A beautiful strategy fails without data
We live off of data. Without data we’re left with just the belief, that we’re doing the right thing, and that our business is moving in the desired direction. But allow us to now quote Winston Churchill:
– Winston Churchill
Data can give you the final answer on where you stand and where you’re going. Data can be interpreted and explained, but the numbers don’t lie.
Of course you have budgets, bottom lines and a lot of other parametres to measure on. But we also measure learning, motivation and engagement. Our experience tells us that these to different indicators – motivation and bottom lines – often go hand in hand.
Employee data and statistics
Academy is built to register all activity on the system, so you quickly can access statistics and follow your employees development.
Does the kitchen know the new dishes? Do the sales staff remember the most important USPs? When the Manager is looking in on the team, everything might seem in order, but the insights from Academy can quickly tell you how everything looks even when the Manager isn’t looking over anyones shoulders.
Academy can tell you exactly how active your employees are, how often they repeat certifications and where they often make mistakes, so you can focus your energy where it matters.
Stay on top of your data
All Managers on Academy have access to a Dashboard. In this Dashboard they have direkt access to view statistics on all their employees – on everything from who has read news posts to who has signed up for events.
This data can be exported to a .csv file, which can be opened in, for example, Excel, if you want to get nerdy with it. But most importantly they give a quick overview on a busy workday.
Our Dashboard can be set so different Managers have access to different insights. This way your Managers can be presented with exactly the data they need.
Academy can tell you exactly how active your employees are, how often they repeat certifications and where they often make mistakes, so you can focus your energy where it matters.
One more time for Prince Knud
Yes, poor Knud. The idiom above refers to a Danish prince, who unfortunately got known for being a bit slow and needed information repeated. But if Prince Knud had had an Academy system, his superiors could easily identify exactly where Knud got stuck and intervene with focused information campaigns, so Knud got the right support to become a confident and motivated prince.
We might have taken the allegory a bit far there, but the point is there. If you have an overview of exactly what your employees excel at, where they lack information, and to be a bit meta: where your news posts and certifications hit the mark and where they miss, you can continue doing what actually works and alter the campaigns that don’t.
To continue down a path that doesn’t improve neither employee skills or budget numbers is a waste of resources. But it can be hard to know whether you’re doing it right or wrong without an overview of the progress and the option to continuously see if the numbers go up or down.
What employee data is available at the Academy platform?
We have provided a few examples, but let’s get down and dirty. Let’s say you’ve launched a campaign to inform your employees on a new product. Let’s call the product the Ultimate Data Collector 5000.
To ensure that all employees are ready to sell the new Ultimate Data Collector 5000, you have put together a campaign consisting of the following:
- 1 certification on the product a month before launch
- 3 news posts about the launch; 1 a month before, 1 a week before, and 1 on the launch date
- 1 product page on the product
- Graphics on the system to lead users to the information
So far, so good. You have a beautiful strategy and believe that your employees will now get all the information they need.
But to be sure you follow-up through your Dashboard, where you look at the statistics for the certification after the first week:
Hmmm. This could be going better. But you now have important information about what the campaign is lacking to ensure that you reach your goal before the product is launched.
What do you do with these numbers?
You need to get the rest of the users on the system and to take the certification and read the news posts, and you need to inform the users about the price better. When you know this, you can for example:
- Send a text directly from Academy to the users to inform them about the campaign on the system
- Write a news post focusing on the price and give it extra focus on the front page
- Include a badge with the certification to reward users who complete it
When you check back a week later, you can see if your new strategy has worked. We’re not saying that Academy is a golden ticket, which will ensure that all your employees will become experts in your products, just like that.
But Academy makes it possible for you to find out exactly what works, and what doesn’t – and from this learn and improve the way you inform and educate your employees, so you’ll soon have that golden ticket in your hand: experience and insights (and of course a system which provides you with both, and which also contains the best framework for learning and seeking information).
Use Academy as a HR tool
Besides the option for Managers to keep tabs on how many employees have completed a certain certification or read relevant news posts, the head office can also follow the general progress.
Instead of visiting all departments with the same routine, Academy provides you with insights on exactly what each departments needs, so you can use your resources where it matters.
You can see which departments (be it stores, restaurants or others) who are performing well, and which might need a helping hand. If a department is falling behind, it might be caused by trouble among the employees or due to a Manager not being fully informed.
In stead of visiting all departments with the same routine, Academy provides you with insights on exactly what each departments needs, so you can use your resources where it matters.
Engagement and motivation
We have written about engagement and the Engagement score before. This is the simplest indicator for how active each user, and whole departments, are.
The Engagement score is calculated using an algorithm which combines everything from time spent online, completed certifications, read news posts and social interactions to the time from call to action to action and achievements earned. But you simply get a number on a scale from 1-100, which tells you how it is.
More than a feeling
Besides having Academy collect data on how things are going on the system, you can also use features on the system to gather even more insights. Can you ever get enough data? No, we didn’t think so.
Our Survey module can be used to build Workplace Assesments, which can be sent to all employees, so you ensure that all information is kept in one place and get the red tape dealt with on the system. You can also use surveys to measure employee satisfaction, get feedback on specific campaigns or simply do a poll on which theme to use for the office party. You can reward employees with points for answering surveys – and you can of course make sure it’s all anonymous.
GDPR is under control, obviously
When we’re spilling our guts on collecting data, it’s important to point out that both A Close Shave and Academy is fully GDPR-compliant.
This means that we do not collect data without accept, and that all the data we collect on user activity is available to the users themselves on the system. But the complete overview is of course only visible to Management.
