Current News

Employee Engagement

Engagement Surveys

Feedback 500

Fulfilment

HR Advice

Our Employee Experience

Retention

Wellbeing

Nobody likes negativity. And yet it often surprises me that so much exists when you look around at business marketing and personal branding.
Some businesses make money from it and some personalities thrive on causing negative publicity. None of this sits particularly well with me, nor do I find it particularly engaging. When I started Space HR I made a pact with myself that I wouldn&rsquo;t focus on the negatives.
It&rsquo;s easy to get drawn into thinking that providing employee engagement as a managed service to businesses involves solving negative problems that already exist. Before I started working with any real customers I had to put some copy together for a marketing pack to send out to some prospects. I laboured over it.
I looked at the competition and spent way too long putting some words together that helped people to understand the problems I was solving.
It read something like this...
&nbsp;
<h3>Spotting The Symptoms</h3>
Many of the companies we speak to suffer the same underlying challenges. These are often costly and include;
<ul>
<li>Regular recruitment, escalating salaries</li>
<li>Difficulty finding great talent</li>
<li>Poor customer feedback</li>
<li>Targets &amp; deadlines being missed</li>
<li>Lack of creativity, innovation and motivation</li>
<li>High sickness and absence</li>
<li>Good people leaving, average people staying</li>
</ul>
Letting these problems develop, embed and grow in any business can lead to much bigger problems down the line.
Initially I thought this was great! It identified the issues my potential customers might be facing and if this sounded familiar they&rsquo;d contact me - simple! But the more I read it back to myself and reflected, I started to think about how it would make me feel as a potential customer of Ten Space.
I might recognise some or even all of these problems in my business, but would this make me want to speak to Ten Space? Probably not - It&rsquo;s too negative.
&nbsp;
I&rsquo;m currently in the process of writing copy for my new website. It&rsquo;ll launch in the next few months and I&rsquo;m really excited by the prospect of moving quickly from &lsquo;what I thought I was doing&rsquo; to &lsquo;what I'm actually doing&rsquo; now I&rsquo;ve got real customers!
Using my new methodology and some employee feedback tech, I&rsquo;ve been working with a bunch of new customers over the last 6 months. Even though it&rsquo;s early days, I've come to realise that none of my customers are really experiencing the issues outlined above - and thank goodness for that. In fact it's been a thoroughly positive experience all round.
Some of the common characteristics I&rsquo;ve found with my customers have been;
<ul>
<li>They&rsquo;re all great business leaders already</li>
<li>They&rsquo;re all running great businesses already</li>
<li>None of them have difficulty finding or retaining great people</li>
<li>They are focused and great at what they do</li>
<li>None of them have issues with sickness and absence</li>
<li>They have a loyal customer-base and very limited customer churn</li>
</ul>
So, you may ask, why the heck did they want to speak to me? Answer - Because they wanted to achieve more with their businesses.
None of them had deep rooted problems, but they were all ambitious and wanted to get their businesses into the best possible shape for continued growth.
&nbsp;
Importantly they all recognised three key things that I knew already;
1. The prevention is better than the cure -&nbsp;There are no quick fixes, but a regular temperature check of engagement coupled with regular feedback is the ultimate preventative measure rather than trying to fix problems after they occur and the rot has set in.
2. Constant and consistent effort is required -&nbsp;A big effort once a year will achieve very little. It becomes a colossal effort that nobody enjoys and can often lead to lower engagement in your teams when nothing really changes. Keeping it simple and regular achieves better outcomes.
3. Marginal gains create major success -&nbsp;My customers recognise that if they get just one highly useful piece of feedback from the survey then they can achieve great things from it. We&rsquo;re not trying to solve the world's problems with each survey, instead we&rsquo;re trying to build an amazing business, one brick at a time.
&nbsp;
As I continue on this journey, I&rsquo;m sure I&rsquo;ll learn a whole lot more about what business leaders want from the Ten Space experience, but one thing is for sure, the way we promote Ten Space will focus on positive outcomes all the way!
&nbsp;
If you want to achieve more from your business, Ten Space can help. Drop me an email - <a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(219, 62, 98);" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

How our first months in business shaped our proposition

Employee Engagement - It's not about solving problems

The flexible workforce and the gig economy is on the rise. In fact it's estimated that the number of freelance workers has increased by 25% since 2009. Thanks to the pandemic and economic crash, this is set to continue rising at an increasing rate.
Some businesses are finding they need to reduce headcount, or migrate towards a more flexible employment model to reduce their salary exposure. Others are innovative or fast paced businesses and need niche or hard to find skill sets, as such they outsource. Both are looking more and more towards contractors, freelancer and gig workers.
From a workers viewpoint, many thrown into unemployment have made the brave leap to become self-employed, some through ambition and some through lack of other options. Others are taking the opportunities that come their way and know they can maximise their value in the market place by being in control.
Whether you employ people directly or in a gig-worker manner, employee engagement can benefit your wider workforce too. Temporary, contract, and freelance workers are not robots and want to feel a connection to your business and your goals. They want to be recognised, challenged, inspired and looked after. If they are enjoying the work then they'll be delivering their best performance.
So whilst you need to make sure the lines of employment aren't blurred, there are some great engagement practices that make good sense for everyone in your business. Gig workers aren't with you for long (that's kind of the point) but you can make that time count.
&nbsp;
<ol>
<li>Share the vision and where you're heading. Everyone wants to believe in what they're working on. So sell them the dream! Make sure they know where they fit in and why their time and expertise is adding value to your business at that point in time.</li>
<li>Keep them updated, they might not be on your internal communication email round robin, or on the Slack group, but consider what they might need to know that would help them be more a part of the business or the team.</li>
<li>Value their expertise and make them feel appreciated for the contribution they make - just because you are paying their invoice, doesn't mean you can't provide great recognition</li>
<li>Provide great leadership, remove blocks, inspire them. Help them to do their best possible work whilst they are with you and leave a lasting impression of your leadership with them</li>
<li>Make them feel part of the wider team, make them feel included and valued. You can create a great blended team without having the same type of employment relationship with everyone</li>
<li>Provide them with challenges and provide development opportunities for them to grow with you, make it a memorable assignment and keep their interest high</li>
<li>Give them certainty if you can - know they'll be with you for 6 months? Great! Is it only 6 weeks? Tell them! Treat them fairly and transparently.</li>
<li>Pay them on time! 🙂</li>
</ol>
&nbsp;
If you have seen that your workforce is changing shape to include more freelancers and contracts, now is a great time to make sure you are building an engagement plan for your whole workforce, not just your employees.
If you'd like Ten Space to help with your plans, just ask! <a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(219, 62, 98);" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

