Diversity & Inclusion

Employee Survey Best Practice

CEO & Founder

<h2 id="a-blog-on-being-accessible-and-inclusive-first-of-many-">A blog on being accessible and inclusive (first of many)</h2>
How people experience works is not a standard, one size does not fit all and if it is designed without considering the rich and wonderful variations that people bring with them then you are going to be delivering a reduced experience.
This blog is about how technology plays a part in this experience design and how it can remove barriers but also what you can do differently for the group of people that experience colour blindness.
<h3 id="how-common-is-colour-blindness-">How common is colour blindness?</h3>
In the UK there are&nbsp;3 million colour blind people, so&nbsp;4.5%&nbsp;of the overall population.
Men are more likely to experience colour blindness: - 1 in 12 (8%) of men and 1 in 200 (0.5%) of women are colour blind.
So, as an employer of people, or a provider of technology to them, it is likely that you will need to consider colour blindness in design.
<img src="../../../../../uploads/f73a196eaa7c40c0922d48ed1f734241.webp" alt="" width="1024" height="1024" />
<img src="../../../../../uploads/bf13a2a1aed343089e19c45089b69cae.webp" alt="" width="1024" height="1024" />
I am one of the 8% of men who are colour blind and with the above, in mind, the fact that I work for a tech company and that I also spend lots of time discussing people analytics, people feedback and data visualisation, I would like to talk about a few things on this blog:
<ol>
<li>The things you could be doing that potentially exclude a population of your workforce</li>
<li>How tech should be helping and what you should be asking from your tech partners</li>
<li>How this is a journey for all of us and it starts with the intention to solve stuff for people.</li>
</ol>
<h2 id="your-kpi-report-is-not-inclusive-sorry-">Your KPI report is not inclusive (Sorry)</h2>
Hi, my name is Nick and my&nbsp;colour blindness&nbsp;means I mainly struggle with reds and greens, but also blues / purples and greens / browns, which is lovely, I can never be a commercial airline pilot.
So, now imagine me in HR, flying those HR key performance indicators (KPI&rsquo;s) that are flagged as Red (Under-performing), Amber (Underperforming a bit) and Green (On target) &ndash; commonly called a RAG report (Red, Amber, Green)
If you use red and green to show a difference on a dashboard, a chart, a notice board, a poster etc then you are effectively stopping me taking part in this conversation, or at least making it more difficult than it needs to be.
<h3 id="what-do-i-see-i-hear-you-ask-">What do I see? (i hear you ask)</h3>
<img src="../../../../../uploads/c946c52b32af4aefb980196af06dd7cb.webp" alt="" width="545" height="265" />
<img src="../../../../../uploads/60084abc6dee46e780b7ba87141baa99.webp" alt="" width="545" height="265" />
&nbsp;
You see the problem?
<h2 id="heatmaps-and-rag-charts-are-problematic">Heatmaps and RAG charts are problematic</h2>
A heatmap is a really good way of presenting large data sets where you want to show high, low and in-between results.
At&nbsp;<a href="https://pxhub.io/">The People Experience Hub</a>, we use them in our dashboards, and we opt for a monochrome (one colour) scale in blue (I like blue) as this is good practice for ensuring that we do not exclude colour blind people from our tech.
We are often asked if it would be possible to have the low numbers in red and the high numbers in green, another example of how a traffic light system has become a norm, and when this happens we always try to educate on how this would cause issues for a population of workers.
I have recreated a red/green heatmap and a monochromatic heatmap below so you can see the difference it makes, the red/green one confuses me and I am not sure what is red and what is green here but the blue one is crystal clear.
