Employee retention is a pressing concern, with 41% of employees planning to leave their jobs this year. Turnover is merely a symptom of a deeper problem – employees feel dissatisfied and disengaged. Sentiment analysis allows companies to peer inside the black box of employee attitudes, illuminating issues and opportunities.
The Growing Importance of Understanding Employee Sentiment
Engaged employees directly impact organizational success. Gallup found that highly engaged business units result in 21% greater profitability compared to those with low engagement. But worldwide, only 34% of employees are engaged at work.
With the stakes so high, companies can no longer afford flawed initiatives based on assumptions instead of data. Sentiment analysis fills this gap. By mining internal communications and HR systems using natural language processing (NLP), companies can finally understand what employees think and how they feel.
Sentiment analysis provides tangible metrics to track over time, enabling data-driven improvements in the employee experience. As AI and emotion analytics advance, the insights generated will only become more nuanced and impactful.
The Far-Reaching Benefits of Understanding Sentiment
Sentiment analysis provides both a wide lens and a focused microscope on the employee experience. Big picture sentiment patterns reveal opportunities like improving leadership rapport, updating outdated technology, or preventing burnout. More granular analysis delivers insights into specific teams, demographics, and individual mindsets.
The applications across the employee lifecycle are numerous according to Josh Bersin of Deloitte. Sentiment analysis can enhance:
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Recruiting: Understand candidate experience and optimize sourcing campaigns
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Onboarding: Identify gaps in onboarding process through early employee feedback
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Learning: Refine L&D programs by analyzing sentiment in training surveys
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Performance management: Provide personalized coaching based on sentiment trends
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Diversity and inclusion: Detect differential experiences of demographic groups
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Retention: Predict turnover risk by analyzing sentiment shifts over time
The Risks of Ignoring Employee Sentiment
Failing to understand employee sentiment is akin to flying a plane without instrumentation telling you altitude, speed, and engine health. Seemingly minor issues can rapidly escalate into catastrophic failure.
Consider the case of Wells Fargo. In 2016, unethical sales practices led thousands of employees to open fraudulent customer accounts. This toxicity might have been avoided had leadership analyzed employee sentiment and concerns early on.
As one Wells Fargo board member told the Wall Street Journal: “There was a failure of leadership at many levels, exacerbated by the lack of board oversight.”
Let’s explore how sentiment analysis provides that insightful oversight across the employee lifecycle:
Modern Techniques to Analyze Sentiment at Scale
Sentiment analysis leverages AI techniques like natural language processing (NLP), text mining, and machine learning to categorize text across positive, negative and neutral sentiment.
Sophisticated algorithms are trained on linguistic data to understand emotional cues in written and spoken language. They identify sentiment based on:
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Keyword matching: Words like “happy”, “terrible” signal positivity or negativity. AI matches input text against sentiment keyword libraries.
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Lexical analysis: Algorithms examine sentence structure, grammar conventions and punctuation to deduce sentiment intensity.
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Learning contextual clues: Models discern how context modifies sentiment e.g. “not happy” suggests negativity.
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Understanding slang and colloquialisms: Modern NLP can decode sentiments from informal language.
Advanced techniques even categorize complex emotional states like frustration, anxiety, anger etc. Rather than just positive or negative, sentiment is scored across multiple emotional dimensions.
Combining text analysis with other data signals like facial expressions and vocal tone enables even richer emotional insights through a multimodal approach.
Comparing Sentiment Analysis Techniques
| Method | How it Works | Key Benefits |
|---|---|---|
| NLP | Uses linguistic algorithms to classify sentiment in text | Nuanced analysis of written language |
| Text Mining | Extracts key themes and topics from text corpora | Discover major discussion topics |
| Machine Learning | Models learn sentiment classification from training data | Adaptive analysis; minimal human input needed |
| Lexicon-Based | Matches words and phrases against a sentiment lexicon | Simple implementation |
| Deep Learning | Advanced neural networks uncover latent sentiment signals | Highly accurate across complex language |
This diversity of techniques allows flexible implementation across diverse datasets like employee feedback, emails, support ticket comments, and workplace chat platforms.
5 Applications of Sentiment Analysis for HR
Here are five ways advanced sentiment analysis empowers people analytics programs:
1. Ensure Employees Are Satisfied with Leadership and Work
Leadership concerns are a common reason for attrition. Employees want management that listens, cares, and communicates effectively.
Yet many leaders are oblivious to these relationship gaps. A SHRM study found 63% of leaders believed they had good relations with workers, while only 33% of employees agreed.