8 ways to super-charge and engage, contractors and freelancers

So you're a month into 2021 and hopefully you've been working hard on engaging your team from the plan you created in our last blog (see: Step 4 - Action Your Plan).
But how do you measure your success?
Employee engagement can be a success outcome on its own (a "lag" measure). A happy and engaged team should be considered a great success for a business. But it can also be a "lead" measure too - it can be used as an indicator for other success measures in your business.
This week, we're going to explore this in more detail.
&nbsp;
<h3>Survey Your Staff</h3>
Regardless of whether you are using engagement as a lag or a lead measure, a great tracking tool is a survey. There are loads of ways to do this from emails, to building a form or using a survey platform. There aren't many survey tools designed especially for the Employee Engagement space.
A platform will position engagement with your team, track your success and identify areas of focus.&nbsp;If you want our expert advice on this, drop&nbsp;<a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent;" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a> an email.
Most engagement survey platforms will give you a score of engagement after a survey - this can be used as your lag measure. Your engagement score can be tracked over time and you can see the impact that your activities are having on your overall engagement score.
Bake this measure into your success measures as a business. Sit it right alongside profit and sales and give it the importance that it deserves. This helps build a mindset of "engagement everywhere".
You can also use engagement as a lead measure too, to establish a link between engagement and business performance. Does an increase in engagement lead to an increase in sales in the following months, what do the trends tell you?
Establishing a cause and effect for your business can really keep the focus on engagement high in your business.
Here's some ideas on outputs of great employee engagement you might want to track so you can enjoy your success:
<ul>
<li>Absenteeism</li>
<li>Sales</li>
<li>Revenue</li>
<li>Profitability</li>
<li>Employee retention</li>
<li>Customer retention</li>
<li>Customer NPS scores</li>
<li>Productivity / efficiency / output</li>
<li>Time to hire</li>
<li>Internal talent moves</li>
<li>Diversity</li>
<li>Retention of top talent</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
<h3>Don't get too stuck on the numbers</h3>
Whilst measuring success is helpful, don't get too caught up in the numbers and start to miss the point. Employee engagement is a mindset, it's a way of working and operating. If you find that you've got caught up in your engagement scores and you've stopped thinking about how it feels to work in your business then take a big step back from your reports!
&nbsp;
<h3>Engagement every day</h3>
To drive success, employee engagement needs to be part of the fabric of your business. Here's some ways to do this:
<ul>
<li>Ask for engagement updates in your business updates. The quickest way to demonstrate that engagement matters is by asking about it. If you're calling your Sales Director, don't just ask about their sales figures, ask about employee engagement and what they've done to improve things</li>
<li>Making a change, big or small? Ask yourself / your team what the impact will be on engagement, if it's negative, how can you lessen it or counteract it?</li>
<li>Add engagement questions into your every-day conversations with your team, ask "how are you?" and really mean it.</li>
<li>Make a focus on employee engagement a non-negotiable with your people leaders, poor engagement = poor performance</li>
<li>Recruit people into your team who are going to make a positive contribution to engagement in your business - treat them as a culture contributor who will have an impact, so make sure it's going to be a positive one</li>
<li>Publicly talk about employee engagement and how much it means to you, be THAT person on social media who talks about how proud they are of their team.</li>
</ul>
 
&nbsp;
Ten Space can really help you make a difference in employee engagement levels. Whether your looking for some personal coaching to make you an engagement hero, you're starting from scratch or you're looking for an extra 10% of engagement, we'd love to be part of your success: victoria@tenspace.co.uk

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 5

By now you might have a huge wish list of things you'd like to implement this year.&nbsp;Or you might just have a few key initiatives that will help move you forward and build engagement. We're now going to look at how you can turn these into ACTION!
&nbsp;
<h3>Make engagement your priority</h3>
We've seen plenty of engagement plans created and discarded when "the day job" gets in the way. But the "day job" gets so much easier if you have a motivated, empowered engaged team all pulling in the right direction. So don't put this off, make your engagement plan a priority.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Include everyone</h3>
In week one we discussed that employee engagement needs to be everywhere in your business and run through everything you do. So if you have gaps in engagement you'd like to close, it can't just be a handful of people who are making this happen and it especially can't just be one leader / HR Manager.
Share your vision with everyone and make sure your managers and leaders are sharing . Make it clear you'll be measuring their success on employee engagement with a particular focus on what you're expecting from them.
&nbsp;
<h3>Assemble your team&nbsp;</h3>
As a leader, your vision and your mindset are vital to making this spread BUT let your employees be involved in the process. You need to assemble a team of people who can tell you what is important, what's going to make a difference and help you make it happen.
The key players you need in this team include:
<ul>
<li>The 'highly engaged' -&nbsp;the ones who love your business, love working there and can cheerlead for you</li>
<li>The 'disengaged' -&nbsp;the ones who are vocally disengaged and will give you the feedback you might not want to hear</li>
<li>The 'influencers' -&nbsp;those people who get things done and have great networks</li>
<li>The 'quiet ones' -&nbsp;use this opportunity to engage those who aren't as ready to share their opinion.</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
You now have a team who are going to help you improve engagement. They are there to share your ideas and observations from the previous weeks bring their own contributions. You can identify priorities, actions, timeframes and review periods. This is where you breath life into your action and plan and set about making it happen.&nbsp;&nbsp;
Get some quick wins in first, to gain traction and success. Identify what you can do that will visibly demonstrate something has changed.
&nbsp;
<h3>If you get stuck&nbsp;</h3>
From time to time you will encounter roadblocks, but if addressed quickly, they can be overcome. If you can't, you need to explain why. Demonstrate that you've heard it, considered it and explain what you can do / have done / can't do. Use it as an opportunity to build trust and transparency.&nbsp;
Ignoring things that you can&rsquo;t do anything about will undermine your efforts. If you&rsquo;ve taken time to listen to your team and asked for their contribution, ignoring their feedback can undo your good intentions.&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<h3>Leading your team</h3>
In leading this team of change agents, you can use the principles of the engagement model to drive further engagement.
These include;
<ul>
<li>Creating clear direction and leading by example</li>
<li>Allowing people to be heard and making it easy for them to contribute</li>
<li>Delivering inspirational leadership to bring out the best in them creating an environment where they can succeed</li>
<li>Recognising (and rewarding if appropriate) achievements and success</li>
<li>Providing challenges that stretch personal development</li>
<li>Share success so your team become real ambassadors for your business</li>
<li>Create a safe environment where they can share their opinions, concerns and ideas</li>
<li>Listen to what they need to support them and go make it happen</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
Need some help creating your engagement plan, getting your team behind it, or making it happen? Ten Space can help <a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent;" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>.

