Emotional Salary Audit

Making the intangible tangible with an Emotional Salary Audit

An Emotional Salary Audit can help you analyse your current organisational culture so you can celebrate what you are doing well as a team or organisation and identify where you’re falling short so you can take steps to improve your employee experience. By measuring the opportunities available and importance of ten factors for employees (Autonomy, Belonging, Creativity, Direction, Inspiration, Enjoyment, Mastery, Personal Growth, Professional Growth and Purpose), we can provide you with a comprehensive picture of the organisation from the employee perspective.

The benefits of an Emotional Salary Audit

An Emotional Salary Audit will enable you to:

  • Identify exactly what might be impacting motivation, engagement and business results
  • Make sense of certain behaviours or outcomes being observed in the team or organisation
  • Understand the reality that people are experiencing at work by giving voice to those factors that are being perceived (or not) at work
  • Create a platform for open and targeted communication that avoids cognitive biases and creates opportunities for growth and development
  • Highlight what is working well from a leadership and organisational perspective and what should be celebrated
  • Give voice and language to what people need and what leadership needs to address
  • Create a culture of co-responsibility and action in which everyone can collaborate to build the organisational culture and future
  • Evaluate the impact of the actions you take to improve Emotional Salary

This is such a wonderful and helpful audit. The information we received helped us give sense and meaning to some of the behaviours and results we were having. It also gave us an action plan on how to proceed in terms of training and development and how to better invest our resources. It also directed our focus in special groups on specific areas to personalize our people development strategy.

The great thing about this audit is that we were also able to pair it with other KPI’s important for our business. This will enable us to continuously compare results in the future months and review and improve our action plan.

Thank you to the Emotional Salary team for their professionalism and excellent work.

Ilse Nino de Rivera - Training Manager, Lancôme

Why an Emotional Salary Audit is necessary

Your team or organisation will benefit from an Emotional Salary Audit if:

  • You believe that your employees’ experience has a fundamental impact on business results. (It does!);
  • You care about the fulfillment and wellbeing of your people;
  • You want to understand how your team or organisational culture is perceived by your people OR You want to ensure the culture being lived in the team or organisation reflects what is desired;
  • You want a simple yet proven framework for people to have open dialogues about their work;
  • Your employees are paid fairly and equitably for the work that they do and you feel they need something more;
  • You are committed to making the most of the Audit by taking action based on the results;

Red de Recursos Humanos (Chile), 03/08/2023 - www.redderrhh.com
Diario Crónicas (Uruguay, 27/05/2022 - www.com.uy
El Pais (Uruguay), 27/05/2022 - www.com.uy
Authority Magazine (USA), 12/05/2022 - www.medium.com
SoftDoit (Spain), 01/05/2022 - www.softwaredoit.es
El Tiempo (Colombia), 07/03/2022 - www.eltiempo.com
Authority Magazine, 19/01/2022 - www.medium.com
Authority Magazine, 18/10/2021 - www.medium.com
Huffington Post, 13/10/2021 - www.huffingtonpost.es
Insights Success, 16/09/2021 - www.insightssuccess.com
Business Insider España, 22/02/2021 - www.businessinsider.es
Tec Review, 19/02/2021 - www.tec.mx
BBC Mundo, 15/02/2021 - www.bbc.com
Ideamensch, - www.ideamensch.com
Revista Dirigir Personas, 01/03/2020 - www.aedipecatalunya.com
HR Director, 14/02/2020 - www.thehrdirector.com

As a company, we often focus on what is not going so well and forget to look at all those aspects of the company that really bring joy and purpose to our employees. Undertaking this exercise has allowed us to reframe our perspective, give ourselves a pat on the back and then focus on the areas we need to improve on. We are very committed to professional and personal development but we have approached it in the typical way of looking at team building, skills training etc and hoping this is what our staff needs. Carrying out this audit has really given us a focus as to where to spend our time and money to give the most return and the biggest impact and to celebrate the areas we are doing so well at. The staff really got a lot out of receiving a personalised report and it has made them take control of and be personally accountable for change that they want to bring about. This has led to lots of ideas for training, outings, idea sharing and new mentoring projects. We are looking forward to devising a long term personalised training plan for our staff based on real data.

