Concept: Team Suggestions on Focus Areas
Overview
The team suggestions functionality enables employees to confidentially submit suggestions for their manager's action plan on focus areas. It's a way to involve the team in the action planning process, and to collect solution-oriented insights when you don't have enough comments to understand the underlying issues.
This functionality is available to all leaders throughout the hierarchy, on
Direct Reports
and All Reports
segments.Managers can:
- Set drivers as focus areas.
- Add custom messages on their focus areas to provide additional context and facilitate team suggestions.
- Select whether to notify employees.
Employees can:
- Provide suggestions on focus areas from the emails that managers send, either through their personal dashboard or through a standalone page.
- Provide ad-hoc suggestions on focus areas through personal dashboards.
Access
These type of access and permissions control the ability to add and access team suggestions.
User | Access | Description |
|---|---|---|
Manager | Dashboard access with these permissions:
| Ability to set drivers as focus areas and add a custom message when notifying employees. The Team suggestions tab displays on the focus area's dashboard also for managers who don't have the Manage focus areas permission, however they can't set or remove focus areas. |
Employee | No access to personal dashboard | If a direct manager or an indirect manager notifies employees about focus areas, employees can submit suggestions through a standalone page linked in the email. |
Employee | Personal dashboard access with this permission:
| Ability to display and add suggestions on direct manager's focus areas. If a direct manager notifies employees about focus areas, employees can open their dashboard from the email to submit suggestions. If an indirect manager notifies employees from their extended team about focus areas, employees can submit suggestions through a standalone page linked in the email. |
Employee | Personal dashboard access with these permissions:
| Access to display and add suggestions on focus areas of the direct manager, and of managers that are above the direct manager. If a direct or an indirect manager notifies employees about focus areas, employees can open their dashboard from the email to submit suggestions. |
User Interface
Manager dashboards display a
Team suggestions
tab on each driver's dashboard. Managers can access new and existing suggestions in this tab, if the driver is currently a focus area. Unread suggestions display at the top, and it's possible to mark them all as read. After removing a driver as a focus area, it's no longer possible to access its suggestions.Employees can provide suggestions in the
Focus areas
tab of their personal dashboard. Focus areas with a custom message from their manager display as expanded cards, but employees can also provide suggestions on focus areas without custom messages. This tab additionally displays the employee's score and comments for the focus area and the manager's custom message, where available.For instructions on how to use this functionality, see Set a Focus Area for Your Team and Submit Team Suggestions on Focus Areas.
Confidentiality
The suggestions that employees add are confidential, and are separate to scores and comments from surveys.
Team suggestions are independent of any comment logic and settings, so there's no minimum response requirement before suggestions become available for managers.
Notifications
Managers can choose to notify employees of new focus areas using email. The email token for non-personal dashboard users is valid for 8 weeks or until the manager removes the driver as a focus area, whichever comes first.
When there are new team suggestions available, manager dashboards indicate this in the notifications area and on the driver cards on the main dashboard. Direct managers and segment managers also receive a daily summary of new team suggestions.
If your organization is using the Slack integration for Peakon, administrators can also enable managers to receive the daily team suggestions summary through slack.
Considerations
It's possible for each employee to add 1 suggestion per focus area. Each suggestion can be a maximum of 2000 characters.
The custom message box displays the name of the manager who has set the focus area, even if they set it on behalf of another manager.
Employees can provide suggestions on focus areas even if they haven't yet answered the question in a survey.
Employees can also contribute suggestions on focus areas even if the manager didn't notify employees or didn't add a custom message.
If a manager doesn't have the
Manage focus areas
permission and someone else (Example: their senior leader) sets a focus area on their behalf, the manager can access their team's suggestions on their dashboard.Recommendations
- When enabling personal dashboard access, enable theData for teams above direct managerpermission. This enables employees to add suggestions directly in their personal dashboard for both direct and indirect managers, providing a consistent experience.
- Adding a custom message when setting focus areas can greatly increase the amount and quality of suggestions. We recommend that managers convey why they're setting the driver as a focus area, and provide their perspective on it.
- Encourage managers to notify employees when setting focus areas, to drive participation for team suggestions.
Limitations
- It's not possible to add team suggestions on drivers that managers have set as focus areas before the release of the team suggestions functionality. If needed, remove the focus area and set it as a focus area again.
- After the manager removes the driver as a focus area, it's no longer possible to access the team suggestions and the custom message. Setting the driver as a focus area again won't retrieve previous suggestions and custom messages.
- It's not possible for employees to edit their suggestions after submission.
- It's not possible to submit suggestions on drivers that aren't focus areas, so the functionality relies on managers setting focus areas.
- It's not possible to provide suggestions on focus areas set at company level. The functionality is for facilitating action planning in teams.
- It's not possible to deactivate team suggestions.
- Only the standard Manager attribute supports the team suggestions functionality.
- The functionality doesn't support translations, so comments display in the language that employees wrote them.
- The functionality is not available on the personal dashboard in the mobile application. However, you can open the standalone team suggestions page from your email notification about a new focus area.