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 4

In weeks 1 and 2, I encouraged you to give some thought to the following things;
<h4>Week 1:</h4>
<ul>
<li>Your business goals for 2021</li>
<li>What you need from your team in order to achieve these goals</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
<h4>Week 2:</h4>
<ul>
<li>How well connected are you to your team? (Start an engagement plan by adding things from checklist)</li>
<li>How can you be a better leader? What can you improve about your business and yourself?&nbsp;(Continue building your engagement plan)</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
This week we're looking at the second half of the Ten Space engagement framework - Fulfilment and Wellbeing. This is where engagement gets really personal. Let's take a look at what each of these mean for your employees and your business.
&nbsp;
<h3>Fulfilment</h3>
Fulfilment is all about answering the employee's question "what's in it for me". It's about how well their role meets their personal and professional needs. This pillar recognises that the employment relationship is a two-way street and that employees are looking for much more than just a salary in return for their time and dedication.
Here's some of the questions to ask yourself in this area:
<ul>
<li>Do the rewards I offer the team, match the contribution they make? Are they fair and motivating?</li>
<li>Are rewards aligned to the right outcomes? Are they driving the right behaviours?</li>
<li>How much focus do you place on personal and career engagement? Are people able to grow in your business? Is this a priority?&nbsp;</li>
<li>Do you design roles and take an approach that allows work to compliment your team's lives? Are you thinking about flexible working? Part time roles? Remote working?</li>
<li>What would your teams say if you asked them if they felt challenged in their roles? Too much? Too little? Just enough? Is the work interesting for them?</li>
<li>Are they proud of the work that they do?</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
Task 4: Reflecting on the list above, is it a two-way street in your business?&nbsp;What else could you be doing? Add them to your notes from the week one exercise. Your engagement plan is starting to take shape!
&nbsp;
<h3>Wellbeing</h3>
Wellbeing is about whether employees feeling safe, secure and supported in their role. It can be both emotionally and physically. Employees will struggle to be engaged if they are worried that their job isn't safe; they are going through a difficult time and haven't got the support that they need, or they can't be truly authentic whilst at work.
Here's some of the questions to ask yourself in this area:
<ul>
<li>Do my teams feel safe and secure in their roles? Are they worried about their position or their future in the business?</li>
<li>Are there good support mechanisms in place if employees need it? Do policies and practices "do the right thing"? Do leaders know what support tools are available to them and are able to use them effectively?</li>
<li>How diverse is your team? Are you proud of the diversity in your team? Have you got more work to do here?</li>
<li>How inclusive is your business? Have you got more work to do here?</li>
<li>Are your employees able to be authentic and truly themselves at work?</li>
<li>Is there more you can be doing to support employee's emotional, physical and financial wellbeing?&nbsp;</li>
</ul>
Task 5: Reflecting on the list above, do you provide a safe and secure place for your workforce?&nbsp;What else could you be doing?
&nbsp;
<h3>Identifying solutions</h3>
If you've identified some gaps, you can work on solutions by thinking about the following things:
<ul>
<li>What feedback have my team given me that has indicated what solutions, improvements or changes they'd like to see?</li>
<li>Who can I ask / how can I ask them to know where I can make an impact?</li>
<li>Do I know people or businesses who are doing this well that I can get ideas from?</li>
<li>Do I need some expertise to help me?</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
If anything in here has struck a cord and you'd like to create your plan with the support of Ten Space, you can contact <a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent;" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 3

