Most frequent terms found in “management and leadership” comment cluster

www.cultureamp.com




I would recommend Hooli as a great place to work

At Hooli there is open and honest two- way communication

The leaders at Hooli have communicated a vision that motivates me

The leaders at Hooli demonstrate that people are important to the company's success

I have confidence in the leaders at Hooli

-13

-12

-11

-9

-8

Benchmark

Cluster Score

Areas where people who commented on questions in the 'management and leadership' cluster were most negative relative to people who did not comment on questions in that cluster.

People who commented on questions in the 'management and leadership' cluster were more likely to give lower scores for leadership questions as opposed to immediate manager questions (see chart below).

The other main clusters identified related to product, culture and office, compensation, communication, goals and vision, career development and training opportunities.

“Management and Leadership” Comment Cluster

Leadership

Management


68%

69%

73%

75%

83%

56%

58%

64%

67%

70%



As New Tech companies evolve and understand the value of engaging people, we’ve been thrilled to see how leaders use data in decision making. Finally the overwhelming feeling of ‘analysis paralysis’ is subsiding and we’re seeing companies use surveys and data as part of a measured approach to improvement across the board.

There are five major trends we’ve seen arise that we anticipate will continue into 2016.

1. Companies are responding to results with a sense of urgency. They are taking action to correct or improve results and re-measuring to understand whether they’ve hit their target.

2. They’re designing better surveys and using the results. There’s less continuous pulsing and single-question type surveys (e.g. single eNPS surveys) and more surveys tailored to the task – so that the feedback received is used. While getting ongoing feedback can be useful and fun at times, we found in the past that some organizations didn’t have time to utilize the insights and that respondents could tire of responding when they were unsure what was happening with the data.

3. Companies are using a mix of different surveys throughout the yearly cycle and using their results to drive the content of the surveys. A common mix is an annual engagement survey followed by pulse surveys focusing on questions set aside for action and additional questions to understand the topic and feedback on the actions chosen. We’re also seeing these pulses coupled with topical survey elements on other initiatives. These approaches help keep the survey programme alive as part of an intelligent conversation with people.

4. We are also seeing a welcome rise in companies providing creative ways in which their people can become part of providing input and ideas for responding to the survey results. These companies view surveys as just a part of the way that the organization uses feedback to learn. They see working and experimenting together on how to utilise feedback is itself a meaningful and positive experience for the organization.

5. The final trend, mentioned last year also, is companies looking to understand the relationship between survey data and other workforce data such as retention, performance ratings, training attendance, customer satisfaction and sales.

Trends for 2016



We hope our New Tech Benchmark Report 2016 has been informative. We’ve certainly enjoyed putting it together and reflecting on the lessons learned from all of the data collected and analyzed in 2015.

Whilst many lessons can be taken from this data, it’s important to note that we are constantly reminded that each company we work with has different data – what is very important to employees at one organization can often be less important to employees at the next. The purpose of Culture Amp is to give people geeks all of the information and insights they need to understand where their company stands, where there are red flags and how the impact of actions taken can be measured.

Benchmark data is important in understanding where your company sits against its competitors – but your unique company data will be most important in informing your strategy. Culture Amp clients have access to a range of finer grained benchmarks and data to help them contextualize what is happening within their company in greater detail.

Putting it all Together for Your Company

Customers will never love a company until the employees love it first@simonsinek

How do you compare?www.cultureamp.com/benchmark2016

“ Dr Jason McPherson, B.Psych(Honors), PhD

Jason has been using, designing and analyzing surveys for over 15 years, and his research has been published in the American Psychological Association’s key methodology journals. Previously a founding member of the workplace survey team of Kenexa Australia and APAC Research Consultant for Towers Watson, Jason has a PhD in Psychology and has experience in cognitive assessments as well as survey statistics and methodologies.

About the Authors

Dr Buddhi Jayatilleke, PhD

Prior to Culture Amp, Buddhi was a Senior Research Fellow for a government-funded big data project extracting information from Twitter streams using advanced text analytics. Buddhi holds a PhD in Computer Science and a Master of Software Systems Engineering. Buddhi brings in over 10 years of experience in applied research, having designed and developed software for enterprise search, e-commerce and mobile applications. Buddhi’s academic research has covered intelligent software agents, text mining and predictive analytics.

www.cultureamp.com


https://www.cultureamp.com/benchmark2016


Documents

New Tech Benchmark Report 2016 - Culture Amp People Analytics from New Tech companies 2016 | New Tech Benchmark Report 3 Whether you’re a New Tech company or from another industry,