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Rodan + Fields finds that POPin pays for itself by providing strong feedback loop
The skincare brand explains how POPin’s crowdsourcing tool has helped it maintain a strong feedback loop with its dispersed consultants working in the field. R+F can launch a video to demonstrate a new concept and get meaningful feedback about what worked and what didn’t in real time. - close
Crowdsourcing Platform POPin 5.0 Drives Employee Engagement Around Company Meetings
Redesigned Product Leverages Machine Learning for Next Gen Content Management, Dashboards and Omnichannel User NotificationIrvine, CA – March 13, 2018 – POPin, a software platform for leaders and executives designed to help drive organizational alignment, today launched version 5.0 of its crowdsourcing platform. The redesigned platform is aimed at helping business leaders create automated feedback loops around company meetings to solicit candid and anonymous feedback that builds trust, exposes confusion and fosters engagement among employees. POPin is built on an architecture that has grown to include more than 16 interdependently deployable, modular services which operate as unique processes connected via simple well defined APIs. The flexibility of this approach allows the engineering team to pick the best languages and sub-frameworks to solve problems. The platform’s micro services are primarily written in Go and Java with Python used for heavier statistical data lifting and machine learning. READ MORE - close
POPin 5.0 Crowdsourcing Platform Drives Employee Engagement Around Company Meetings
Redesigned Product Leverages Machine Learning for Next Gen Content Management, Dashboards and Omnichannel User NotificationIRVINE, Calif., March 13, 2018 /PRNewswire/ — POPin, a software platform for leaders and executives designed to help drive organizational alignment, today launched version 5.0 of its crowdsourcing platform. The redesigned platform is aimed at helping business leaders create automated feedback loops around company meetings to solicit candid and anonymous feedback that builds trust, exposes confusion and fosters engagement among employees. READ MORE - close
POPin 5.0 Crowdsourcing Platform Drives Employee Engagement Around Company Meetings
Redesigned Product Leverages Machine Learning for Next Gen Content Management, Dashboards and Omnichannel User NotificationIrvine, CA – March 13, 2018 – POPin, a software platform for leaders and executives designed to help drive organizational alignment, today launched version 5.0 of its crowdsourcing platform. The redesigned platform is aimed at helping business leaders create automated feedback loops around company meetings to solicit candid and anonymous feedback that builds trust, exposes confusion and fosters engagement among employees. POPin is built on an architecture that has grown to include more than 16 interdependently deployable, modular services which operate as unique processes connected via simple well defined APIs. The flexibility of this approach allows the engineering team to pick the best languages and sub-frameworks to solve problems. The platform’s micro services are primarily written in Go and Java with Python used for heavier statistical data lifting and machine learning. “In spite of rapid technology advances in communications technology, businesses today continue to face a crisis of organizational alignment and widespread disconnect between management and employees,” said Brian Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer of POPin. “POPin 5.0 makes it easy for leaders to automate candid feedback from employees, especially prior to and after important meetings, to drive better organizational alignment and improve initiative success management.” “One of the keys to the success of POPin is our ability to release significant feature updates regularly without risking stability,” said Jeff Kunzelman, Chief Technology Officer of POPin. “To allow us to innovate at such a rapid rate, POPin has been built on an ever-evolving micro services architecture which leverages the best open source frameworks as well as our own home grown specialty services.” POPin 5.0 leverages the latest features of the popular open-source redis platform in memory data store to provide faster real-time data streams. These streams are used to satisfy the increased demand to calculate dashboard analytics, measure content contributions, notifications and more allowing us to deliver content and analytics to business leaders in real time.“POPin enables SCL Health to engage associates in meaningful dialogue which has a tremendous impact on how we provide superior care, while running a large, complex organization,” said Dave Husted, VP, SCL Health.“As various units within organizations are coming under additional pressure to get more comfortable with continuous change, there is a growing requirement for ways to sustain initiatives and ensure ongoing engagement throughout dispersed teams. Consequently, organizations are just beginning to explore crowd-sourcing as a management tool, and so will increasingly need the software to support the approach,” said Katy Ring, Research Director, IT Services, 451 Group. “Aside from direct enterprise sales, POPin could also think about how the platform might be used to support service providers involved in digital technology deployments, as its platform may well enable more successful delivery of projects for this category of supplier.”Resources:- Video: Working More Efficiently using POPin at SCL Health. Terri Casterton, Director, Innovation and Virtual Health at SCL Health, talks about how the hospital is working more efficiently using POPin.