In last weeks blog, I encouraged you to give some thought to two things;
<ol>
<li>Your business goals for 2021</li>
<li>What you need from your team in order to achieve these goals</li>
</ol>
You can find it&nbsp;<a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(219, 62, 98);" href="https://www.spacehr.co.uk/blogs/5-steps-to-a-highly-engaged-team" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a> if you want to recap.
Hopefully you've had time to reflect and give some thought to this.
This week we're going to be looking at two critical pillars of Employee Engagement - Connection and Leadership. Each pillar offers the ability to help you achieve your goals by building a highly engaged team for the future.
&nbsp;
<h3>Connection</h3>
Connection is about aligning your employees to your business and it's goals. It's about having a sense of purpose (like a mission or vision) and ensuring your people are bought into it. It's about two way communication with employees having a voice and being able to contribute to the business's future. On a practical level it's also about being informed and updated.&nbsp;
If your people understand the part they play in the future of the company they can make a great contribution!
Thinking about your own business;
<ul>
<li>Do you have a mission or vision that's clear and meaningful?</li>
<li>Do your team know what it is and know how they can contribute?</li>
<li>Do you have company values and are they brought to life in your business?</li>
<li>Are your people processes well aligned to this? For example, do you recruit with your mission in mind?</li>
<li>Do you have a mechanism by which your team can give feedback / ideas / ask questions / contribute? Do you allow your employees to influence what happens in your business?</li>
<li>How good is your communication about what's happening in your business? Are your team well informed and updated? Is it engaging? Topical? In the moment?</li>
</ul>
Task 2: What are you not doing from the above list?&nbsp;Add them to your notes from the week one exercise. Your engagement plan is starting to take shape!
&nbsp;
<h3>Leadership</h3>
The saying goes that people join a business and leave a manager. We've found this to be very true. Without great leadership, you are always filling a leaky bucket when it comes to employee engagement.
Leadership is about how confident employees feel about their leaders and managers, how inspired they are by them, how much trust there is there and what the relationship is like.
Thinking about your own business;
<ul>
<li>Do the leaders in your business bring out the best in your teams?</li>
<li>Have you got a high performing team? If not, are you working towards it?</li>
<li>Are your teams well recognised by leaders? Does it inspire your teams to do more?</li>
<li>Do your leaders create great working environments for their teams? Are they good at bringing teams together and build their strengths?</li>
<li>Is poor performance well managed? Is there a sense of fairness in your business?</li>
<li>Is trust high amongst your leaders and their teams?</li>
</ul>
Thinking about yourself;
<ul>
<li>What kind of leader are you?</li>
<li>Where do your strengths lie</li>
<li>What are your weaknesses?</li>
<li>Where do you need to focus personally?</li>
</ul>
Task 3: Reflecting on this list above, what can you improve about your business and yourself.&nbsp;Add them to your notes from the week one exercise. Your engagement plan is starting to take shape!
&nbsp;
<h3>Identifying solutions</h3>
If you've identified some gaps, you can work on solutions by thinking about the following things:
<ul>
<li>What feedback have my team given me that has indicated what solutions, improvements or changes they'd like to see?</li>
<li>Who can I ask / how can I ask them to know where I can make an impact?</li>
<li>Do I know people or businesses who are doing this well that I can get ideas from?</li>
<li>Do I need some expertise to help me?</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
If anything in here has struck a cord and you'd like to create your plan with the support of Ten Space, you can contact <a style="color: rgb(17, 85, 204); background-color: transparent;" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 2

Taking the time to plan in January is an excellent way to make sure you don't drift as the year goes on.
I'm going to assume a few things first...
&nbsp;
1. You had a great Christmas break
2. You took some real time off from work
3. You rested or had a good change in pace (because as they say, a change is as good as a rest)
&nbsp;
If not please do consider a break first, because starting a year burnt out from last year is never a good idea!
Like me, you're probably wondering what the year has in store. Could it be a record year of revenue growth? Maybe you're launching a new product? Maybe you're going for investment? Or could it be the year that you sell your business and cash out?
I don't want to curse any of your plans at this early stage, but how did 2020 feel when you left it behind? Maybe some people handed their notice in and left at the end of last year. Maybe you're going to walk back in to a flurry of people handing their notice in. Or, maybe the mood became quite low at the end of last year and you know it's going to be a challenge to raise spirits and re-engage your team?
One thing is for sure, if you've got huge ambitions for 2021 you're going to need a rock solid team that's firing on all cylinders to help you get there.
&nbsp;
Here at Ten Space, we've thought about this for you. We've put together a 5 week plan to help you put your team first in helping you to achieve your goals.
&nbsp;
<h4>Over the next 5 weeks we'll cover;</h4>
Week 1 - How will a more engaged team help you achieve more?
Week 2 - Engagement Pillars - Connection &amp; Leadership
Week 3 - Engagement Pillars - Fulfilment &amp; Wellbeing
Week 4 - Turning your plan into action
Week 5 - Measuring success
If you lose track of our posts at any time, you can find all our blogs on www.spacehr.co.uk.
&nbsp;
<h3>STEP 1 - How will a more engaged team help you achieve more?</h3>
Employee engagement touches everything you do in your business. It's in the colour of the walls, it's in the type of coffee you provide, it's in each payslip and every word that comes out of your mouth.
It isn't a project, an initiative, or a short term fix. Great employee engagement doesn't have a deadline and it's never finished or completed. High engagement today doesn't guarantee you high engagement tomorrow. You need to work at it every day and in every corner of your business.
&nbsp;
<h4>Your Engagement Bank</h4>
Think of employee engagement as a bank account. You opened it on day one of your business and since then you've been adding to the balance. The currency in your account has a value and it can help buy the business great things such as increased revenue, higher profitability, better talent, higher employee retention and increased creativity.
Every day in your business you are making deposits or withdrawals from your account. Making more deposits increases the level of employee engagement you have and gives you the opportunity to buy more. Similarly, you'll naturally make withdrawals. These are unavoidable as an employer, but they matter less if the balance in your account is kept high. You simply need to put more in than you take out.
&nbsp;
<h4>Your 2021 Goals</h4>
Most businesses start the year setting out goals they'd like to achieve. There might be some specific goals such as entering new markets, building new products, offering new services or smashing higher sales targets. Whatever they are, it's likely that some withdrawals will need to be made from The Engagement Bank along the way to meet these goals.
Some examples could include;
&bull; Goal 1: Work with bigger clients - So requiring your team to up-skill
&bull; Goal 2: Ensure profitability - So communicating that pay-rises might not happen this year
&bull; Goal 3: Increase revenue - So sales targets need be increased
&bull; Goal 4: Streamline processes - Requires introducing a new piece of tech and re-training
&nbsp;
<h4>Your Task</h4>
1. Document the goals for your business in 2021
2. Consider what you will need from your team in order to achieve these goals. Have you got enough currency in Your Engagement Bank? What withdrawals are you likely to need to make to ensure this year is a great success?
&nbsp;
Writing these things down, gives you a good foundation for your engagement plan. If you'd like to use the Ten Space Engagement Planner to create your plan, email victoria@tenspace.co.uk and we'll send it to you.
Ten Space's model of engagement provides focus and direction to create impact.
&nbsp;
Over the coming weeks, we'll be looking at engagement in 4 key areas:
<ul>
<li>Connection</li>
<li>Leadership</li>
<li>Fulfilment</li>
<li>Wellbeing</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
Want to do it faster? No problem! We can send you the next 4 weeks content now! Or we can help create your plan with you: victoria@tenspace.co.uk.

