Unions are making inroads in former corporate workplaces, by organizing manual laborers at Amazon to food service workers at Starbucks to high-tech professionals at Google. Unions not only defend the rights of workers to higher pay and better working conditions, but also give them a voice in the workplace.
So why aren’t companies taking the same approach to increasing employee morale and retention?
Aside from increasing hourly pay and providing better benefits, CEOs and Chief People Officers can take the reins from union leaders by engaging their employees in making decisions and rewarding them for their insights. Once employees feel that not only their labor but also their minds are appreciated, it’s more difficult for them to separate from what can feel like a family culture.
The trick in setting up a system for what business professionals call collective intelligence is to make it simple enough for employees to participate and for leaders to reap the benefits of their contributions. The system also needs to allow employees to earn points for participating, and for those whose ideas prove the most predictive and useful to be recognized and rewarded.
That system is here, and it’s the reason we developed and tested CrowdSmart.ai, collective intelligence SaaS that delivers a more accurate basis for decision making by increasing employee and stakeholder participation. Leveraging its patented AI technology, CrowdSmart filters ideas and delivers the best feedback for making decisions on anything from new products, employee hires, and competitive marketing strategies.
Unions depend on the alignment of employee dissatisfaction to recruit and retain members. Businesses and organizations can increase employee satisfaction by helping teams align with others regardless of how and where everyone is working by eliciting their insights. And because CrowdSmart elicits ideas anonymously, employees are not afraid to speak out and offer ideas that might seem out of the ballpark or that challenge current company procedures.
We’re not saying that CrowdSmart is a union stopper – in fact, unions could benefit from using our technology to gauge ideas and opinions of their membership as well. But with CrowdSmart, your organization can benefit from a workforce that is engaged and committed to helping your business prosper.