Always up to Date with Honestly's Pulse Survey
Kapten & Son is currently experiencing rapid growth. In 2018, 20 new employees were hired - and many more open positions will be filled. Now the young company faces new challenges: How do you keep in touch with the team, despite the rapidly increasing number of employees?
Summary:
- Kapten & Son searched for an effective addition to one-on-one feedback talks with employees in order to cope with the rapidly increasing employee count.
- Goals: collect anonymous feedback, increase employee engagement, and notice trends early on.
- Honestly stood out from the competition due to great communication, fast support and the intuitiveness of the software itself.
- After only a few weeks, Kapten & Son was already able to gather important information and derive preliminary measures from the survey results.
Kapten & Son is a fast-growing German fashion and lifestyle company that sells watches, backpacks and sunglasses worldwide. The company was founded in Münster in 2014 and has been growing steadily ever since. More than 70 employees now work in the New York office and in the Cologne headquarters.
Great praise to the team: If you have any problem you can write in the chat and you will be helped immediately. These are the kind of things that have a huge impact.
Feedback talks are not enough
In early 2018, Kapten & Son began searching for suitable employee feedback solutions. The company wanted to ensure a high level of engagement from the team even with an increasing number of employees, while keeping track of how their employee engagement would develop in the future. Vanessa Siegbert, Head of HR at Kapten & Son, talked to us about their experience with introducing employee surveys in the company.
Before Honestly, Kapten & Son collected employee feedback through one-on-one meetings. This worked pretty well as long as the employee count stayed relatively small. Over time, however, the needs changed:
"We wanted to make our feedback a little more verifiable and get the bigger picture instead of just hearing the perception of individual employees. There are also certain topics that employees are more reluctant to discuss in one-on-one meetings. That's why we decided to go with an anonymous solution in addition to our quarterly in person meetings."
Above all, it is important for Ms. Siegbert to make it clear to every employee that they don’t have to hold back and can talk openly about anything that is on their chest.
Ms. Siegbert quickly came across Honestly and tried out the product. Compared to other solutions on the market, Honestly convinced her immediately - not only because of the technical aspects of the software, but also from an interpersonal point of view.
"Contact and communication with you is always very uncomplicated and efficient. That is something that one, unfortunately, doesn't experience as often these days, especially with software companies."
Implementing Pulse Surveys
We definitely want to keep the pulse going to see how it develops over the years.
After a successful test phase, the company-wide rollout could begin. It only took one week to set up the first survey. The solution is intuitive and easy to use and that Kapten & Son use Honestly’s preconfigured pulse survey, also reduced the setup time to a minimum.
Honestly’s Pulse Concept allows companies to effortlessly monitor all areas of employee engagement. The entire survey and evaluation process is automated. If desired, the wording of the questions can be changed and questions can be included or excluded. Ms. Siegbert made some adjustments to adapt the pulse survey to Kapten & Son.
"The pulse concept in itself really covers all the important areas, there's nothing missing. We definitely want to keep the pulse going to see how it develops over the years."
Measuring the eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) is also a priority for Kapten & Son. This KPI being accounted for in the Pulse as one of the main indicators for engagement, was yet another argument for the pulse survey. In the future, Ms. Siegbert plans to send out other surveys, such as onboarding and exit surveys, alongside the pulse as well.
Monitoring the Company's Pulse
The pulse survey at Kapten & Son has been running for nine months now. Important insights have been gained during this period. Some problems have already been addressed. Others, of course, cannot be solved immediately. However, it is important to convey to the employees they are being heard and that topics are actively being worked on. All employee surveys are of no use as long as no actions are derived from them. Mrs. Siegbert gives us an example of how she dealt with the feedback of too much noise in the office:
"A frequently mentioned feedback is that the volume in the office is too high. Employees cannot fully concentrate all the time. We work in open-plan offices where some people talk on the phone while others work on very complex spreadsheets. We can't change that overnight, but I still think it's important to respond to employee feedback and tell them that we are already in negotiations for additional business premises, for example. This way the team knows that their feedback is seen and taken seriously."
Overall Kapten & Son is very happy with Honestly. The product is easy to use, quickly implemented and the pulse concept enables the company to be in constant contact with its employees and identify problems early on.
"Our expectations in the product have definitely been met. We are very satisfied and would recommend the solution"