5 Steps to a Highly Engaged Team - Part 1

The traditional working week of 9-5, 5 days a week seems to be hard wired into our society. Most workers build their days, weeks and years around this working pattern. But for many people, it just doesn't align with their life outside of work.
Many are juggling a near impossible balance of work and life outside of work, which makes it incredible difficult to be fully engaged in their job.&nbsp;
Caring responsibilities play a large part in this juggling act:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/employmentandemployeetypes/articles/familiesandthelabourmarketengland/2019">5 million people</a>&nbsp;in the UK are juggling caring responsibilities with work - that's 1 in 7 of the workforce.</li>
<li>Almost 3 in 10 mothers (28.5%) with a child aged 14 years and under said they had reduced their working hours due childcare reasons.</li>
<li>The proportion of parents who faced an obstacle fulfilling responsibilities decreased as the age of the child increased; from&nbsp;34.9%&nbsp;of parents whose youngest child was aged between 0 and 4 years to&nbsp;20.4%&nbsp;of parents with a child aged 11 to 14 years.</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
Reviewing mental health statistics makes it really clear where employees are struggling and where the engagement gaps may be.
A recent Mental Health Foundation survey found:
<ul>
<li>One third&nbsp;of respondents feel unhappy or very unhappy about the time they devote to work</li>
<li>More than&nbsp;40%&nbsp;of employees are neglecting other aspects of their life because of work, which may increase their vulnerability to mental health problems&nbsp;</li>
<li>When working long hours more than a quarter of employees feel depressed (27%), one third feel anxious (34%), and more than half feel irritable (58%)</li>
<li>The more hours you spend at work, the more hours outside of work you are likely to spend thinking or worrying about it</li>
<li>As a person's weekly hours increase, so do their feelings of unhappiness</li>
<li>Many more women report unhappiness than men (42% of women&nbsp;compared with&nbsp;29% of men), which is probably a consequence of competing life roles and more pressure to 'juggle'</li>
<li>Nearly&nbsp;two thirds&nbsp;of employees have experienced a negative effect on their personal life, including lack of personal development, physical and mental health problems, and poor relationships and poor home life.</li>
</ul>
These findings make for pretty depressing reading. So what can you do as a business to change things for the better?
&nbsp;
If your business can accommodate it, moving away from the traditional working week and offering more flexible ways of working can offer solutions to the challenges above. In return, you'll build long lasting employee engagement and create competitive advantage.
Offering flexible working options opens up new, often more diverse talent pools too as well as giving employees a greater reason to stay in your business.
If your business can accommodate it, we recommend that you build flexible working into your processes when creating or replacing roles.
Try and consider;
<ul>
<li>Can this role be part time?</li>
<li>Can this role be a job share?</li>
<li>Does this role need to be 9-5?</li>
<li>Does this job need to be 5 days per week?</li>
<li>Can it be compressed hours?</li>
<li>Can it be term time only?</li>
<li>Can it be remote?</li>
</ul>
&nbsp;
The principals and the benefits of a flexible working approach, reach across all of the 4 pillars of the Ten Space engagement model. If you'd like to talk some more about our model, approach and how flexible working could offer you competitive advantage, you can email our founder: Victoria@tenspace.co.uk&nbsp;

Shunning the 9-5 can create competitive advantage

Can flexible working improve engagement?

This is a story about a people manager that works in your business. Let's call this person "Alex" for the purposes of this story.
Alex (delete as appropriate):
a)&nbsp;has worked in your business forever
b)&nbsp;is a close friend of your partner
c)&nbsp;is the key contact for your biggest client
d)&nbsp;knows where the bodies are buried
e)&nbsp;started in a lower role, showed promise and drifted in new roles as the company grew
&nbsp;
Once upon a time Alex was doing well, so you gave them a team. They didn&rsquo;t get off to a great start, but you were busy at the time, and didn&rsquo;t have the time to deal with it. Before you knew it, many years had passed. If you're being honest, Alex probably gets worse each year now.
Because Alex doesn't model great behaviour they don't have a great recruitment success rate. This leads to a high number of people leaving or being made to leave in probation. It wastes a lot of time and is costs the business a lot of money. But not everyone is great at recruitment, so no action needed.
There are no real shining stars in the team, no one manages to make it out of Alex's team once they are in it. Alex has no idea how to create a great environment for working and for talent to thrive, they just seem to muddle along.&nbsp;Sickness levels do seem to be a bit higher in that team too, but it isn&rsquo;t that much worse than other teams, so no action needed.
&nbsp;
Alex likes banter.&nbsp;You&rsquo;ve heard a couple of things second hand, but again you&rsquo;re too busy to do anything about it, they aren&rsquo;t a screaming problem at the moment. No grievance received, so no action needed.
Alex's customer stats are ok. The clients Alex manages are stable, but Alex doesn't really achieve any up-sell or create any new opportunities from their client base. But they haven&rsquo;t lost any clients, so no action needed.
Alex's name has come up a couple of times in exit interviews, but you&rsquo;ve never had a grievance about them from leavers and not everyone can get along, so no action needed.
Others in the leadership team are visibility frustrated working with Alex.&nbsp;There&rsquo;s tension but that&rsquo;s normal in a senior team under pressure right? Sadly one of your highest potential leaders has decided to leave. You don&rsquo;t think there&rsquo;s a link though, so no action needed.
&nbsp;
<h4>But now its crunch time - the business is growing up.</h4>
Now you&rsquo;re having to make some different and difficult decisions about the future of the business. You need your leadership team on board to help push this change through. But Alex messed up the message and now you&rsquo;ve had a load of emails directly from employees to deal with. Classic Alex cock up, but not the end of the world, so no action needed.
&nbsp;
<h4>Remember, Alex (delete as appropriate):</h4>
a)&nbsp;has worked in your business for 1 million years
b)&nbsp;has been there since the beginning
c)&nbsp;is a close friend of your partner
d)&nbsp;is the key contact for your biggest client
e)&nbsp;knows where the bodies are buried (delete as appropriate)
f)&nbsp;started in a lower role, showed promise and got promoted a few times
... so it isn&rsquo;t that bad. Deal with it later.
How does this make you feel as the owner of a business, or as an effective leader in the business?
The impact of a poor leader in your business can be really damaging. Other employees may see Alex's mediocrity or poor approach being acceptable in your business. If you settle for this level of mediocrity, you&rsquo;ll have to settle for mediocre outcomes.
&nbsp;
<h3>So what should you do?</h3>
You need to confront this head on. And you need to do it now. There are to many amber warnings going on here and ultimately your business might not be suffering, but it probably isn't realising its true potential either.
Here&rsquo;s some ideas of how to get this started:
<ul>
<li>Firstly you need to make it clear to Alex that it isn&rsquo;t acceptable anymore</li>
<li>Gather your facts and prepare for a challenging conversation</li>
<li>Invite Alex to your meeting, do it properly, so they know it&rsquo;s not just a quick catch up</li>
<li>Have an exploratory conversation with them. What&rsquo;s going on? How can you support? How can you turn it around? What do they need?</li>
<li>Put in place your agreed support actions - do not forget or skip this part</li>
<li>Set clear expectations and timescales for review. Be fair, be supportive, be clear.</li>
<li>Be brave about moving from informal to formal processes if you aren&rsquo;t seeing the change you need. Don&rsquo;t cruise at this stage either</li>
<li>Make great notes &amp; keep great records</li>
</ul>
Here&rsquo;s that line again, in case you still need convincing, if you settle for mediocre leadership, you&rsquo;ll have to settle for mediocre outcomes.
Take this out of the &ldquo;too hard&rdquo; box and demonstrate that you&rsquo;re also a great leader by tackling this and not accepting this level of mediocrity.
&nbsp;
If you need help raising the game of your leadership team,Ten Space can help. <a style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(219, 62, 98);" href="mailto:victoria@spacehr.co.uk" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">victoria@tenspace.co.uk</a>