Natasha Mason - Director, LETS Education

When to undertake an Emotional Salary Audit

Every Audit enables you to measure the Emotional Salary of your people at two distinct points in time, between 6 and 18 months apart. This means that you can easily identify the impact of action taken and track your employees’ Emotional Salary over a period of time. We also recommend measuring some of your existing KPIs at the same time so that these can be compared against the results for organisational Emotional Salary. An Emotional Salary Audit should be done at a time when the team or organisation is fully committed to acting on the insights gained from the Audit.

What is included in an Emotional Salary Audit?

An Emotional Salary Audit includes:

  • Two opportunities to take the Emotional Salary Barometer™ for every employee, including a personalised report and Action Plan on their Emotional Salary detailing an Emotional Salary score, together with practical tips and advice to increase Emotional Salary each time.
  • Access for all employees to their personalised dashboard where they can review their results at any point and download activities to help them improve their Emotional Salary.
  • A detailed analysis of the results of each Audit taking into account a range of different metrics such as gender, age range, length of service, department/division and location highlighting key conclusions and recommendations, whilst retaining employee anonymity.
  • Presentation of the results of each Audit together with suggestions for practical actions that can be taken at a team and organisational level.
  • Consultancy and advice on internal communications including presentations to employees if required.

Many of our clients combine an Emotional Salary Audit with training for employees and leaders or their internal learning and development team to support employees in increasing their Emotional Salary.

What does a typical Emotional Salary Audit look like?

Every organisation that we work with is different and we will work with you to determine the best way to run the Audit taking into account your objectives and needs. A typical Audit process looks like this:

  1. Initial discussion/meeting to determine the scope of the Audit – ie, what metrics will be measured, project timescales, communication plan.
  2. Communication of the Audit to your employees.
  3. Employees are invited to complete the Emotional Salary Barometer™ by email and immediately receive their personalised report and action plan.
  4. We analyse the results based on the metrics agreed, which usually takes 2-3 weeks depending on the size and scope.
  5. We present the results to you and provide you with a detailed analysis with recommendations for actions to be taken.
  6. The wider results of the Audit are communicated to employees.
  7. You agree what action will be taken as a result of the Audit (we recommend including employees in this process wherever possible).
  8. We measure again in 6-18 months’ time by inviting employees to take the Emotional Salary Barometer™ again.

After the first measurement of Emotional Salary, training or coaching for your leaders or all employees can support them in taking concrete action to increase Emotional Salary.

The Emotional Salary Barometer far exceeded our expectations and provided a common language to start honest dialogues about our emotions. Based on this accurate emotional diagnosis that brought together everyone’s feelings, we committed ourselves to continuously creating spaces to improve the Emotional Salary, acting based on these recommendations and continuing to promote well-being within our company, to measure at 6 months again our Emotional Salary and check the evolution. On the other hand, it allowed us to become aware of the co-responsibility that the Emotional Salary implies, which requires the commitment of each person, the leaders, and the organization.

To cite a specific example, we became aware that the emotional signature of our company is enjoyment, and that the belonging factor was well below enjoyment, when they are often factors that go hand in hand. This dissonance led us to consider, as a group, developing simple but effective actions such as instances of weekly meetings with the aim of taking the inspiration and belonging of the entire team to another higher level. We know that through these instances, and taking action on other opportunities that the Emotional Salary Barometer made us glimpse, we can enhance the organization’s creativity to another level. And along the way, as a domino effect, strengthen our direction, purpose and personal growth through these actions. The Emotional Salary is awakening very interesting possibilities for all of us.

Martin Carrier - Founder - FE Think Studio