How data can unearth what your employees really think

Employee burnout, stress and engagement is top of mind to every communicator.

Pulse surveys and check-ins are helpful tools to determine how your employees think and feel about a range of issues going on in the world today, and how your organization is responding to them.

While important, those methods tell part of the story.

“In those situations, you’re only going to be able to get the insights that employees are willing to share with you point blank,” says Betsy Sewell, head of marketing at Aware, a company that analyzes the data from Microsoft Teams, Yammer, Slack, and Workplace from Facebook.

Those platforms are intended to help employees communicate and collaborate digitally—critical for remote workforces—but offer areas where employees can chat based on interest groups, for instance.

“It’s where these employees now are going to have their water cooler conversations,” Sewell says

By having those conversations in digital form, there’s a wealth of data at your fingertips to derive insights. “Every day you can plug in and see how things are trending. It allows the data points to drive decisions making rather than gut or anecdotes,” she says.