A story about "Alex" - A manager in your business?

Does one bad manager matter?

How BEAM Fieldwork increased their survey completion rate to 94% by creating action plans using feedback  gathered by Ten Space

Case Study

Following a successful HR career, Victoria saw the opportunity to build a pragmatic product for HR teams to fall in love with. Her mission to ‘create incredible workplaces through highly engaged teams’, is underpinned by the technology and service delivered by the Ten Space team. 

CEO / Founder

Ten Space is a team of experts in employee engagement, experience and technology. Our powerful survey platform and service helps HR teams build winning businesses.

<div>Right from the start our goal was always very clear. We wanted to help businesses be the best versions of themselves.So we combined technology, support and resources for HR professionals and business leaders to gain incredible insight.We’ve built a product that’s really easy to build into your current framework and delivers feedback from day one.</div>

Our platform is designed to help you understand the real problems in your business - fast!

Insightful articles, hints &amp; tips and company news

Featured Blog

Take our survey platform for a test drive and see what it can do for you and your business.

See how B-Secur used their 81% completion rate to inform engagement policies and strategies through Ten Space.

Featured Case Study

view

Take our platform for a test drive and see what it can do for you and your business. Our team are here to answer all your questions.

Employee engagement is crucial for accountancy firms as it directly impacts productivity, client satisfaction and firm reputation. Engaged employees are more likely to go the extra mile to understand client needs, provide tailored solutions and build long-term relationships. High levels of engagement reduce turnover rates, saving recruitment costs and preserving institutional knowledge.
                

Measure employee engagement in accountancy firms through regular surveys assessing factors like job satisfaction, work-life balance and alignment with firm values. Include questions on communication effectiveness, career development opportunities and recognition. Analyse survey results to identify areas for improvement and gauge overall engagement levels.

 A great employee engagement platform will give you the data, insight and feedback you need to enact real change in your organisation. Using a third-party platform adds an extra layer of trust. By segmenting the data from engagement surveys, you can uncover valuable insights specific to different employee groups. You can find where your problems are coming from and create targeted actions.

How it works

<div><h3 class="heading pb-4">What is Employee Engagement?</h3>To put it in its simplest form: Employee engagement is the level of commitment, enthusiasm and dedication employees have towards their work and the organisation. Enhanced employee engagement reveals itself in employees reaching their full potential and delivering exceptional performance at work.</div>

Measuring employee engagement in your legal firm can be achieved through regular employee surveys. This first step is critical in gathering data that will help you make decisions. Ideally you should be surveying your business every month so you can quickly observe any drops in engagement and affect a plan quickly to resolve issues. Regular surveys provide the data you need to build a strategic engagement plan based on real information, not gut feeling.


Using an ‘engagement specific’ survey platform will help you gather data faster, more securely and more accurately. The right platform will also make it easier for people to submit their responses in a way that’s easy for them. You’ll be able to compare results over time to analyse trends. By segmenting the data from engagement surveys, you can uncover valuable insights specific to different employee groups. You can find where your problems are coming from and create targeted actions.

Once you’ve done your first survey, things will become instantly clearer. You’ll start to see the hotpots in your company by a variety of segmentation criteria such as team, location, gender, role and tenure. Open-ended feedback will often help provide a solution to the challenges you’re seeing. We’re always amazed how much insight a first survey provides to our customers from a high level right into the detail. Measuring consistent data-points over time will help gain a deep understanding of how to build your strategic plan.


Build your employee engagement strategy

<div><h3 class="heading pb-4">High engagement means higher performance</h3>Employee engagement is a critical activity for professional services firms. Retaining your high performing people will help you build a high performing legal practice. 

But if you don’t have a way to measure engagement and understand when engagement is dropping, you run the risk of losing your top performers and a potential domino effect of top talent.</div>

This is a 404 error, which means you've clicked on a bad link or entered an invalid URL.

learn more about employee experience &amp; retention

An easy-to-use platform to helps you capture employee feedback simply, safely and securely.

Survey using Email, WhatsApp and SMS. Easily reach your deskless mobile and remote workers with surveys so everyone can share their ideas and feedback.