- Video: Continuous Improvement at Lutheran Medical using POPin. Noomi Hirsch, Operations Director of Quality and Excellence at Lutheran Medical Center (SCL Health) – explains how the hospital used POPin for continuous improvement.
- NEWS COVERAGE
Crowd-solving the employee retention crisis: Keeping nurses on the job and keeping them happy
close Crowd-solving the employee retention crisis: Keeping nurses on the job and keeping them happy
Nurses are, in many ways, unsung heroes. They serve in one of the noblest professions, but in many healthcare systems they are overworked and underappreciated. In hospital settings, they are at risk of injury and exposure to dangerous pathogens. The National Healthcare Retention and Staffing Report, produced annually by Nursing Solutions, Inc., found that turnover of registered nurses stood at 16.2 percent in 2016. The rate is much higher for Certified Nursing Assistants and in specific departments such as emergency care and behavioral health. Meanwhile, the American Nurses Association (ANA) warns of an ongoing nursing shortage that “isn’t stopping soon.” Many factors contribute to the shortage, chief among them an aging population requiring more services, substance abuses crises, and increasing access to healthcare combined with a strengthening economy. The average RN vacancy rate in hospitals is 8.1 percent. Recruitment, contract labor, and overtime pay are expensive solutions, and not sustainable in the long run. READ MORE - close
Use Social, Collaborative Tools to Reinvigorate Your Sales Team
Many companies are kicking off 2018 with renewed energy and a fresh sales strategy to promote the latest, most innovative products and features. As this happens, one of the biggest pain points for companies is the length of time it takes to get the sales team ramped up and ready to hit the market. In fact, the transition from “training” to “ready to sell” takes anywhere from six to 12 months. The time it takes to fully integrate a sales representative is time-consuming and costly, and it may lead to missed sales opportunities while giving the competition a head start. READ MORE - close
POPin: Crowdsourcing to raise business productivity
The company offers a crowdsourcing tool that helps to grow employee engagement, and the companies adopting it to support transformation are finding it to be a boon to the success of their projects. READ MORE - close
Trace3 stresses importance of hearing employee voices
Q: How does your workforce communicate their concerns? A: We use a tool called POPin. Everyone has it on their phone and laptop. It allows me to ask questions to the company. I’ll ask, “What would stop you from bringing a friend to Trace3?” Or, “If you were in charge of growth, what would you lean into?” Anyone can respond, anonymously or not. Then we let everyone vote on the answer. It might be something management doesn’t want to hear. Many companies are afraid to let employees have a voice. But there is gold in those answers. There’s a quote from V.S. Naipul: “The only lies for which we are truly punished are those we tell ourselves.” READ MORE - close
The Magic of the Truth: Communicating Through Organizational Change
We spent weeks as a leadership team discussing an organizational change we needed to make in order to better align the company to achieve our goals. These are brutal times as a leader because everyone in the company has value, but our timing was off and we had brought on certain functions either too early or too aggressively. Regardless, when a move needs to be made, you have to make it. We delivered the news to the individuals on a Wednesday morning in a loving but systematic fashion. It was moments after that the real work for leaders really starts. Earlier in the week, we let the company know there would be an all hands on Thursday at 8:30am (the day after the riff). We knew that would be our chance to address everyone. What we didn’t know was how they would react or receive the message. To manage that, I personally met with the different departments and explained how the day was very difficult, but we were excited about the future with a totally aligned team. After 15 minutes of talking, I asked each group if they had any concerns, questions, or comments. Every group said nothing, except one. The one person that spoke up said, “I am not going to ask now, but I am going to ask it in the POPin.” READ MORE - PRESS RELEASES
POPin Survey Finds Widespread Lack of Employee Engagement, Near-Fatal Misalignment Between Management and Employees
closePOPin Survey Finds Widespread Lack of Employee Engagement, Near-Fatal Misalignment Between Management and Employees
