HR Tech: Future Of Employee Feedback

Welcome to the Vantage HR Influencers Podcast. This podcast is sponsored by Vantage Circle, the simple and AI-powered rewards and recognition platform for employee engagement. Employee feedback is the compass guiding organizational growth, offering valuable insights that fuel improvement. In its essence, it is the bridge between aspirations and achievements, shaping a culture of continuous enhancement in the workplace.

Hello, listeners. You're tuned in to the Vantage Influencers Podcast, I'm your host, Susmita, and joining me is Tarek Kamil, the CEO and founder at Cerkl, as we unravel the dynamic landscape of HR technology when it comes to employee feedback, exploring how it is reshaping the way organizations connect with their workforce.

Susmita Sarma: Hi, Tarek. Welcome to the show.

Tarek Kamil: Thank you. It's great to finally meet you.

Susmita Sarma: Yes, definitely, Tarek. So, before we start with the list of questions and points that we have lined up today, it would be great if we can connect with you on a more personal level and understand the exciting work that you do. So, would you like to share a bit about your journey and background, Tarek? And of course, we'd love to know about Cerkl too.

Tarek Kamil: Sure. Yes, happy to. So, I'm Tarek Kamil, I'm the CEO and founder of a company called Cerkl. It's spelled C-E-R-K-L. And the idea behind Cerkl is that employee communication shouldn't just be one way. We learn a lot about our employees and our workforce by how they respond to our communication. So, hence, a feedback loop and the idea of a circle. And so, that's really what we think about.

And my journey to get here is an interesting one. So, my background is very technical, software engineer. I love solving problems. And one of the problems I wanted to solve was for my children and their school district. How do we get more people engaged with what's going on in the school district, in a way that's meaningful to you because everybody's busy? So, I wanted to go out and solve that. And I'd like to think about how can we make the world a better place using technology? And this is not about making money, it is about making the world better.

And so, that was the problem I set out to solve in the very, very beginning, how do you really drive engagement? And the idea that really stuck with me was out of the brands that actually engage me, what are they doing in common? Think Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Spotify. And they're really only doing one thing in common, and that is they learn about me through my behavior, and then they tailor every future experience across every channel just to me. So, it's all personalized.

And why that matters is we as a society are so busy now, and there's so much communication being thrown at us from all different angles, social media and work and family and all of it. So, how do you cut through the noise, ultimately, to save people time, is what they are doing. And so, I took that same model and applied it to communication. Why can we not do the same with communication? And that led me to starting Cerkl, to really solve this problem.

And I realized that there is a massive lag between what we're seeing as a consumer and what employees are receiving. So, the technology that marketing is using to engage you is so much more sophisticated than what employers are using to communicate and engage with their workforce. And so, that's really what I set out to do, how do we solve this problem of employee disengagement? How do we give them what they need in a way that they're already used to as a consumer? How do we bring that same feel and experience inside the organization? So, super high level, long answer, I apologize, but that's really what brought us to this conversation right now.

Susmita Sarma: Right. No, it's always fascinating to hear the stories behind the professionals in our field. And thank you for giving us a glimpse into your background and Cerkl. So now, Tarek, let's dive into the heart of today's discussion, which is all about the crucial topic of employee feedback. So, given your expertise and the innovative work at Cerkl, we'd love to hear your insights on how organizations can harness employee feedback to drive engagement and success.

Tarek Kamil: Yeah, I think the way that we think about feedback historically, a lot of it is what they say. So, you might see things like a pulse survey, you might see things like an eNPS, how likely are you to recommend our company to a colleague to work here, right? And so, employee engagement surveys, a lot of it is in the moment, kind of how I feel in that exact moment that I have asked that question. And for a variety of reasons, we know that surveys are fundamentally flawed. Not everybody does it. You're capturing me at a moment, might be happy or angry or I don't really care. And so, it can skew the data. And then companies are taking that data and trying to make decisions based on it. And if you have not solid foundational data, then anything you decide to do with it can be flawed.

And so, how we think about it differently is, of course, you want to ask your people how they feel and what they think, and there's a place and time for surveys, but really what you're going to learn the most from is how they behave. And what I mean by that is, are they actually taking a job posting and sending it out to their friends, we can see that behavior. We can see that they're posting it to social. So, that means they really love what they're doing because they want to bring their friends in. And are they quitting, has productivity gone down, we can measure all these things. And so, behavior, if we can capture it, is so much more valuable than what they say.