Reporting that delivers instant actionable insights, whilst offering rich detailed analysis.

The insights you need to prioritise, make decisions and track your impact. The data you need to help your team thrive.

<h5 class="heading mt-4 aos-init"> Take employee feedback to the next level</h5>If you're already gathering employee feedback but want to do more, we can show you how.

<div>The Ten Space survey platform does the hard work for you, reducing months of data collection and analysis into minutes.</div>

<div>Our survey platform delivers feedback surveys to gather responses back quickly for super-quick analysis and faster action.</div>

<div>Employee surveys, that allow you, your HR team and your leaders to focus on what they do best - building engagement and creating change.</div>

Search our Knowledge for answers to the things you need to know.                

Choose the plan that suits you

<ul><li>Access for up to 250 team members</li><li>Bi-monthly engagement surveys</li><li>Industry specific questions</li><li>Real-time results and analytics</li><li>Result segmentation, tracking &amp; comparisons</li><li>Suggested actions from experts</li><li><a href="/employee-engagement-model/">The Ten Space employee engagement model</a></li></ul>

<div class="text-center"><a>Find out more about advantage</a></div>

Fast and powerful engagement surveys

advantage

<ul><li>For all sizes of organisation</li><li>Advanced AI analytics</li><li>Build your own surveys</li><li>Distribution via email, WhatsApp &amp; SMS</li><li>Customisable data segmentation</li><li>Targeted surveys based on segmentation</li><li>Customised dashboards</li><li>Track key parts of the employee journey</li><li>Permissions based reports</li><li>Dedicated engagement managers to help you get the best results</li></ul>

For larger teams with dedicated requirements

enterprise

Build question sets unique to your business to get to the heart of the problem.

Set surveys to deliver when you want, to whoever you want, where you want.

Your business is comprised of lots of different teams that work in different ways.

Our platform is customisable to fit the needs of every part of your organisation.

Ten Space AI summaries reduce days of data analysis into seconds of processing. In a few clicks the key themes of your survey are summarised, allowing you to identify the parts of your business that need help. 

Simple, clear, easy to understand dashboards for faster desicion making.

Tag and segment data easily to identify areas of concern.

Get ahead by viewing results as they come in.

Confidently identify hidden meanings and discover trends.

Agile businesses need a flexible and inclusive approach.Ten Space reaches the parts that other platforms can't, using Whatsapp, SMS &amp; Email to gather employee feedback.This leads to higher participation and a more inclusive experience, capturing the data from all your people, easily.

The Ten Space survey platform offers a data-driven approach for HR professionals. You can easily design, gather and analyse real feedback from your across your business in real-time. 

Listen to HR Director's Cut - insight into your dilemmas, conundrums and questions

Engage your team to deliver the future of your business today. From only £3 per employee per month. Whether you're starting your employee engagement journey or taking your people strategy to the next level, we can help.

Capture and utilise diversity data to enhance your culture. Capture diversity data in an efficient and safe way. Explore diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in your organisation. Ten Space supports your DEIB strategy. We can help you capture diversity data from your team in an efficent way to enhance your people data.

Elevate engagement. Retain talent. Supercharge performance. An engaged workforce helps businesses achieve so much more. The Ten Space survey platform captures the insights you need to understand employee engagement &amp; culture across your organisation. Take action &amp; drive change.

Create exceptional employee experiences. Optimise engagement. Supercharge your EVP. Let us take you on a journey.... Explore the experiences of your employees. Ten Space can help you to explore the journeys your employees take as they join your organisation, all the way through to when they leave.

Accelerate the performance of your teams to drive business performance. Explore what is driving, or holding back, your teams from delivering high-performance. We can help you explore high-performance in your organisation. Using our performance-focused surveys, we can help you uncover what is holding a team back from achieving their full potential.

Our monthly subscription fee includes our intuitive survey platform and wrap around service.

Ten Space fully supports your Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) strategy in the workplace. We offer comprehensive solutions to help you efficiently capture diversity data from your team, thereby enriching your people data. Additionally, our platform enables you to explore the topics of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging within your workplace culture, providing valuable data and insights to inform and enhance your DEIB strategy.

Ten Space equips companies with the necessary resources, tools, knowledge and information to create the ultimate diverse and inclusive workforce. Our platform offers analytics and insights that enable organisations to develop and implement effective DEIB programs. From setting goals on equality to attracting diverse candidates during the hiring process, we provide solutions that address gender, race, ethnicity, and other dimensions of diversity.

Leveraging our data capture platform, we ensure that the process of collecting DEIB data is efficient, safe, and secure. Our platform is designed to capture data in a clean and organised manner, ready for your analysis and utilisation.

With our DEIB focused surveys, we enable you to capture the essential data and gain insights that support your DEIB strategy. We can explore general engagement across different demographics, or we can specifically focus on diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging as central themes, allowing you to delve deeper into this critical area of culture.

As a trusted third-party platform that captures feedback anonymously, we provide a safe space for your employees to share their experiences and provide valuable feedback. This anonymity fosters an environment of authenticity and trust, enabling you to build an accurate and comprehensive picture of the insights you need to drive your DEIB initiatives.

We understand that your DEIB strategy is an ongoing journey, not a one-time event. That's why we help you regularly capture feedback and insights, allowing you to track your progress over time. By monitoring and analysing this data, you can demonstrate the impact and return on investment of your DEIB efforts, ensuring continuous improvement and advancement.

An engaged workforce helps organisations achieve their goals. Ten Space captures the valuable insights you need to build a positive culture through high employee engagement. Your people managers and leaders can easily identify and address those critical issues preventing high engagement and build a culture that everyone buys into.

Ten Space empowers organisations to unlock the full potential of their employee engagement strategy. By utilising our platform, people managers and leaders can leverage their knowledge, experience and approach to drive positive change throughout the workplace. Effective communication, addressing challenges and fostering a supportive culture are integral aspects of our platform, enabling you to build a thriving organisation that values its employees. With Ten Space, you have the necessary insights and data to prove the impact of your employee engagement strategy and continuously improve the employee experience.

