Futurum Research defines the employee experience (EX) technology ecosystem rather broadly, encompassing a variety of solution types to support an end-to-end employee journey.
Recognition and rewards are an important and sometimes overlooked factor in job satisfaction and engagement, having not only an impact on work performance, attrition rates, and turnover costs, but also overall viewpoint on life, wellbeing, and the feeling of connectedness an employee has with their employer. However, recognition must feel authentic, equitable, and personal.
Navin Jain, product evangelist at Workhuman, recently demoed the platform for me and I was able to see some of the unique features of the solution. Workhuman iQ Analytics and Inclusion Advisor were two capabilities of particular interest. Jain has spent the first 5 years of his time at Workhuman managing the core part of Workhuman Cloud, the Social Recognition product, which includes creating, giving, and approving recognition as well as a few other features such as the unconscious bias detector (Inclusion Advisor). For the past 2 years, Jain has been an overall product evangelist for Workhuman Cloud.
Related Article: 5 Questions with Zoe Peterson-Ward, Chief Customer Officer, Workhuman
Tying Corporate Purpose to Recognition and Making Rewards Meaningful
Workhuman offers a fairly robust platform that can showcase a newsfeed where employees can socialize recognition moments and good work that is occurring across the organization. Using WorkCircles technology, the platform becomes personalized based on interactions, making the newsfeed more relevant to each employee. Employees can add media, such as GIFs and videos, to enhance the impact and engagement with the recognition moments. All recognition and rewards programs can be consolidated into this one platform. The platform is highly configurable with branding and award categories.
Companies are still struggling with employee engagement, which is often tied to a feeling of belonging or purpose. A positive feature of the platform is the ability to incorporate corporate values that are tied to different award categories. The nominator can choose from these categories, making sure that the recognition aligns with the company’s core values.
“Companies can choose different corporate values based on the contribution to the recognition moment. If they don’t know what to choose, we can give them a quick five question survey that will give advice on what to recognize with what attached value,” says Jain.
Jain emphasized that a successful program needs to go beyond “thumbs up” and words of gratitude and that monetary rewards do need to be part of it. Monetary rewards can be adjusted for where the person lives in the world. The important piece is that the choice is usually in the employee’s hands so that it can be meaningful.
Inclusion Advisor Helps Detect Bias
One of the features I found particularly interesting was the inclusion bias detection tool. Workhuman research has found that implicit bias can be found in 20-30% of all written communications in the workplace. When people compose a recognition message, they can opt to have it reviewed for unconscious bias. Using machine learning (ML), the tool can scan the text and provide feedback and recommendations to promote more inclusive, positive, and unbiased language.
Initial Award Message
Nominator Chooses to Have Inclusion Advisor Review Message
“Inclusion Advisor is really an opportunity for nominators to think about messages they write and the language they use. It’s optional and completely private to the user. In this example, Roberta is written about as being demanding. Now, the colleague group I’m giving this recognition to may understand what I mean when I say she is demanding, but the advisor puts this in a negative light because if someone else saw this in the newsfeed they may come away with a negative opinion of Roberta. If they’re assigned to work with her on a project, they may have a preconceived bias when that was not the writer’s intent at all,” says Jain.
According to Workhuman, over 3 million employees are now using Inclusion Advisor and it has been adopted in employee recognition programs by companies such as Merck, LinkedIn, and Cisco.
Workhuman iQ App
The Workhuman iQ App is still in development but represents an advancement in using data analytics to drive insights to promote a more inclusive and informed organization.
“Workhuman has a team that consists of individuals with various skill sets such as psychologists, data scientists, and I/O experts (Industrial & Organizational). They serve multiple purposes within the organization. They form the NLP team, responsible for driving machine learning through natural language processing and they also conduct people analytics on a regular basis, reviewing customer data and providing insights. Recently, our Product Management and Engineering teams have been focusing on integrating these insights directly into our platform through an application called Workhuman iQ. This allows for real-time data analysis and provides valuable information that would be impossible for an individual to process alone,” says Jain.
Workhuman iQ can alert users to any changes in program activities by comparing current and historical data. This could include shifts in recognition between different departments that might require further investigation. It can also analyze recognition patterns, and with gender information provided by customers, IQ can identify disparities in recognition between genders that can form a basis for future discussions and actions.
Although still in development, some features of Workhuman iQ are currently available to customers in the early access phase. The platform will be rolled out in phases throughout the year, eventually becoming accessible to all customers.
Overall, it was a very interesting demo from Workhuman, which made it easier to see how the end user of the platform would be able to use this not only as a positive tool in their EX technology set, but also to put action into place in a more timely, focused, and personalized manner.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Image source: Workhuman
Author Information
As a detail-oriented researcher, Sherril is expert at discovering, gathering and compiling industry and market data to create clear, actionable market and competitive intelligence. With deep experience in market analysis and segmentation she is a consummate collaborator with strong communication skills adept at supporting and forming relationships with cross-functional teams in all levels of organizations.
She brings more than 20 years of experience in technology research and marketing; prior to her current role, she was a Research Analyst at Omdia, authoring market and ecosystem reports on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and User Interface technologies. Sherril was previously Manager of Market Research at Intrado Life and Safety, providing competitive analysis and intelligence, business development support, and analyst relations.
Sherril holds a Master of Business Administration in Marketing from University of Colorado, Boulder and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Rutgers University.
