Handling the #GreatAttrition using eLockr Surveys

March 3: Organizations across the globe, from startups to blue-chip organizations to large conglomerates, are all experiencing unprecedented attrition across multiple levels in the workforce. This phenomenon is being commonly referred to as the #GreatAttrition and is significantly being attributed to the pandemic.

Even though the global pandemic may be the primary cause for the #GreatAttrition, leaders across the industries have been curious about reasons that have triggered a mass employee exodus from their organization. Ex-employee surveys with a well-designed methodology thus have gained importance to understand an ex-employee’s perception of the ex-employer.

eLockr Surveys is a tech-enabled solution rolled by OnGrid, a leading background verification platform, and ex-employee verification automation platform. While the core objective of eLockr Surveys is to collect feedback from employees who have left and to derive insights on what prompted them to leave, it’s the design of methodology that makes all the difference. The two key design principles are:

• Ex-employee filling up the survey without any fear of consequences
• Understanding relative score of the organization, as compared to other organizations

The hypothesis behind the first design principle of eLockr surveys is that employees may be more candid in their responses once they have settled in their new organizations, as opposed to exit interviews on the last day when they are yet to get their experience letters and full and final settlement from the previous employer. Anonymity while filling up the survey will add another layer of authenticity to the responses. The responses from ex-employees, along with high level insights, can form the backbone of bringing about change in the company that focuses on people, who are the real drivers of organizational growth.

eLockr survey is designed to capture qualitative and quantitative responses on below 8 parameters:

• Career growth
• Compensation and benefits
• Culture and environment
• Leadership that you can trust
• Relationship with manager
• Training and personal growth
• Vision and mission
• Work-life balance

The ex-employees are subjected to the survey post their full and final settlements (typically 30-45 days after exit). The eLockr surveys follow key principles of a robust reputation system by exposing only registered ex-employees to fill in the survey while maintaining ex-employee anonymity. Ex-employees give a rating across the 8 parameters listed above.

The second key design principle is that the organization not only knows their own average scores across the 8 parameters (and aggregate scores), but also where they stand viz-a-viz other organizations. For example, Organization A may have an average score of 4.1 out of 5 on the “Culture and environment” parameter, which may look great at the outset. However, they may learn that their percentile on the same parameter is only 50, i.e. half the organizations participating on the eLockr survey network have fared better than Organization A, as rated by their ex-employees.

In summary, eLockr survey output is a survey score and a percentile to show organizations their relative position w.r.t. key parameters that matter most to their ex-employees.

Once 50 ex-employees have rated their ex-employers (say 100 ex-employers participating on the eLockr network), the insights will start making a lot of statistical sense for organizations to take meaningful actions to contain the #GreatAttrition.

How to start usingeLockr surveys?

eLockr Surveys are really easy to use. Any organization can issue exit credentials of ex-employees (really as simple as putting together the name, employee ID, date of joining, last working date, etc. in excel). The communication tokens (mobile or email ID) available in the exit credentials are used to prompt the ex-employee for filling up the survey form.

In addition to standard questions asked on the eLockr Surveys platform, organizations have the provision to add custom questions as per their requirements.

The survey can take 2 minutes to 10 minutes, depending on additional questions that an organization has configured. eLockr Surveys are free for the first 50-surveys, and they come with many other free benefits of the eLockr platform (ex-employee verification process, attrition insights, etc.)

 Understanding the real reasons for attrition is already contributing to a huge win by HR leaders, especially when they huddle with the organization leadership (CXOs) in planning and executing people-related policies and interventions.