How Salesforce is leveraging workplace analytics to drive the success of remote work?

The pandemic has changed the way companies approach employee experience, it’s no longer about fancy offices and endless perks. To be able to work effectively in a hybrid or remote model, organizations have to turn into data analytics. And this is the exact approach that Salesforce follows. Ernest Ng, VP, Global People Strategy and Analytics, Salesforce says that “Because we are growing at such a fast pace, as a company, workplace analytics is really key to helping us scale efficiently and effectively”. In today’s piece, we’re going to take a deep dive into how Salesforce leverages workplace analytics to drive success. 

#1 Employee experiences at the centre of remote space 

Salesforce always paid a lot of attention to employee experience. Prior to the pandemic, they focused their efforts around amenities that made it possible to mingle and interact with one another. The office was spectacular in all sorts of ways – barista bars, DJs, perfectly designed work spaces where people met spontaneously. These unplanned interactions led to a lot of innovation.  

However, COVID has turned their entire definition of what “good employee experience” meant upside down. While the company knew that they had to keep supporting their employees, they knew that they had to revisit the methods so that they worked in a remote setting.

As explained by Ernest Ng, Salesforce VP of Global People Strategy and Analytics, they’ve decided to put a focus on employee data which revolved around three areas – wellbeing, productivity, and spaces. Tracking and analyzing data, helps Salesforce maintain a great employee experience, which contributes to business success. 

#2 Measure experiences that impact well-being 

When it comes to wellbeing, Salesforce focuses their efforts on three methods:

• Employee surveys
• Contact tracking
• Health checks 

Similarly to Salesforce, we also measure wellbeing metrics at Network Perspective. Our platform allows you to collect and analyze data the following areas:

• Time spent on meetings after hours – this metric lets you see how much overtime is caused by meetings scheduled after your employees’ standard working hours. As a result, you can evaluate the risk of employees feeling overworked. It also tells you whether you need to look into how employees plan their work each day.
• Emails written after hours – the number of emails your employees send out after their declared working hours may point to a number of potential problems – a lack of work-life balance or heavy workload being just two of them. 
• Time since the first to last daily activity – shows the time between performing the first at the last task while at work.  It’s only effective when people are logged into the company tools. 
• Time since last balanced week – to verify if your team had a balanced week, you need to check if their work day exceeded 9 hours for consecutive 5 days. If it didn’t then it means that your team isn’t overloaded with work. 

#3 Measure productivity and experiences that impact it

The impact of hybrid work on productivity at Salesforce is measured by looking at:

• Learning
• Scrum team output
• Sales output/opportunity. 

At Network Perspective, we pay particular attention to the learning aspect. Namely, we believe that the quality and number of learning & development opportunities are important in determining whether your staff sees you as a good employer. Here are our top two learning & development metrics:

• Number of lifting interactions – lifting interactions apply to a situation where an employee interacts with a colleague higher up in the hierarchy. These interactions can be either spontaneous e.g. meeting during a coffee break or planned e.g one-on-one meetings. 

• Network size and diversity  – this metric indicates how many employees each team member is regularly in touch with, as well as how diverse their network is. For instance, if a Customer Success specialist communicates with members of the Product, Marketing, and Operations team regularly, you could consider their network diverse. You could thus assume that they have plenty of opportunities to learn from other departments.

#4 Measure workspace experiences  

Regarding spaces, Salesforce tracks the following data: 

• Office attendance data
• Work preferences
• Meeting data. 

At Network Perspective we put a strong focus on measuring data on workspace experiences. We look at three areas, namely: 

‍Focus time

Deep work – deep work is the time dedicated to individual work without any interruptions. To calculate deep work time, use the calendar to check the time between scheduled events, and identify the gaps which last at least one hour. 

Deep work streak length & count – relates to how long the deep work time lasts and how many occurrences there are i.e. is one streak of 4h of constant work, or is it 4 streaks of 1h each. 

Multiple context work – relates to tasks which take less than one hour to finalize. To calculate it, track all activities which take less than 60 minutes and add them up. 

Time spent on meetings 

Time spent on meetings tells you how much time, altogether, your staff dedicates to meetings throughout the week. This might indicate whether your employees are experiencing an imbalance in the time dedicated to collaboration and individual, deep focus work.

‍Routines

When discussing data on meetings, routines also deserve a special spot in your employee experience data analysis. At Network Perspective, we let you track information on cyclical meetings like 1-on-1s between the leader and employee, as well as any team routines, like daily standups and status updates.

Final remarks

Employee experience remains a top priority for businesses – particularly now that traditional engagement methods like team lunches, parties, or spontaneous meetings have become difficult (if not entirely unattainable).

Salesforce is a great example of a company that tackled this challenge effectively. As explained above, they’ve revisited their employee experience strategy so that it aligns with the remote work model. They now focus on new performance, wellbeing, and workspace metrics, which they carefully measure through organization network analysis.

If you’d like to learn how you can track and improve the experience for your hybrid or remote team, reach out! We’d love to show how the Network Perspective platform can help.