PollUp Brings Easy-Access Polls to HCM

By Steve Anderson
Contributing Writer

Human capital management (HCM) requires that companies know the mood of the current stock of human capital—otherwise known as “employees,” “contractors” or “people”—and address the concerns of the same directly. One of the most expedient ways to do that is with a poll, but polling used to take quite a bit of time and effort, and not just on the part of those taking the polls. PollUp, however, is out to make it a lot easier to find out what all that human capital is thinking, and how the organization can react accordingly.

With Gallup figures suggesting that just under one in three employees—32.5 percent—actually feels engaged at work, it's a real opportunity for HCM to step up involvement and get more information out of those employees. Polls come with some problems, of course, in that they take a lot of time to not only fill out, but also gather and analyze to attempt to find patterns that can be acted upon.

Meanwhile, PollUp helps settle that by offering quick-to-produce polls that can be sent out rapidly. With PollUp, users can set up multiple choice polls, or leave polls open-ended for free response, and do so on an automated basis that frees up HCM operations for other purposes. It allows for quick information gathering while also allowing everything else to be taken care of. PollUp hopes to have a wide release product ready sometime this year, and has already been spotted working with several firms to get there.

When employees don't feel engaged at work, it increases several major potential problems, in both absenteeism and presenteeism— that comparatively new issue at work where employees are present at work but working at suboptimal levels due to illness, exhaustion, or even lack of engagement. Not paying attention to what the workforce wants is a sure cure to suboptimal production, and may well be prompting some of a company's best employees to be actively looking for work elsewhere. Such a move generates other costs, and when costs can be avoided without damaging the customer experience, it's a means to free up resources and get more from what's already on hand.

While PollUp may not make for more engaged employees automatically, it can go a long way toward finding out what's wrong within a company and addressing the issues accordingly. This can make the difference between a company with an engaged workforce and a company that doesn't have a workforce anymore.