And how I think about that, and when I tell people this, they say, yeah, that's true. So, why does Netflix never survey you? Because they don't have to. They can see your behavior, they can see whether you're engaged with Netflix and how frequently you're watching and what shows you're watching. So, they know. And from that, they can learn if you're disengaging, how do we save you from leaving Netflix? So, our problem is we have fundamentally coupled the idea of employee understanding with surveys. And that's where I think we run into problems. And we now have technology that helps us see behavior in ways we've never been able to see it before.

Susmita Sarma: Yeah. So, like you mentioned about eNPS, unlike more complex surveys, it typically asks a single question like, on a scale of zero to ten, how likely are you to recommend our company as a great place to work. So, that is, I think, the specialty of things like eNPS in surveys.

Tarek Kamil: That's correct. That's right.

Susmita Sarma: And we'll be talking about the challenges that organizations face in gathering and utilizing employee feedback effectively, and how can HR tech help address these challenges?

Tarek Kamil: Yes, and I think there's a new era approaching for HR. And there's so much transition now with employees. Everybody's heard about quiet quitting, the great resignation, and it's very expensive for these organizations where productivity really drops. So, I'm paying someone that's really not engaged, they really don't want to be there, they're just there for a check. And we don't even know why. Why did that happen? And we can't even identify, it's really difficult to identify even who are those people, because of things, I think we're going to talk about this, the emergence of remote work and hybrid work, because I'm not seeing you in person in the office every day any longer.

And I think because of COVID, we will never go back to that, those days are over. I think employees have come to expect more freedom in how they work, and employers that are going to force being in the office, I think are going to struggle to retain talent. So, we have all of this newness that has been thrust upon us because of COVID. I don't think all of it is bad, it's just different. And a lot of the things it's forcing companies to do are good, we just don't know how to do that. That's where I think technology can be your best friend.

Susmita Sarma: Yeah. So, talking about HR tech, can you tell us about some of the coolest HR tech tools that have totally shaken up the game when it comes to collecting and analyzing employee feedback? I would love to know about some real world examples of how we are making a difference.

Tarek Kamil: Yeah. So, one of the things that we're doing at Cerkl is, first of all, we think about fundamentally changing how we communicate to people. So, how do I make you feel seen and valued? Communication underlies everything. And when we think about employee communication, we think about what do you need to know? So, open enrollment starts November 1st, for example. We need all employees to know that. Fantastic. How do we make sure that you see that and you digest that without overwhelming them, without spamming our own employees?

So, without really solid communication and without a way to engage them automatically, which I'll talk about in a minute, we can't really understand behavior. It would be very similar to Netflix if it wasn't a great platform. Imagine if you started a series on your laptop and then you went to your TV and had to start all over because it doesn't remember where you left off. That's a terrible experience, right? People are going to disengage quickly. But that's exactly what we do to our employees. You might have read the story about open enrollment starting on November 1st on the intranet, and then what do you do? You get an email about the exact same thing, and it's in your newsletter, and then you go to Teams or Slack and you're seeing the exact same thing, right?

So we fundamentally have to start with communication, and it leads to how we're really going to understand our people. But communication is the foundation, and if you don't do it well, you will always struggle with really understanding your people. So we think about how do we really modernize how these companies effectively communicate, for one, what employees need to know, and then number two, what do they want to know, what do you care about as a human being? How do we bring that information to you front and center based on AI and learning about what you actually like? So this is how we think about engaging people at scale.

So let's zoom out. I'm thinking, I want to make sure my people are informed and engaged. I think you ask anyone in HR, they would say yes, if 100% of my people are informed and engaged, I am being successful. So how do we do that? It is effective, modern communication that learns about what you like and what you don't like, that is not overwhelming you because it understands your channels and where you've consumed content. Once we have incorporated effective communication, 50% of your problem goes away because I am engaging them at scale, great, I didn't know my company was doing this amazing thing.

So now we go into the next section, which is what you were just asking about, how does that lead to learning? So if I contrast this with surveys, I'm asking employees questions, again, it might be an annual survey, or we do it every two years or every three years, and you're capturing me one day out of the year and asking me how I feel basically about this organization. If I'm angry or happy, it's going to skew everything. And so it's not solid, behavior is solid, that is who you really are. And so how people interact with communication, what channels, how frequently, all those things tell us a lot about how you're feeling, that you're actually engaging. We can see it through the communication.

So if I go back to where we started this conversation, the idea of a feedback loop, most companies send out a lot of communication and don't really listen to how people are responding and engaging with that communication. And that's the most valuable piece, how do they react to what we are saying. And we can learn so much from this, and most companies are leaving that very valuable piece of feedback on the table because they're so used to using surveys. And again, nothing wrong with surveys, but it shouldn't be the primary driver making decisions about how you'd want to retain talent, attract talent, or where you're having problems. That is a horrible way to make decisions based on survey data alone.