IRVINE, Calif., Dec. 5, 2017 /PRNewswire/ — POPin today announced a new survey of C-level executives and vice presidents across a variety of industries, which found that most companies still struggle with significant misalignment issues between management and employees, making it difficult to implement key initiatives and retain top talent.According to the survey, 41% of respondents say town hall meetings are “typically one sided” with information flowing from management to employees. An alarming 47% of respondents say employee opinions are “only sometimes” heard and addressed in such meetings. Moreover, 45% of respondents fail to conduct town hall employee meetings at all. 56% of respondents say executives rely on email as the “primary” method of employee communication. Only 21% of executives surveyed solicit feedback from employees in person, and often that feedback in not candid for fear of negative career consequences. “Businesses today are in crisis when it comes to employee engagement and organizational alignment,” said Brian Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer of POPin. “As social collaboration continues to create new methods of bringing people closer together, most companies continue to follow older, less effective practices. Business leaders continue to prove they are completely unable to establish an effective process for employee engagement and fail to build organizational alignment on key initiatives.”Survey Results:- Lack of Productivity: Most managers do not prioritize employee feedback when it comes to productivity improvements. Only 26% make this a “high priority.” Nearly 55% will listen to employee concerns but admit they are challenged to address them. 20% said it is “too difficult” to sift through feedback to identify employee challenges.
- Failure to Gauge Employee Satisfaction: 24% of respondents say they have “frequent” conversations with employees to solicit feedback but there is “no quantifiable method” to do so. An alarming 52% say they have conversations with employees but often “do not receive candid feedback.” 25% say there is “no process whatsoever” to gauge employee satisfaction.
- Inability to Solicit Candid Feedback: 54% say employees will share their opinions but typically “withhold” critical feedback about the organization. 26% consider that they have “open and honest” conversations with employees. 20% say employees try to communicate honestly but are hesitant to offer critical feedback for fear that it would reflect poorly and affect their career.
- Employee Retention: 53% of managers can predict when an employee is not happy but are often unable to remediate the problem. 29% say it’s “usually a surprise” when an employee resigns. Only 18% do well to predict employee dissatisfaction and can usually remediate the problem in time.
- Misalignment on Technology Initiatives: 57% of respondents say their company is “slightly out of alignment” on new initiatives and that it “takes some time to come up the learning curve.” 14% say employees are reluctant to embrace new ideas. Only 29% of respondents are “well aligned” and “in lockstep” with senior management.
- Ideation Challenges: 52% of respondents say that although they have an “open line” of communication between departments, there’s “no solid process” to share ideas. 25% say they are “not effective” at ideation with “limited interaction” with disparate departments. Only 23% of respondents they have a “solid infrastructure” in place to develop new ideas.
- No Standard Process for Sourcing Ideas: Responses were mixed on how ideas are sourced internally. 22% use an internal solution; 12% use social collaboration tools, 32% use a survey; 15% arrange large brainstorming sessions and 20% admit they “don’t know” how to source ideas and concerns from the organization.
- Mobile Communications: Only 20% of respondents say that mobile has had a “significant” impact on employee communications. 39% say mobile capabilities have had a “moderate” impact, creating “an important communication channel” for “alignment.” 36% say mobile has had “no improvement on alignment and ideation.” Only 5% consider mobile to be a “hindrance.”
- Senior Management Fails to “Take Action”: 20% of respondents say they have processes in place that enable senior management to react quickly to employee concerns. 44% say they have “some processes” but need to be “more nimble in this area.” 36% of respondents say e-level executives are “slow” with “limited resources to react in a timely manner.”
- Download survey infographic here.
