I am Lisa Leath and I’m the co-founder of WorkTok, an app that allows managers to check in with employees via their mobile devices. I am a lifetime HR professional and I have felt that every HR technology that I had demoed over the last 15 or so years was really overcomplicated expensive and underused. I set out to find a tool that was allowing managers to do the most important part of what I had advocated for the last 15 years and that was just simply checking in and talking to your folks with some regularity. Through my experience, the one pattern that kept sticking out was employees wanted to know that they could see that you gave two hoots about them as an employee. As I began my search, there were really no viable tools out there. I created WorkTok, it’s an app that works on Apple or Android devices and employees can even use it on their computer if they wanted to. We created WorkTok to make check-ins very very simple, and easy to complete even if you can’t be face-to-face, which is still the best option. But if you can’t, this is a fantastic tool to equip your managers and your employees with so that the team continues to get feedback even if they’re very, very busy.
How did we get here?
I was working with a medical practice group when WorkTok first came to mind. The leadership team was handling many nurse resignations due to poor communication, long schedules, a decrease in engagement, and leadership being out of touch with their employees. The management team hardly saw their nurses because their nurses, were with patients all day every day. And in case you were wondering, this idea came to be in 2019, pre-pandemic. Out-of-touch managers have always been around. Though I will say, how COVID-19 has affected the medical profession, really supported why a tool like WorkTok was a real need.
The most important thing in the medical profession is patient care. Of course, the second most important is the billing aspect. Hospitals, Doctors’ offices, yes they are businesses too. And, want to make money. Unfortunately, checking in with their folks hasn’t always been a top priority. When is there time to stop the nurses to have a 30-minute check-in? Managers did not have the time to talk to the nurses all day long every day. Making rounds to all employees every day is a full-time job in itself, no matter what the profession. So I thought, how can I relieve some of these stressors? How can the management team still have a pulse on how their nurse team was doing? How can we improve communication?
I partner with PS Solutions to have a development team behind the project. WorkTok then came to life! We had created a mobile app, that was easy to use and effective for two-way feedback.
The entire goal of WorkTok was to have some positive interaction with the nurses even if the management team was not able to sit down on a regular basis to check in. We set out to create templates that we loaded into the WorkTok portal. In efforts to make it really just that easy to check in with their folks.
Is it really that easy?
Yes, we have already done the hard part. There are pre-loaded HR-approved templates loaded with questions that you can send out within 5 minutes to your entire team. Have something specific you want to check in about? No worries, take 5 minutes to create your own Tok. With a mix of multichoice and open-ended questions, you are able to ask the right questions to get the feedback you need to build a better workplace.
Once you send out your Tok, your teams receive a notification that you, as the manager, sent a Tok to check in and see how they are doing. From their phone they are able to fill you in about any upcoming time off, let you know they haven’t had a break from work, let you know they have had a really crappy day, or maybe they have the next big idea for your business. You never know until you ask. That is what WorkTok is all about. Talking with your people.
With WorkTok you’ve got two-way feedback going on, which is so, so, so important for that feedback loop. Build a better work when you have continuous feedback from your employees and your leadership teams. Especially with the War on Talent and the Great Resignation, this tool is a great way to make sure that employees feel like their voices are heard, that they are empowered, they can make a difference, and make suggestions. Also, it is important to be building rapport and checking in on your folks, and making sure that they feel noticed and not forgotten. When you have that level of trust built from regular check-ins, when they go to think about quitting, they might trust you enough to come and talk to you about it first. Which gives you a chance to save that relationship.
If you’re having problems with things like surprise attrition, low employee referrals, poor customer experiences, folks not growing professionally, and the organization with generally misaligned employees and managers. WorkTk can be a great tool to introduce to your company. It’s meant to be affordable, and easy to use. How great is it that you could do a check-in on your phone when you’re running to the bathroom or you leave and work on your walk to, the parking garage?! This is a really good tool for situations like that where you’ve got employees who are tied up all day., and managers who have a lot of direct reports and just simply can’t get around to having those face-to-face conversations as often as they’d like to! Start retention your folks in as little as 5 minutes. Our team is ready to show you how your team can benefit from WorkTok!
Set up a 15-minute demo with our HR expert, Lisa Leath to see how WorkTok can help you reduce turnover in as little as 30 days.
Contact Us:
@Worktok_app
