Why: Setting specific goals makes them easier to achieve and find the motivation to achieve them. It provides a sense of gravity and responsibility and helps you determine when you should act.
How: Set a specific goal. It could be a goal for a certain level of participation or wellbeing within the department or the company. Continuously follow up on where you are in relation to this goal and discuss within the team what it will take to reach it.
Regardless of whether the Howdy Score is affected by private or professional considerations a KPI can help sharpen your focus on when you should be particularly attentive.
Why: The app’s user experience is very different from the web version. We want Howdy to be a tool that lives as an app on the phone of the individual.
This provides greater flexibility and possibilities for communication and content. There are many possibilities and features in the Howdy app and you could lead the way there.
How: Encourage everyone to download the Howdy app. You can do it together at a meeting, so the employees get it done. You can turn it into a contest where the employees must find the department’s Howdy Score and give their take on why it is at the level it is at.
If you use work-phones, you could automatically get the app pre-installed by the company’s technical department.
Why: Clear communication, arrangements, and expectations of one another ensure employees become involved, take ownership, and Howdy becomes a COMMON project.
How: Set aside time at a department meeting to talk about expectations. What can employees expect from management and what does management expect from the employees? Make specific agreements and keep them. A Howdy response provides insights, which benefit the entire team and enable you to respond to trends. That is why you should talk about how you want to work with Howdy.
Why: When you show vulnerability and dare to be open about how you are feeling, you help create a culture where it is OK to share both easy and difficult things. When a manager uses their own experiences, colleagues can more easily relate rather than if the manager merely encourages participation.
As a manager, you can lead by example in using Howdy to help show everyone is in the same boat when it comes to wellbeing.
How: Share your stories, whether they are positive experiences with the response team or continuous reflections relating to the 5 Howdy questions. Neither you nor employees have to do anything you do not want to do and it is not necessary to go into details with the case itself.
However, try to use certain phrasings when framing your questions, such as: ”What did Howdy do for you?”. Specific cases may inspire others to enjoy Howdy as well. Share these stories at meetings, intranet, newsletters, or the cantina.
Why: Is Howdy anonymous? What can my manager actually see? Do you also get these questions? Demystify how the data is used and show how it is reported. The employees should have no doubts as to what you can see and access. Make it obvious through transparency that their responses are anonymous and the intent is solely to work with the wellbeing of the team from a management perspective. Make yourself available to the individual.
How: Use the Howdy Portal at department meetings. Show live data and talk among yourselves to gain insight. Depending on the culture you should be aware of whether you should show the groupings of green, yellow, and red out of consideration for potential questions that may come up, such as: “Who is in the red?”.
The goal is to maintain the dialogue at a group level, where it is left up to each person to determine whether they want to share their response with others. The most important thing is that employees can see what data you receive in the Dashboard and that you CANNOT view their individual responses.
It may be a good idea to use the Howdy Score as a basis for discussion if you are curious as to why things are going so well or so poorly. A focus on what is going well can be self-reinforcing.
For inspiration, you can check this video in the Toolbox.
Why: Howdy can be an outlet for employees and help broach difficult topics. By relating to positive and negative comments employees feel heard and like their contributions are taken seriously.
How: First and foremost, you should encourage employees to write comments if they have feedback. Examine the comments at the department meetings and broach one topic at a time. Create dialogue, acknowledgement, reflection, and possibilities for solutions from these specific inputs.
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