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Holiday Pain Points: There’s A ‘Right Way’ To Onboard Temporary Workers
By Brian Anderson, Chief Marketing Officer at POPOne of the biggest pain points for companies during the holidays comes with the influx of hires they make in order to accommodate increased demand. Case in point, Amazon announced it will nearly double its fulfillment center workforce with 120,000 temporary employees; Macy’s will hire 80,000 temporary workers; Target, 100,000; JC Penny, 40,000. While the extra hiring is helpful, it can create challenges in retail teams in terms of training them to get the job done. In most cases, the transition from training to ready-to-sell can take weeks, a luxury retail companies do not have. Many companies have begun to tap new social, collaboration tools to better engage and equip the sales team, to provide more effective training, help staff come up the learning curve more quickly and begin selling to ensure better profitability. READ MORE - close
How to Build Employee and Customer Engagement through a Feedback Loop
It’s a tale as old as the Internet. Essential basics of human interaction get lost in the flash and promise of technology. Time and again, we must take a step back, reconnect, and make sure the technology is serving us, and not the other way around. I see it happening again with big data and customer analytics. We now have immense power to collect, correlate, and manipulate data to produce more precise customer profiles, marketing strategies, and sales trends. These capabilities are nascent in most companies; many are still figuring out which metrics will produce the most valuable insights. But metrics and models will never give us all the answers we need to understand the voice of our customer. The most valuable messages can get lost in the deluge of data, and even the best analyses still require expert human interpretation before they can be put to practical use. Without true engagement, I see all those insights mined from surveys, customer tracking, and social media as gold nuggets piled high in carts but stuck below ground in the mine. We have to finish the job by bringing them out into the light and using them to barter for real answers and actionable feedback. Most companies fail to grasp their customers’ needs and opinions beyond a one-to-five rating scale. They may have mechanisms in place to collect information from customers, but they lack a repeatable way to build on it by getting to a deeper understanding and then acting on it in a reasonable timeframe. Survey results end up sitting around like those mine carts. READ MORE - close
How to Build Employee and Customer Engagement through a Feedback Loop
It’s a tale as old as the Internet. Essential basics of human interaction get lost in the flash and promise of technology. Time and again, we have to take a step back, reconnect, and make sure the technology is serving us, and not the other way around. I see it happening again with Big Data and customer analytics. We now have immense power to collect, correlate, and manipulate data to produce more precise customer profiles, marketing strategies, and sales trends. These capabilities are nascent in most companies; many are still figuring out which metrics will produce the most valuable insights. But metrics and models will never give us all the answers we need to understand the voice of our customer. The most valuable messages can get lost in the deluge of data, and even the best analyses still require expert human interpretation before they can be put to practical use. Without true engagement, I see all those insights mined from surveys, customer tracking, and social media as gold nuggets piled high in carts but stuck below ground in the mine. We have to finish the job by bringing them out into the light and using them to barter for real answers and actionable feedback. Most companies fail to grasp their customers’ needs and opinions beyond a one-to-five rating scale. They may have mechanisms in place to collect information from customers, but they lack a repeatable way to build on it by getting to a deeper understanding and then acting on it in a reasonable timeframe. Survey results end up sitting around like those mine carts. Those results may tell you what is wrong (or right) but they don’t tell you why and they don’t provide the next steps. Understanding the root causes behind your customers’ feedback is the key to rolling out successful initiatives, products, and services. In feedback loops, the output of a system or process is used for new input, which then generates more output carrying those characteristics. High quality feedback (and deeper understanding) feeds more successful results. The reverse is also true—junk in, junk out. READ MORE - close
Town Hall Meetings Get Real
As new tools, analytics and technology transform the traditional workplace, “town-hall-style” gatherings remain popular forums for employees at all levels to engage with one another and have direct contact with senior management. Beyond the camaraderie, the issues at hand and the need for consensus gathering, transparency, feedback and input make town halls an attractive option. As such, the agenda setting, post-meeting action items and feedback loops can hold as much weight as the meeting. But corporate town hall meetings often fall flat; employees see them as lip service rather than places for their voices to genuinely be heard, and senior management perceives them as precarious attempts at transparency with a low yield on organizational alignment. This disconnect shows a failure to source feedback from employees prior to meetings so that management can plan to address the right topics. Despite efforts to gather the whole team, it is challenging to prioritize agenda items, figure out what’s really top of mind across the board, and discern how best to address issues with a constructive, results-based approach. READ MORE - close
