Why Talent Pulse Is Unique:

• Understanding if pre-employment expectations have been meet . New employees have certain expectations about the organisation they are joining, and the role they have been employed to carry out. The extent to which these are met are known to impact on an employee’s decision to stay or leave.
  
  
• Building the questionnaire is quick and easy , working alongside one of our experts you have access to our “item bank” of reliable questions that are built to measure levels of employee commitment in a number of critical areas. Your final Talent Pulse can be paper or web based.
  
  
• Who’s at risk? Talent Pulse will help you to identify those populations most at risk of leaving through a “Potential Leaver Analysis”.
  
  
• Real voices, not just graphs and statistics. Whilst questionnaires have many advantages they can be frustrating for the employee when they are not able to express their feelings or a particular issue is not covered. Within every Talent Pulse application the employee is given the opportunity to provide feedback on any issue and in their own words. The quality and relevance of this feedback is often impressive and adds genuine value for the employee and employer.
  
  
• How satisfied is your top talent? Taking your employee performance data and including as a variable within the analysis process will show you what is important to best performers, how satisfied they are with you as an employee, how committed they are and if they are intending to leave. Other report breakdowns can include tenure, job type, location,etc.
  
  
• ‘Rolling Sample’ or annual survey? Whilst some Talent Pulse applications follow the more traditional annual survey approach, the most effective method of data collection and ultimately problem solving is the “Rolling Sample” method. An initial data collection process is carried out across a large proportion of the target population to create the initial benchmark group. Reports are generated and fedback to the organisation. Within most organisations a process of identify key issues/risks takes place and interventions are agreed and implemented. At an appropriate point (typically 4 months after the initial benchmark work) a representative sample of the target population are selected and asked to complete the Pulse process again. Typically this sample is around 25% of the total group. The reports enable the organisation to understand and review the impact of interventions and also ensure that other issues are not developing. The Pulse process happens on a rolling basis with representative samples of employees participating. This approach provides accurate and continuous measurement of the organisational pulse, whilst ensuring that each employee only completes 1 questionnaire within a 12 month period.
  
  
• Customisation , we work with you to understand what you are trying to measure and develop questions to meet your specific requirements.
  
  
• Anonymous or not? Typically Talent Pulse applications are anonymous, giving the employee the confidence to provide open and honest feedback. However, there are situations where total anonymity can create difficulties, for example where employees report discrimination, harassment or bullying. TalentDrain monitor responses for these key issues and if they occur can contact the employee asking if to provide more information and offer them the opportunity to speak confidentially to an appropriate individual within the organisation.
  
  
• Building focus groups. Many organisations use focus groups to flesh out survey results, but finding people who wish to participate in these events can be time consuming and sometimes difficult. With the Talent Pulse process employees can be offered the opportunity to participate in these events. Employees can self-nominate by simply ticking an appropriate “participation request” box.
  
  
• Feedback and reporting. As well as providing detailed reports, written to your specification, full exploration and analysis of the data occurs ensuring that significant trends are not missed just because you didn’t ask the right question. The results are presented to you by the people who write the reports ensuring that you have immediate and ongoing access to the people with deep understanding of your data.
  
  
• Employee Commitment. This measures the desire of the employee to maintain membership with your organisation, their willingness to expend extra effort on behalf of your organisation, the extent to which they feel integrated into your organisation, and whether they would recommend your organisation as a place to work.
  
  
• Intention to Leave. More behaviourally-based, this scale measures the extent to which the respondent is considering leaving the organisation, and whether they are actively searching for other employment.

The Overall Retention Index (ORI)

The Overall Retention Index (ORI) forms the cornerstone of TalentDrain’s portfolio of products. The ORI measures twelve work-related areas that are known to influence two key turnover-related cognitions.

These twelve areas are measured along two dimensions: Importance and Satisfaction.

• ORI Importance. This is how important the employee judges the area in terms of maintaining their commitment to an organisation. This judgement is made relative to the other 11 areas, via the card-sorting paired-comparison task on the questionnaire. Please note that the respondent is not being asked specifically about the organisation they are currently working. They are required to consider what is important to them in terms of their general commitment to any organisation.
  
  
• ORI Satisfaction. This is how satisfied the employee is with the twelve work-related areas. This rating is made normatively via responses to statements that correspond to each of the twelve areas. Each statement is rated on a 5-point scale from ‘strongly agree’ to ‘strongly disagree’. The satisfaction ratings reflect the extent to which employees have been able to attain satisfaction in various areas during their specific experience at your organisation.

Both measurements are required to properly diagnose the potential causes of employee turnover. Clearly, if your employee population consistently rate an area as more important for maintaining commitment to an organisation (and reducing the intention to leave), then whether or not your employees are satisfied in this area has a bigger impact than if the area was less of a priority.

In broader terms, when predicting behaviour it is necessary to take into account both:

• Characteristics regarding the individual (or group of individuals); and
• Aspects of their environment.

In the ORI, the importance dimension measures the twelve areas as preferences of the
individual(s) irrespective of the organisation, while the satisfaction dimension measures the twelve areas as key aspects of the working environment. These dimensions interact to model the impact of each area on employee commitment. (See Figure 1).

Click here to view Figure 1

Talent Pulse uses a single diagnostic by combining both Importance and Satisfaction scores for each area (see Figure 2).

Click here to view Figure 2

This is produced by multiplying the average importance rating by the average satisfaction rating for each area. Essentially, the importance value acts as a weighting factor on the satisfaction value, increasing or decreasing the (positive or negative) impact of the area accordingly.

How to Interpret Figure 2

• The fuller the shape along each dimension, the higher the Overall Retention Index (ORI).
• Areas with values approaching the outer circle are more likely to be increasing employee retention.
• Areas with values approaching the core are more likely to be increasing employee turnover.

Further details are found in our example Talent Pulse Report which can be requested by clicking here.