Human Dynamics at Work

It is well understood that the human dynamics within an organisation are critical to performance and help drive long-term value.

Human dynamics as a field includes key variables such as employee productivity and engagement, strength of community, attraction and retention, culture, leadership, performance management and even innovation. While every business understands the value of getting things right in these areas it can be challenging to grasp and manage them effectively and to track performance over time. The reason is that unlike areas like sales, customer engagement and cost there is often a lack of hard data to facilitate the analysis.

Given the ongoing importance our clients place on their people and the management challenges involved in gripping this important strategic area, we have invested in a significant programme of research over the last ten years to develop a model which our clients can use to manage human dynamics. The programme is called 360° ORG VIEW. It allows firms to understand the drivers of employee productivity, organisational social capital (strength of community) and CULTURE in their organisations and drive improved performance. An initial online employee survey (NOT an engagement survey) gathers the diagnostic data necessary for the analysis and computation of benchmark scores in the key areas of human dynamics performance.

The diagnosis supports the development of bespoke interventions designed to drive performance upwards. Regular (annual) pulse surveys then provide the data to track progress and enables a continuous improvement approach.

Five key steps

1. Survey employees

2. Analyse survey results

   • Produce benchmark scores

   • Full diagnostics package

3. Leadership review

   • Leadership workshop to review diagnostics, benchmark scores, identify key performance ‘gaps’ and drivers of improved performance

4. Strategic imperatives

   • Agree and build-out of up to five primary action plans to drive human dynamics scores up

5. Pulse survey

   • Focused repeat surveys to assess impact of priority action plans and drive a successful continuous improvement programme

360° Org View explained

• The three elements that make up our 360˚ ORG-VIEW survey have been designed with input from leading academics and experts, examining both psychological / emotional factors as well as functional ones

• Each element is made up of a number of drivers (for instance, four contribute to social capital). Each driver is explored within the survey through a number of different statements where respondents state how strongly or not they agree with them

• Scores for each statement are calculated, which in turn are used to create a score for each driver. From this, a composite score for each element (effectiveness, social capital & culture) is calculated. The minimum score is 0, the maximum 100

• Examining an organisation’s culture requires a bespoke examination, designing the drivers and statements around the specific behaviours a business is seeking to “inject”

• The survey is carried out by employees online, following a simple website link. It takes no more than 5 minutes. All individual surveys are confidential with data analysis carried out off-site by forward thinking inc

• The data allows you to establish a human dynamics BENCHMARK, identify and address key issue and opportunity areas (the data can be cut by organisational / demographic subsets) and track and report on progress against objectives every 6 or 12 months. You are able to drive scores up systematically, increasing the value of your business and the effectiveness of every employee. It provides the data to support delivery of a clear strategic people plan and clear ‘line of sight’ across critical performance management drivers

Key benefits

• 360° Org View helps organisations to grip and drive performance improvements in the human dynamics of their organisation

• Supports a data driven, evidence based approach to continuous improvement

• Finally a tool with which to measure and influence the key soft value drivers for your business

For more information on how a 360° Org View programme could work for your organisation, contact Zoe at zoe.e@forwardthinkinginc.com.