Among the abundant announcements at the Qualtrics X4 experience management event was the general availability launch of Manager Assist, with discussion of upcoming features that will help bring employee behavior data and continuous listening together onto a single platform. Dash Research was able to catch up with Qualtrics Head of Product Management for EX Wojtek Kubik onsite at X4 to get more detail on the upcoming enhancements.

Employees and managers have been struggling with inefficient processes that are causing feelings of burnout. Additionally, recent data from the Qualtrics XM Institute found that while 83% of HR leaders say their organizations effectively use insights from employee feedback to improve experiences, less than half (49%) of employees say they have seen positive changes as a result of employee surveys.

Qualtrics helps to bring some efficiencies to managers and allow faster actions to be taken on employee signals by combining and analyzing anonymized employee experience, operational, and behavioral data. The addition of the digital behavior data is an upcoming enhancement to Manager Assist, with the data coming from workplace apps such as Slack, Google Calendar, and others. This could include how many hours employees are working, how full their calendars are, and whether they are answering work messages after hours to get a deeper understanding of employee wellbeing and engagement. This analysis is done in aggregate, with robust privacy. Additionally, Manager Assist can support managers in taking appropriate action.

“Manager Assist goes beyond simply asking people about what’s going on, and it looks at the signals beyond employee engagement surveys, things like training, conversations, and digital behaviors. It helps to see what is happening with staff in the time in between big moments, looking at their day to day,” says Kubik.

The ability to have weekly insights will boost abilities to take faster action. Managers can also have an AI-supported, real-time view into how teams are feeling. Having this more continuous flow of signals that can be seen in a single view allows HR to be less reactive and become more predictive.

“Manager Assist gives managers a process and tools to engage with their teams. It can remove some of the burden from managers by laying out a clear, but anonymized picture of what is going on with their staff and also give recommendations for actions. It includes action planning tools which can be shared across the group for brainstorming and collaborative action planning,” says Kubik.

Kubik shared what he felt was unique about the Manager Assist offering, saying, “So many tools that have been built have been developed from an HR perspective and what HR needs for their processes. For two years, we have worked with managers to see where their gaps are and what unmet needs they have. These managers needed help bringing data together in an easy way and clearing paths to work with their teams. We really wanted to support managers with more resources and data without them having to do a lot because they are already doing so much.” Manager Assist is now generally available. The new employee behavior data capabilities will be available in the second half of 2023.