EY is combatting the trend of disengaged employees with hard data.
"We continue to leverage listening data extensively, but what's been cool is we've now combined that with much more operational data, and we've done the data science to understand what the most important drivers are to specific business outcomes," he says.
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This has led to an increase in usable data for leaders at all levels when it comes to specific areas of workers' wellness. In January, EY published its public vitality index that outlined 10 drivers of well-being and how this connects to retention. Some of these drivers were from employee experiential data, such as whether they feel supported and have opportunities for career growth, and some were from operational data, such as hours worked, whether employees utilized paid-time off and participation in company programs.
As a result, managers have a deeper understanding of what's working and where they need to improve, Giampietro says. For example, EY's data shows that employees who take two days off per month have the best overall well-being experience and are 1.6 times more likely to stay with the company. Also included in the published index are actionable tips on how to improve each driver so managers can improve their scores as well as the experience of their team members.
"What's great is we're able to put that on the desktop of a leader, and they can see, 'Am I trending up? Am I trending it down? How do I do against my peers?'" he adds.
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Another mission over the last several months has been to identify the drivers of team revenue — what the highest-performing teams were doing differently, and how this was impacting their account growth. In addition to reporting a psychologically safe environment, teams that experienced better growth logged fewer hours, countering the common belief that more hours leads to more productivity. The number of digital communications employees receive and their levels of interaction with each other was also studied.
"There's a point at which we have so many things hitting us that we feel stressed, we feel anxious, we don't feel like we're our best selves, and those teams that are operating that way don't grow as fast," says Giampietro. "And then the last one is actually a positive: What we find out is when our people interact more with each other, and they interact more with clients, they're just happier, they're healthier, and good stuff happens."
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By helping managers see what works best for their teams, they can become more informed, proactive and empathetic leaders. Giampietro's philosophy is that managers deserve this kind of guidance from top executives if they're expected to be good leaders themselves.
"We make the assumption [that] managers want to be good at their job [and] that they care about the people on their team, so if they're not good at it, that's probably more about us than it is about them," he says. "So what can we do that can really help give them different data, different insights, different tools, different learning skills, that are going to help them feel more confident in the way they do this? We know, not only is that good for all of them, it's obviously really, really good for our people."
With hard results from multiple data sources in hand, it is much easier to convey the importance of these engagement and productivity drivers to the C-suite, Giampietro says.
"We can quantify what we've always felt," he says. "When we showed the hours worked data to our COO, he said, 'I've always known this. I've always known that it wasn't better, but I love that I can stand up now and say we've got the data science to prove it.'"
