8 Quantum Workplace Tools for Building Relationships at Work

Building relationships at work is one of the most important pieces of an engaging employee experience. Employees desire to create meaningful connections with their peers and managers—and doing so increases engagement and performance.

In fact, employee satisfaction increases nearly 50% when a worker develops a close relationship on the job.

Organizations must create environments that encourage employees to form bonds with coworkers and managers. That includes providing tools that create meaningful interactions without slowing productivity.

You might be using one or a few of the following tools and tactics, but you should move toward a strategy that includes all of them. Quantum Workplace helps you integrate these approaches and their resulting data to take relationships and engagement to the next level.

1. Annual Engagement Survey

An annual engagement survey benefits everyone in the organization. Employees can voice honest opinions about their workplace — confidentially and with an equal amount of weight and influence as their peers. Honest feedback can drive positive and meaningful change.

Employers learn the whole truth about what’s going on in their workplace — good, bad, or ugly. They get access to invaluable employee feedback quickly and efficiently. Detailed reports and analytics enable leaders to see what’s working and what’s not. They can use insights to create the necessary strategic plans to increase engagement across the organization.

2. Pulse Surveys

Pulse surveys are fast, easy-to-implement surveys designed to collect lightweight employee opinions. They can collect feedback on any topic, launch at any time, and be sent to any employee. They're a stress-free way for leaders and managers to collect tons of actionable and real-time employee feedback. Smart organizations use pulse surveys to:

• Assess engagement levels throughout the year 
• Track progress on engagement initiatives 
• Evaluate leadership accountability  
• Create ad hoc polls 
• Gather feedback before, during, and after change

3. Lifecycle Surveys

Lifecycle surveys measure employee perceptions at a specific point in their tenure. They provide a unique opportunity to better understand employee perceptions at key milestones. Here are examples of critical moments in the employee journey when a lifecycle survey can help you capture valuable data and strengthen relationships in your organization:

• A job candidate completes the application or interview process
• A new hire arrives for their first day
• An employee celebrates their fifth anniversary
• An employee resigns

4. One-on-One Meetings

One-on-one meetings are foundational to relationships in the workplace. They provide valuable opportunities for managers and employees to connect and align on performance. These meetings also allow managers to collect honest, direct, real-time employee feedback.

Encourage managers to use one-on-one meetings to dig into findings from other data sources. For example, if a manager’s team scored low in communication and resources, they should investigate this area with team members. How do employees prefer communication? Through what channels? How often? What suggestions do they have for improvement?

5. Employee Feedback

Great companies are built on trust, and trusting cultures are built on feedback. Regular feedback builds strong relationships by encouraging continuous and transparent performance dialogue. There are many uses for feedback in your organization that can help you improve, such as:

• New hire feedback: at 30, 60, and 180 days
• Milestone feedback: after a lateral move, promotion, or for a first-time manager
• Exit feedback: from an exiting employee and their peers
• 360 feedback: from an employee’s manager, peers, and direct reports
• Upward feedback: from direct reports
• Peer-to-peer feedback: from one team member to another
• Project feedback: related to a specific project

6. Employee Recognition

Receiving recognition is a top driver of employee engagement. Openly acknowledging and praising employee behavior or achievements offers many benefits, such as:

• Increased productivity
• Increased engagement
• Decreased turnover
• Improved company culture

There are many ways to recognize employees, but one of the most effective is public, peer-to-peer, real-time recognition. This type of recognition helps organizations celebrate, motivate, and engage teams across the organization.

7. Goal Setting and Tracking

The most successful people and organizations set goals to reach success. Goals help people and organizations achieve more, faster, with less. Goals can be a powerful tool in your organization and provide many benefits, such as:

• Shared alignment: Goals unite employees, managers, and leaders around a common purpose.
• Performance motivation: Goals motivate, inspire, and fuel higher performance.
• Clear direction: Goals provide guidance for how employees should spend their time.
• Effective evaluation: Goals help measure success.

8. Talent Reviews

Talent decisions should be based on credible data that is easy to access, understand, and act upon. Managers, leadership, and HR should have clear visibility into the organization’s talent pipeline and make informed decisions on how to keep and develop key talent.

Consider optimizing your talent review process with technology that makes ongoing data collection and analysis easier. This allows you to be more agile, more collaborative, and to make data-based decisions in real-time.

Finding a platform that helps you integrate these approaches and their resulting data will help take relationships and engagement to the next level. Download our Employee Engagement Program Models guide to find the right pathway for your organization.