<img src="../../../../../uploads/2171f2cb48fc472dbed1bf45dfbf488a.webp" alt="" width="1229" height="366" />
<img src="../../../../../uploads/cf466528d2f24082ae2c2e86b6044578.webp" alt="" width="1229" height="367" />
Traffic light systems of reporting data have become so normal it is the default for many companies reporting.
It should stop. Please.
<h2 id="what-colours-can-i-use-when-designing-for-colour-blindess-">What colours can I use when designing for colour blindess?</h2>
I am glad you asked!
Martin Krzywinski, Scientist, Data visualisation wizard and all-round inclusion good human has developed a 15 colour palette for colour blindness.
Details in the link and image below:
<a href="http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/colorblind">http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/colorblind</a>
<img src="../../../../../uploads/a06e888636714bae98a54a3dc7f03a92.webp" alt="" width="948" height="906" />
This 15-colour palette provides good discrimination for common colour blindness types.
Individuals with tritanopia cannot distinguish colours marked with ● and ◥.
<h2 id="top-tips-for-colour-blind-data-visualisations">Top tips for colour blind data visualisations</h2>
We have summarised some top tips for ensuring that what you are doing is accessible for people who are colour blind
<img src="../../../../../uploads/5707403e0be74ea29394fbe959666c97.webp" alt="" width="1480" height="442" />
<h2 id="-and-while-we-are-here-chromostereopsis">&hellip;and while we are here, chromostereopsis</h2>
Not directly related to colour blindness, but blooming annoying for lots of people!
If you put blue and red next to each other it can cause an optical illusion of depth, normally the red section is seen floating, for me I see it moving around which is a bit weird, and this is called chromostereopsis.
One of the issues here is a lot of tools default to a red and blue image, Microsoft Excel will default to the chart colours below &ndash; some people will see some crazy stuff here!
<img src="../../../../../uploads/3e6ede94590b4d28818b9919918bc176.webp" alt="" width="1024" height="389" />
But there is a simple solution to this one &ndash; just stop using red and blue next to each other.
<h2 id="remember-it-is-a-journey">Remember it is a journey</h2>
When we started&nbsp;<a href="https://pxhub.io/">The People Experience Hub</a>&nbsp;I knew that whatever we did we needed to be inclusive.
I am lucky to work with a great team on our product development and everyone is a huge advocate of the technology user experience (Ux) being an inclusive one.
We hold each other to account and when one of us comes up with something amazing we use a set of UX tools to test this idea against and of course inclusion is one of these tests.
We know that we are on a journey and not everything we do will be perfect, but we will continue to strive to be better and make it happen!
There is a lot to take in here and if you are making changes internally it can feel a little overwhelming, my advice to you is that you have started and that is the main thing but also lean on your tech suppliers and demand better from them for your people and ask them how they tackle the above.
And remember to listen to your people and let them tell you if something isn&rsquo;t working.
<h2 id="measuring-the-experience">Measuring the experience</h2>
At&nbsp;<a href="https://pxhub.io/">The People Experience Hub</a>&nbsp;our whole range of tools help you understand the inputs, what detracts from satisfaction and to really understand what changes can be made to improve people experience by design
<blockquote>
&ldquo;Designing a great people experience for your employees starts with understanding how they feel about the world of work from start to finish.
</blockquote>