It Takes More Than Tech to Get Teams to Collaborate Effectively
Collaboration is a popular business buzzword these days due to the proliferation of mobile apps and enterprise social platforms such as Chatter, Yammer and Jive. In addition, Facebook recently unveiled a free version of its own Workplace collaboration service, along with updates to its Messenger app. Yet moving past the latest tech hype cycles, it’s clear that collaboration is just another word for teamwork. Effective teamwork requires strong employee buy-in, a collegial workplace environment and proper tools for shared project management. Leaders who strike the right collaborative balance improve how work gets done. It’s not enough to adopt technologies and a culture that make it easier for workers to communicate and share knowledge. Teamwork should ultimately become a business enabler, so it’s critical to focus collaborative efforts on achieving real business outcomes that spur innovations and increase productivity. Again, the two essential ingredients for successful collaboration are the underlying workforce culture and the enabling technologies. READ MORE - close
POPin 4.0 Is the Control Center for Executives to Measure and Drive Alignment
Irvine, CA – June 20, 2017 – POPin, a software platform for leaders and executives designed to help drive organizational alignment, today launched version 4.0 of its platform. POPin’s newest release version 4.0 adds an Executive Control Center that allows leaders to measure key areas of interest and identify where there are issues. The new functionality compliments POPin’s existing ability to solve challenging problems with the input of the organization and drive alignment and a reduction of obstacles. The updated POPin creates real-time measurement and feedback loops between leadership and their organization around business critical issues. “POPin provides a unique way to operationalize organizational alignment,” said Lee Ott, President of POPin. “This new release allows companies to drive success by uniting and engaging the organization in solving how to achieve strategic goals and create high functioning workplaces and teams by finding and removing the obstacles in their way, increasing both throughput and employee trust in the organization.” POPin 4.0 includes the new Executive Control Center, which provides insight into current activities and issues. It also includes new Pulse functionality, allowing the measurement of specific issues or topics over time. Additionally POPin 4.0 adds the ability to upload Teams, and generate a breakdown of results by attributes, such as demographics, manager, division, office, etc. POPin 4.0 also includes the new Org Alignment module, a year-long program based on POPin’s successful engagement with hundreds of organizations for driving organizational alignment and the removal of obstacles. The University of Pennsylvania, with over 4,500 faculty members and 25,000 students, deployed POPin to improve communications within the institution of higher education. “Hearing the truth is absolutely critical to me as a leader. POPin gives us that channel to the truth. Nothing else that I have ever worked with has allowed me to really get to the heart of issues as quickly and as efficiently as this tool,” explains Tom Murphy, CIO of UPenn, regarding the University’s former communication challenges. For more information about POPin and the 4.0 release of the platform, please join us for a webcast on Thursday, June 27 at 1pm PST. Register here: http://bit.ly/2tdX4TD. - close
Crowdsourcing: Friend or Foe of KM?
Seen from a knowledge management perspective, crowdsourcing is a technique for capturing and using tacit knowledge. Often used for innovation, crowdsourcing can bypass organizational structures to obtain insights from large groups of individuals either within the company or outside it. Innovation has become a driving force for many companies; according to Forrester, more than 60 percent of Fortune 500 companies have appointed a chief innovation officer, and nearly 75 percent have innovation strategies. Crowdsourcing can also be a mechanism for increasing employee engagement and buy-in. The opportunity to share ideas for improving operational performance can shift employees from questioning change to supporting it. READ MORE - close
Getting Employees to Tell the Whole Truth When You Need to Hear It
Let’s face it. Every organization has employees who fear telling their bosses the whole truth about workplace problems because such honesty can be career-limiting. In fact, it’s likely that most employees feel this way at some point in their careers. Employee self-censorship usually amounts to a simple act of self-preservation because nobody wants a reputation as the office complainer. Employees will often resist giving honest feedback due to concerns that their leaders may oppose suggestions for change. Or employees will stay silent in the presence of senior staff because they fear they might say the wrong thing or show up their bosses in front of other managers. READ MORE - close
Why CIOs Need Team Buy-in for IT Initiatives
Watch our CMO Brian Anderson explain why CIOs need the input of their teams when implementing IT initiatives. READ MORE
Fundamentally Change the Way Your Company Drives Business Outcomes
POPin gives your employees a voice, no matter what level or position they are in your organization, so your toughest business questions get answered in the fastest and most accurate way possible.
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