Utah State University (USU) is where I received my bachelor’s degree and both my master’s degrees over the course of five years. Located in the beautiful Cache Valley of northern Utah, it has nearly 30,000 students and state-of-the-art business, engineering, and research programs. An organization this size with so many colleges needs a solid HR department that can keep HR functions and communications consistent and effective.
While working through my master’s in HR, I and a couple of friends spoke with Doug Bullock, Executive Director of HR for USU, and learned of a potential data analytics project we could help out with. Doug was curious to learn how HR-related communications were received throughout USU among faculty and staff, and how he might improve their effectiveness. Excited to practice (and show off) our HR analytics skills, we took on the project and dove right in.
Data Collection
We knew from the start that determining if communications were being well-received would require the collection of data. Asking only USU HR employees if communications were working wasn’t going to give us very telling data, so we brainstormed ways we could gather feedback from up to have of all benefited (exempt, full-time) employees at the university about HR emails, the HR website, the HR newsletter, and the HR helpline. We decided on conducting focus groups, sending out an in-depth survey using Qualtrics, and then analyzing responses.
Doug was able to help organize five focus groups for us. An effective focus group brings together randomly-selected employees of a population and gets them talking about the good and the bad of certain subjects. We held these focus groups over Zoom and they were about one to one-and-a-half hours long. We used a program called Otter.ai to transcribe every word spoken in the meetings to make compiling the feedback easier. Four of the focus groups consisted of a variety of USU departments and colleges, and the fifth was made up of USU HR employees.
The main challenge in gathering data from focus groups was that all the feedback we received was qualitative, not quantitative. How do you make charts and graphs from comments such as “I start with searching the website with questions but usually give the helpline a call” or “HR communications from my manager stick the best but I only hear anything from them maybe once or twice a year” (actual comments)? It took a while, but we compiled all the Otter.ai notes, grouped statements together into different topics, and weighted them according to comment frequency and urgency. We also highlighted key comments in each topic to garnish the hard data we were going to receive. We planned on using these qualitative comments to support and validate the quantitative data down the road. We wanted the best feedback we could get, and though it took more work, we knew that focus groups in addition to an employee survey was the best way to go.
Creating and sending out the Qualtrics survey was the fun part of this project. From the survey we wanted to answer the following core questions:
- How often do you receive communications from HR that you find difficult to understand?
- What information would you like to see more of on the HR website?
- Is HR good at communicating urgent/important information?
- Is HR good at communicating other information and services?
We had to make sure no question was redundant, all Likert-scale questions were on a consistent scale, and the overall survey didn’t take too long to complete. All these were important practices to get as many responses as possible, avoid respondent confusion, and ensure the data outputs were usable and clear. The end result was a 38-question survey complete with demographic and employment questions. Every question except the last was multiple choice for easy analytics.
We sent this survey to half of USU’s benefited employees, allowed a 14-day response time, and sent regular reminders to recipients who hadn’t filled it out yet. Our end sample size was 187 total responses. Not bad!
Our final task was to manipulate the data, look for trends, and combine all our focus group feedback to give a story back to Doug. This meant lots of PivotTables, charts, and data cleaning! (My favorite part, to be honest.)
Findings
There were about a hundred findings we took away from our survey and focus groups, but it was important to us to only focus on the most telling data. Here are some of our most interesting findings.
1) Employees feel positively about HR’s timeliness in responding. 90% responded positively.
Focus group findings:
- “They’ve always been really helpful and seem like they’ve always been available to take a call or [respond] in a timely manner.”
- “Always respond in a timely manner, always really helpful as well.”
- “Always available, when I do need something they’re very quick to help”
2) HR’s communications are often misunderstood by employees. 67% of receivers at some point did not understand HR communications.
Focus group findings:
- “[Communication is] too wordy and not always to the point”
- “[There is] too much info up front”
- “Unclear how it pertains to me”
- “[I] don’t understand what they are talking about.”
- “It can be difficult to understand what I need to do…”
- “I can’t actually think of any HR communications other than the sexual harassment seminar we had to take.”
3) Email is by far the most preferred medium for communications. 50% of respondents marked email as their preferred communication medium.
Focus group findings:
- “I receive information mostly by email. If I need more information, I’ll go to their website and ultimately if I don’t find information, I’ll just call.”
- “I don’t need this feel good paragraph at the beginning [of the email]. I need the detail; the meat in the middle. If not, I will just scan it and not consume anything at all.”
4) People like the idea of using the HR website for self-service, of often struggle to find what they’re looking for. 79% of employees go to the website first when they have a question, but focus group feedback shows it’s sometimes not helpful.
Focus group findings:
- “I have a member of my staff that is expecting a baby. When we tried to go to the website to find out how maternity leave is handled. A phone call was better.”
- “Search results always brings up articles from USU Today which is not helpful”
- “…[A] google search will give better luck than the HR site. Maybe 50/50 I find what I am looking for but the other half, I have to call and find the clarity.”
5) The cadence of HR communications is good. 90% of employees disagree that HR communicates too often.
Focus group findings:
- “They’ve always been really helpful and seem like they’ve always been available to take a call or [respond] in a timely manner.”
- “Always respond in a timely manner, always really helpful as well.”
- “Always available, when I do need something they’re very quick to help”
Recommendations
Based on our most interesting findings, here’s what we recommended for USU HR in the end.
- Reduce the length and simplify the complexity of communications. A number of employees indicated that HR communications are difficult to understand or are too long, and many indicated that they immediately dispose of HR messages for this reason.
- Improve the navigation and user-friendliness of the HR website. The HR website is the preferred method for people looking to find information about HR topics. However, it is also frequently brought up that it is difficult to use and find relevant information.
- Increase the frequency of face-to-face training for remote campuses. Focus group feedback from satellite campuses indicated that they really appreciated when HR gives face-to-face trainings.
- Continue communicating with all mediums currently in use with an emphasis on Email communication. Email is most preferred; the website, Banner (a USU information system), and HR hotline are also used.
We were very happy to have tangible, realistic results and recommendations from our research and analysis. If Doug applies these suggestions, the urgent and important information HR needs to share with USU’s large population of employees will be transferred and received more effectively. For HR to succeed in their job, they need to communicate information effectively. And to communicate effectively, HR needs to adapt to its audience and find the best ways of doing so. I’m happy I was able to play a part in helping USU HR succeed in this area.
A huge thanks to Doug and his HR team for facilitating this project, and allowing us to dive so deeply into USU’s employee base. We hope this research project will help you in the future!