Colourblind.png

How to design for colour blindness, a guide on making your interface designs colourblind friendly to be easily read and accessed by employees who mistake shades or find it difficult to distinguish colours.

Designing for Colour Blindness: Some Of Your People Are Colour Blind

Approximately 4.5% of all people experience colour blindness, yet the world of work is full of charts that are not designed to be easily read or accessed by colour blind employees.

Some of Your People are Colour Blind: Designing for Colour Blindness

A blog on being accessible and inclusive.
How people experience works is not a standard, one size does not fit all, and if it is designed without considering the rich and wonderful variations that people bring with them then you are going to be delivering a reduced experience.
This blog is one of a series of blogs about how technology plays a part in this experience design and how it can remove barriers but also what you can do differently to include neurodiverse groups. You can read the first, <a href="https://www.thepeopleexperiencehub.org/post/colour-blindness-some-of-your-people-are-colour-blind">on Colour Blindness here</a>
Dyslexia is a very common form of neurodiversity 10% of the UK population has some form of Dyslexia &ndash; that is a whopping 6.3 million people&nbsp;So, as an employer of people, there is a pretty high chance that some of your people are dyslexic.&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="../../../../../uploads/a8140f88dc2e4125a54e5277be690503.webp" alt="null" width="233" height="233" />
&nbsp;
<h3 style="font-weight: 400;">Is your tech Dyslexia friendly?</h3>
&hellip;Are your written communications?
How you choose to use technology and how you communicate in your business will matter to any of your workforce with dyslexia. (Remember 10% of the UK have Dyslexia and this could be higher!)
<h3 style="font-weight: 400;">So, what is Dyslexia?</h3>
The British Dyslexia Association say this:
"Dyslexia is a neurological difference and can have a significant impact during education, in the workplace and in everyday life.
As each person is unique, so is everyone&rsquo;s experience of dyslexia. It can range from mild to severe, and it can co-occur with other learning differences.
It usually runs in families and is a life-long condition."
<h3 style="font-weight: 400;">Tips for dyslexia-friendly text</h3>
In our business we are in the business of asking people what they think, we do this typically with text, so it makes sense to ensure that we are not putting a barrier in the way of people with dyslexia.
Do not use serif fonts!
Serif fonts examples are Times New Roman, Georgia, Garamond, Bodini and Rockwell.
A serif is the bits circled in the image here:&nbsp;
&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="../../../../../uploads/d754f1463a6e435895360f52b6ad21d9.webp" alt="null" width="114" height="142" />
The impact of this for someone with dyslexia is that they tend to obscure the shape of the letter and make letters appear to run together.
So using Sans Serif fonts (sans means &lsquo;without&rsquo;) should be your default position, examples are Ariel, Calibri, Comic Sans (yes you hate it, but it is a fab font for people with dyslexia), Century Gothic, Gill Sans and Helvetica.
Or there are a number of fonts that have been designed with Dyslexia in mind, here at The People Experience Hub we let users completing surveys select the font they prefer and we include Open dyslexic as a font choice.
&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="../../../../../uploads/bf3cd592c0e84c62a6d5098b07c0d36a.webp" alt="null" width="446" height="236" />
&nbsp;
Use bold text not italic or underlining to highlight words Italic text and Underlined text will make it harder to read for anyone with dyslexia, if you need to highlight an important section then make the text bold instead.
Do not use justified text or a double space after a full stop The river effect is where there are rivers of white space in the body of text, which can cause people with dyslexia to lose their place when reading.
Justified text is where you distribute your text evenly across a fixed area. It is often used for formal documents and often seen in legal contracts, academic papers and in places where the writer is portraying a more formal message.
The text below is an example of this:
&nbsp;
<img style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" src="../../../../../uploads/3d126ff60521466a8a4eed83644cf4d8.webp" alt="null" width="305" height="239" />
&nbsp;
Double Spacing after a full stop creates the same effect.
Sorry to all those, like me, who were raised to use a typewriter and always to put a double space after a full stop but the time has come for us to try and stop this practice.
Back in the day, a double space accentuated the end of a sentence when using a typewriter because they used single-spaced letters.
Today this practice used online (and offline) causes the river effect and will make your text difficult to read for anyone with Dyslexia.
We ran a quick Twitter poll, which you can find <a href="https://twitter.com/Scruffy_Nick/status/1227213720369188865?s=09">here</a>&nbsp;asking people if they put a double space after a full stop and 34% of people said that they did.
We are always learning and breaking a habit is hard so people may need your support in understanding the impact today.
<h3 style="font-weight: 400;">Colour is important</h3>
Stay away from using stark contrast (bright white background and pitch-black fonts) as this can be a little overwhelming, soften the background slightly and use a dark grey rather than a solid black for your text.
Avoid background patterns and pictures, use a solid colour instead. You can find out some more about dyslexia-friendly styles <a href="https://www.bdadyslexia.org.uk/advice/employers/creating-a-dyslexia-friendly-workplace/dyslexia-friendly-style-guide">here.</a>
<h3 style="font-weight: 400;">Let technology do the heavy lifting</h3>
As with any communication it is all about the right delivery, whether that is multiple channels you should make sure that there are options for as many people as possible.
Today stuff like letting users select the font they read and complete a survey in should be the basics.
But also can a screen reader cope with the layout on the screen?
Getting these basics right should come before any funky functionality.
<h3 style="font-weight: 400;">Remember, becoming inclusive is a journey!</h3>
When we started <a href="https://pxhub.io">The People Experience Hub</a> I knew that whatever we did we needed to be inclusive.
I am lucky to work with a great team on our product development, and everyone is a huge advocate of the technology user experience (Ux) being an inclusive one.
We hold each other to account and when one of us comes up with something amazing we use a set of UX tools to test this idea against and of course inclusion is one of these tests.
We know that we are on a journey and not everything we do will be perfect, but we will continue to strive to be better and make it happen!
There is a lot to take in here, and if you are making changes internally it can feel a little overwhelming, my advice to you is that you have started and that is the main thing but also lean on your tech suppliers and demand better from them for your people and ask them how they tackle the above.
And remember to listen to your people, let them tell you if something isn&rsquo;t working.
Thank you for reading!
Why not check out our&nbsp; blog on Belonging which can be found <a href="https://pxhub.io/blog/belonging-the-rules-of-the-game" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here</a>

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A blog on supporting dyslexic employees in the workplace by improving verbal discussions and making reasonable adjustments to help support dyslexic co-workers.

Dyslexia: Are you excluding Dyslexic employees in communications?

We are not all the same, thank goodness. When it comes to communicating with neurodiverse employees, 10% of whom may experience dyslexia, one size does not fit all.

Are you excluding Dyslexic employees with your communication?