Susmita Sarma: I think privacy and data security is another big deal when it comes to collecting feedback through surveys.

Tarek Kamil: No, I think you see that a lot. I think you see a lot of employees feel like they don't even trust that the survey is anonymous. They don't believe the employer. So foundationally, you have trust issues. Are they really going to tell you the truth if they don't trust you? And so that's the big mess. I think a lot of companies go through the motions, they say we're going to do an employee engagement survey or eNPS or whatever, and you shouldn't even go down that road until you have established trust with the employee, so they feel like it is a safe space, the company really wants to learn, they really want to get better, they really value my feedback. So we're missing all of these foundational things that have to be in place for even survey data to be valid. You're spot on.

Susmita Sarma: And you are also talking about AI and machine learning. It's paying into the future of employee feedback and engagement.

Tarek Kamil: Yeah, I think that's here. When we built Cerkl, the idea of AI, and this was started nine years ago, was already foundationally built into how we think organizations should communicate. And AI is a big part of that. So AI can be used to make sure you're not seeing content that you've already seen somewhere else. AI can be used to learn about what your interests are. So there is a bucket of content that you need to see regardless of your interests, open enrollment, or a message from the CEO, or where you've acquired a new company. Your interests are irrelevant, you have to know this. Then there's all this other content where your interests matter, and that's a beautiful place for AI to be used to learn about each employee, which is exactly what Netflix and Amazon and others are doing. They're using AI and machine learning to understand your behavioral data and then to make intelligent recommendations based on what they've learned.

So we have been saying this for nine years, and I love that AI is now at the heart of the mainstream. Everybody's talking about it, ChatGPT and Bard and all these generative AI models, and they are amazing, they are fantastic. Of course, there are things we need to be careful about with them, as with any new technology. But all of that is available to you today. So we start to think about modernizing communication, really AI has to be foundational to that, to engage people at scale.

I think I can keep you engaged if it was just you and I having a conversation, but as soon as you start to add other people to that mix, it becomes really difficult to engage even two people at once. They have to find their common interests. As you expand, this becomes so complicated that you can't have humans really do it, and it's an ideal situation for what AI is built for, exactly this. How do you engage your employees at scale? Most organizations don't do any personalization whatsoever, then you've got some that think in personas, everyone that works in the call center, we're going to treat like this, everyone that works in IT, we're going to treat this way, everyone in sales will be treated this way. So that's better than nothing, but the ultimate goal is we treat you as the individual that you are, down to the individual, let's learn about you, understand you, and make sure that we are talking to you in a way that resonates with you. All of that is AI.

So that is out there today. And then the tie to that would be how can that help us understand where you have problems brewing in your organization before they're actually problems. So behavioral data that we can see, and then we can convert that into opportunities for HR to be proactive instead of reactive. That is also out there. So we're doing that today as well. And it's not just problems, it's opportunities. Right. So for example, if you had all of this learning, you could have the system say you have a pocket within your organization that is unbelievably engaged, and you can see this. You can go to that leader and ask them what are you doing, how are you so much more engaged and your people so much more engaged than everyone else here, and learn from them.

Susmita Sarma: Right. Take, ask them questions, interview them, say, wow, I didn't know that you were doing this, that's a great idea, and you roll those out as best practices across your entire organization.

Tarek Kamil: The problem fundamentally, and this is where I think AI will make a massive difference with HR and employee feedback, is that HR traditionally has been very reactive. We wait for a problem to break out, and then we jump in and we try to minimize the damage associated with that problem, people quitting, poor leadership, bad policy, or communication, and we jump in and try to minimize the damage. But if you could in advance know there is a problem brewing before it's actually a problem, and shift the function of HR from being reactive to proactive, that's where I think you will see a massive difference in HR's function, all powered by data analytics and AI.

Susmita Sarma: Brilliant answers today, Tarek. And it's lovely talking to you, and because of time constraints for today's episode, we'll have to wrap it up by now. So for listeners who might want to reach out to you or connect with you after this episode, what's the best way for them to do that?

Tarek Kamil: There are a couple of ways, they could come to our website, C-E-R-K-L dot com, and reach out to us through that. Or I'm always available on LinkedIn, it's T-A-R-E-K K-A-M-I-L. Feel free to reach out to me, connect with me, ask questions, I love these conversations, so hopefully people will take me up on it.

Susmita Sarma: We're truly grateful for your presence on our podcast, Tarek. Your expertise has added a wealth of knowledge to our discussion, and we're excited to have another opportunity to learn from your experience one day. So thank you for being here today.

Tarek Kamil: Oh, thanks so much. I've enjoyed it.

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