a.s.r. developed eMood^® shortly after the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic as a way of staying abreast of the mood among its employees at a time when everyone was working from home.

Simple survey design

Simone Roos, HR Data & Digital manager at a.s.r., explains that eMood® goes further than simply measuring mood through the use of a smiley icon. ‘The strength of the survey lies in its simple design. Every Tuesday, all our employees are presented with three short, varying statements. Examples include “After the weekend I’m sufficiently recharged and ready to tackle a new working week”, “I’m proud of the work I do” and “I have the opportunity to take initiatives”. Employees are asked to score these statements. By focusing on specific topics, we find out what we need to do to improve people’s mood. It helps employees and managers to broach difficult or less obvious issues.’

eMood^® is completed weekly by an average of around 2,400 employees, and provides key input for taking decisions at all layers of the organisation. Simone: ‘Employees feel they’re being listened to and can voice any concerns anonymously and bottom-up. HR uses the results to undertake centralised interventions, such as adjustments to HR policy and employee development initiatives. For example, we have drafted guidelines governing the relationship between working at home and at the office. This policy is evaluated by the results of an eMood® survey.’

When other organisations began to show an interest in eMood^®, a.s.r. decided to offer the tool to customers. ‘eMood^® fits in with our ambition to increase the long-term deployability of employees within our organisation and that of customers. We take care of the entire process, from sending out the weekly pulse-checks and the data-processing to the distribution of the dashboards. The whole thing is fully automated, which means we can offer eMood^® at low costs.’

Minimal effort

13 business customers now also use eMood^®, among them Hienfeld Assuradeuren. ‘Our CEO Bob Botter heard about eMood^® and asked me to look into whether it might be something we could use, ’ Anouk Roemelé, HR & Operations manager at Hienfeld, explains. ‘To measure the job satisfaction of our employees, we sent out a periodic survey, and during lockdown I called colleagues personally to ask how they were doing.’

Anouk got in touch with Simone and was immediately enthusiastic about eMood^®. ‘Over half our personnel have been with Hienfeld for more than 20 years, but that doesn’t mean everyone is equally happy here. Research shows that contented employees are more productive and motivated, which in turn leads to lower levels of staff turnover and less absenteeism. Due to its simplicity and the minimal effort it requires from people, eMood^® is a great way of measuring how they are doing’ says Anouk.

Anonymity

Anouk presented the eMood^® to the Hienfeld Executive Board; she then notified all staff that it was being introduced and dropped in on each department to give an explanation. ‘Some people asked whether their answers would be anonymous. Happily, we were able to reassure them that their anonymity is guaranteed.’

The results are published weekly on the Hienfeld intranet, and Anouk discusses them at the monthly management team meeting. She’s happy with both the overall response and the results themselves. ‘Since we began using eMood^® in January 2023, the response rate has been over 50% and the score is consistently above 7. Only during the final week before the summer we fell below that with a score of 6.9. Clearly, everyone was more than ready for a holiday.’

Hienfeld is enthusiastic about the success of eMood^®, although Anouk has a couple of wishes. ‘To derive real added value, it would be good to be able to benchmark ourselves against other companies. And it would be great if we could add some of our own statements to gauge what our employees think about issues that are current within our organisation.’ Both of these wishes are being worked on, confirms Simone. ‘It’s good to hear what customers need.’

Predicting absenteeism

As a market leader in income protection, a.s.r. is taking steps to prevent sickness absence in order to improve the health and long-term employability of employees. With over a million replies, eMood^® generates key information with which future sickness absence can be forecast. ‘The answers to a statement like “Once I’ve finished my working day, I’ve still got enough energy to engage in other activities” have a high predictive value, as has a sudden change in responses and more extreme scores,’ Simone explains.

Over the next few years, eMood^® will be further refined to encourage prevention of absenteeism and good employership. Simone: ‘We want to be an important player in the sphere of sustainable employability and hence contribute to a vital labour market.’