People Analytics

<h1>Sliders in Employee Survey: Measurement Theatre</h1>
At a recent conference, I was interested to hear one of the speakers, previously a senior HR person in a large organisation and now a respected HR voice, talking about how technology is changing employee feedback technology.
<h2>The theatre</h2>
She talked about moving away from the &ldquo;old-fashioned&rdquo; scale (typically using radio buttons) to the modern approach of sliders. Even better, she suggested, are sliders with graphics that change as you slide up or down the scale.
The example on the screen was a wilted flower that became less wilted the more you moved the slider to the right.
&nbsp;<img style="min-width: 200px;" src="../../../../../uploads/7462386cad054f2fbc3580323dd9b7f2.jpg" alt="Plant Slider" width="1156" height="285" />
I&rsquo;ll be honest: At the time I was completely taken in by the theatre of the moment. I was excited by the thought of this slider slash graphical solution to employee feedback that was being praised so highly on stage. I even made loads of notes on how we could do something like it in <a href="https://pxhub.io/">The People Experience Hub</a>.
<h2>The reality</h2>
As soon as the presentation was over I got in touch with our Chief Product Officer (Ben) and asked him whether we should put this on our product roadmap.
I suspect that his sigh could be heard across much of the UK...
And his answer: a resounding &ldquo;No&rdquo; (or possibly something less polite).
<h2>Why? Sliders sound cool!</h2>
With his next breath, Ben reminded me of all the reasons we didn''t build sliders into the platform in the first place, and all the time we spent discussing and debating them in the early days.
Our Product Development and People Science teams are data enthusiasts and this includes not just the data we hold but how we capture it.
We must capture feedback data in a manner that is; meaningful, repeatable, relatable, accessible and because User Experience (Ux) is essential, it has to be easy to use.
The immediate questions asked to me were:
<ol>
<li>Will everyone share the same meaning of a flower as it passes through its stages of wiltedness?</li>
<li>Could we repeat the results using a different scale?</li>
<li>What is the scale that we are trying to represent?</li>
</ol>
Fully wilted, A bit wilted, neither wilted/non-wilted, Not that wilted, Not wilted at all
<blockquote>
Today I am a rampant sunflower!
</blockquote>
I conceded that a scale with a flower going from wilted to Non-wilted was probably a bit rubbish when considered rationally through a data collection lens.
<h2>What does the evidence say?</h2>
There&rsquo;s no doubt that sliders look good. Because of this, they have been introduced into employee feedback technology to add a wow factor, sizzle rather than sausage&hellip; &hellip; pure theatre, you might say.
But does that matter?
Let''s look at what the evidence tells us:
<ol>
<li>While sliders look great on a desktop, they are not always mobile-friendly. Sliders used on mobile phones result in more non-responses than sliders used on desktop computers (<a href="https://doi.org/10.1080/08898480.2018.1439245">Toepoel and Funke 2018</a>).</li>
</ol>
<ol start="2">
<li>Sliders may reduce accessibility, which doesn''t fit with our view that technology should be inclusive &ndash; Some respondents find it difficult to move the sliding bar on a cell phone (<a href="https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfw088">Antoun, Couper, and Conrad 2017</a>).</li>
</ol>
<ol start="3">
<li>Finally, and worryingly, sliders register a &lsquo;response&rsquo; even if you do nothing, so a null answer will always return a value - Sliders produce more incomplete data compared with clickable radio buttons (<a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0894439315575477">Funke 2016</a>).</li>
</ol>
So, it would appear that we can conclude that Sliders are better for marketing a product than they are for capturing quality data.
<h2>So what is the best way to collect employee survey data?</h2>
It&rsquo;s perhaps not exciting, but we&rsquo;ve found that clickable five-point scales tend to be the most effective way of gathering employee attitudes and opinions.
That&rsquo;s the short answer, however.
The longer story is that there are pros and cons to different types of scale, and we explore those further in our <a title="guide to good employee survey measures" href="https://pxhub.io/blog/good-practice-vs-survey-theatre" target="_blank" rel="noopener">guide to good employee survey measures</a>.
You may also want to check out our blog that tackles another flawed piece of &lsquo;survey theatre&rsquo; <a title="eNPS-pure-theatre" href="https://pxhub.io/blog/eNPS-pure-theatre" target="_blank" rel="noopener">eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score)</a> and what you can do to deliver a better result from your employee surveys.
At <a href="https://pxhub.io/">The People Experience Hub</a>, we are always happy to connect with new people and talk about employee feedback, what you are up to and how we might be able to help you.
---
<a href="https://pxhub.io/blog/guide-to-employee-surveys-1-design">Check out our guide to running employee surveys</a>

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Are slider questions an effective tool in surveys or do they just add an interactive visual design element in your employee feedback?

Sliders in Employee Surveys: Measurement Theatre

There’s no doubt that sliders look good. Because of this, they have been introduced into employee feedback technology to add a wow factor, sizzle rather than sausage…
… pure theatre, you might say.
But does that matter?


Employee Experience

Senior Marketing Executive 

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A guest blog from David McDermott, SEO executive from peninsula group who talks about inclusion, why it’s important, and how to create an inclusive company culture.
 

How to be an Inclusive Manager

Let’s learn all about inclusion, why it’s important, and how to create an inclusive company culture by David McDermott, our guest blog writer.