"Ten Space help HR teams identify and resolve retention hotspots quickly. The data helps you improve every stage of the employee journey including hiring, onboarding, probation, reviews and exit interviews to continuously improve the employee experience and reduce retention risks"

<div><h3 class="heading pb-4">What is the Employee Engagement model?</h3>Some believe engagement is solely about having happy employees, but engagement goes beyond this. Enhanced employee engagement reveals itself when your employees reach their full potential and deliver exceptional performance at work.At Ten Space we use a simple model. It helps you explore engagement in your organisation. It shows you where you already excel and where you need to focus to improve.</div>

When your employees feel connected to the mission of the company, their engagement improves significantly. They find meaning and purpose in their work, knowing that their efforts contribute to something larger than themselves. They become more invested in the success of your organisation, leading to higher productivity, increased job satisfaction and a stronger sense of belonging within the team.

A great leader inspires and motivates their team members, earning their trust and respect. They provide clear direction, guidance, and support, allowing employees to perform their best and reach their full potential. A great leader creates a sense of empowerment, job satisfaction and loyalty among the team, leading to enhanced employee engagement and overall success.

 Employee engagement improves when your employees feel fulfilled in their role. When individuals find their work meaningful and aligned with their values, they are motivated to invest their time and energy into their work, going above and beyond to achieve goals. This positive mindset and attitude contribute to increased productivity, stronger teamwork and a happier work environment, ultimately enhancing overall employee engagement.

The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychologically safe workplaces. Psychologically safe workplaces promote healthier, more productive and more inclusive workforces. They also provide the environment in which innovation can thrive and people can perform at their best.

Ten Space is the platform to gather regular employee feedback. Every month, your employees are able to offer the feedback and insight you need to create positive change throughout your organisation.

The Ten Space engagement model underpins the data. It ensures a consistent approach to capturing feedback that can be measured over time. Our platform helps you build the perfect question set to understand the real issues preventing high engagement. 

 Ten Space does all the hard work, saving you days of admin. Questions are sent via email, WhatsApp or SMS and responses are gathered back in the platform. No matter where your employees are or how they work, there is always an easy way for them to provide their feedback. 

See responses as they're being submitted. Our dashboards display real-time information for you and your managers to access valuable insights at any time. This allows you to spend less time collating data and more time taking the actions that matter to build higher engagement.  

The Ten Space way

Retaining your best people is all about understanding the individual and collective journeys they're on. Ten Space allows you to predict retention issues before they occur and prevent your top talent from leaving.  

The Ten Space survey platform allows leaders to seamlessly follow their employees' journeys within the organisation, gaining invaluable insights into their professional growth and development. The platform provides a unique ability to monitor employee sentiment through live data streams from surveys, enabling leaders to make informed decisions to enhance workplace satisfaction.

All of your employees are on a journey. Even before they work for you, they're building an impression of your organisation through the hiring process. Common experiences for all employees may include hiring, onboarding, probation, promotion and exit. Ten Space allows you to unpack the employee experience at each stage of the journey, helping you improve the experience for future employees. 

Ten Space provides a highly customised in-depth feedback loop to understand which parts of your HR initiatives and processes could be causing retention issues. Our platform sends our feedback surveys at critical times to gather sentiment and understand feeling. At every step, you'll gain a true understanding of how employees really feel and what retention risks exist.

Ten Space makes the process of collecting feedback really easy. Our platform allows you to build and launch custom feedback loops that can analyse specific journeys being experienced in all parts of the organisation. You can customise your questions to gain a deep understanding of employee experiences. And our AI summaries make it easy to analyse retention hotspots at all times.

At any time, your HR team can log into Ten Space and view our feedback dashboards. Our customer success team will hold regular reviews and insights sessions with you, so you feel fully supported. We'll help you to get the most out of the insights you've captured and support you in taking the next steps to further enhance employee satisfaction. 

The Ten Space way

Ten Space assists you in exploring high-performance within your organisation. Leveraging our performance-focused surveys, we enable you to achieve your goals and unlock the full potential of your teams. Our platform helps you identify the unique qualities that make a team exceptional, empowering you to replicate and build upon their success. Analysing performance culture team by team in organisations where performance matters.

Ten Space equips you with everything you need to drive team performance and achieve success. By leveraging our platform, you can assess and enhance the culture, communication, management, individual commitment, projects and processes that contribute to team effectiveness. Through comprehensive performance evaluation metrics and insights, you gain a deeper understanding of your teams and can make informed decisions to drive improvement and productivity.

Utilising our performance-based question sets we’ll help you understand how to assess performance in organisation. We guide you by asking the right questions to extract the necessary insights on performance evaluation for teams. Whether your team operates in creative, technical, administrative, or sales-focused areas, we tailor the process to fit your team's specific requirements.

We assist you in segmenting your team data, enabling you to gain in-depth performance insights and understand the trends that impact team effectiveness. Our intuitive dashboard helps you quickly identify key insights from your results, allowing you to focus on actionable steps and next moves.

Harnessing the power of Ten Space as a trusted third-party anonymous platform, we provide a safe space for employees to share any challenges, barriers, or catalysts that affect their performance. This way, we foster a climate of openness, encouraging individuals to provide candid feedback that can uncover valuable insights.

We can help you integrate communication and training needs analysis into your surveys, allowing you to gather ideas and solutions directly from your team members. By capturing this information, you gain a clear understanding of work expectations and where your team would like you to focus your efforts to improve performance culture. There are no limitations or holding back when it comes to taking action.

Capture and utilise diversity data to enhance your culture.

Insights to understand the engagement and culture across your organisation

Identify and resolve retention hotspots in your organisation

Capture and utilise diversity data in an efficient and safe way to enhance your culture.  

Capture the insights you need to understand employee engagement &amp; culture across your organisation.

Create exceptional employee experiences. Optimise engagement. Supercharge your EVP.

Accelerate the performance of your teams to drive business performance

Build a high performing business powered by high performing teams

Educational content - book now or watch on-demand

Employee Engagement

Employee Retention

Team Performance

Blogs

Webinars

Resources

Podcasts