Analyzing sentiment patterns around leadership in internal communications reveals weaknesses driving attrition. For example, frequent negative mentions around “support from my manager” highlight an opportunity for management training.
2. Provide Better Performance Management and Coaching
Performance criticisms without empathy and support demoralize employees. But pairing feedback with each individual’s sentiment trends creates personalized coaching.
For example, an employee stung by a negative review may privately voice anxiety about inadequate training. Sentiment analysis can detect such concerns and prompt managers to improve coaching with more mentoring.
3. Build a Positive Company Culture anchored in Meaning and Equity
Employees want workplaces where they feel valued, included, connected, and empowered – not just transactional compensation. Understanding nuanced sentiments around organizational culture enables smart improvements.
Analyzing demographics helps ensure no groups feel marginalized. For example, women mentioning sentiments of not being heard in meetings might lead to mentorship programs.
4. Predict and Prevent Turnover by Listening to Sentiment Shifts
Not all turnover is preventable. But listening to sentiment changes over time allows intervention to avoid regrettable losses.
For instance, sudden negativity spikes around compensation may signal flight risk. Proactive measures like retention bonuses, promotion opportunities, or workload adjustments can respond before it’s too late.
5. Understand and Optimize Candidate Sentiment During Recruiting
Candidates often silently withdraw when they have a poor experience. Analyzing their feedback provides insights to improve sourcing, interviewing, assessments, and offer response time.
For example, repetitive mentions of delays and lack of feedback during hiring would underscore the need to update recruiting operations. This reduces applicant dropout and improves hiring outcomes.
Best Practices for Impactful Sentiment Analysis
Like any advanced analytics technique, sentiment analysis requires care and expertise to yield reliable insights. Follow these best practices to generate impactful findings:
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Survey design: Ask open-ended questions to prompt responses ripe for sentiment analysis, while close-ended questions provide context.
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Multivariate analysis: Cross-reference sentiments with factors like demographics, location, tenure etc.
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Triangulation: Compare sentiment data with engagement surveys, productivity, retention etc. to connect insights from different sources.
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Trend analysis: Watch for sentiment shifts over time rather than relying on one-off snapshots.
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Multiple data sources: Gather insights across different communication channels like email, chat, support tickets.
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Thoughtful automation: Use human oversight to catch nuances algorithms might miss to minimize bias.
Case Study: Global Bank Improves Retention with Sentiment Analytics
A leading Asian bank faced rising attrition amongst high-performing employees. Exit surveys revealed retention issues, but provided little actionable insight. They needed a better view into underlying sentiment drivers.
By analyzing internal communications and engagement surveys using NLP, they uncovered issues around lack of career development, coaching, and technology frustrations. Retention risk models based on sentiment data predicted attrition 6-9 months in advance.
Leadership then rolled out initiatives like skills-based mentorship programs and staffing rotations targeted to high flight-risk groups. This helped cut regrettable turnover by 58% in the first year.
Emerging Trends in Sentiment Analytics
Sentiment analysis is rapidly evolving. Key trends to watch include:
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Individual-level analysis through monitoring digital body language like typing speed, facial expressions etc. This enables personalized, real-time understanding of each employee‘s emotions.
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Predictive analytics to model future turnover risk based on sentiment shifts and trajectory. This allows proactive, preemptive retention initiatives.
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Multimodal analysis combining text, voice tone, facial expressions and more to understand sentiment and emotions with nuance. Integrating data from new interaction channels like virtual reality training and metaverse workspaces.
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Work graph analysis examining how sentiment cascades across relationships between people, teams, and hierarchy. This reveals hidden patterns across interconnected groups.
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From sentiment to emotions going beyond positivity, negativity and neutrality to decode complex emotional states like stress, uncertainty, engagement, and trust.
Of course, these techniques come with ethical obligations around consent, transparency, bias mitigation and employee privacy. But with conscientious oversight, the future looks bright for sentiment analytics to drive empathy, connection and belonging at work.
Turn Insights into Action to Improve Employee Experience
Sentiment analytics exposes invisible issues plaguing the employee experience. But data alone is insufficient. Leadership must have the courage and compassion to take action on uncomfortable findings.
Technology reveals areas for improvement, but empowered human leaders must drive the solutions. Combining machine intelligence with human wisdom unlocks lasting, systemic gains in employee satisfaction and retention.
In 2023, organizations have an unprecedented opportunity to listen to the heartbeat of their workforce. Will you respond to what your employees are telling you? The companies that do will gain an unassailable competitive edge.