Heartbeat emotional analytics

Bring your events to life

Town Halls and company events are a crucial time for rallying everyone together, aligning the organisation, sharing news, inspiring employees.

Yet, how many of us measure the success of our events? How do we know how to improve them or if further work is needed post-event?

It’s important to know your desired outcomes and measure them.

It’s also vital that people are engaged at events and Town Halls, otherwise they could miss out on crucial information and lose sight of the strategy. If it’s worth investing the time, money and energy in staging an event, it’s worth spending a little time to make sure it does what’s needed.

Last year one of our clients used Heartbeat at their Global Leadership conference. They used it to track the emotional journey of employees at the event and gather feedback on how it was going down.

They began by running a survey at the start of the event to understand how people were feeling coming into the event and what they hoped to get out of the day. The results showed that “curious” was the overriding emotion (46%), with “enthusiastic” (14%), “excited” (9%) and “apprehensive” (8%) the next dominant emotions. This gave the organisers valuable context and helped them gauge the mood for the day.

During the morning session their Global CEO gave a review of the past year, and articulated the purpose of the company and vision for the future. A Heartbeat survey after the morning session showed a change in mood; 32% said they were “inspired”, 22% “proud” and 20% “motivated”. Again really useful information for the organisers and senior leaders which helped them shape the rest of the day.

In particular, free text comments highlighted that the speech by the Global CEO had had a big impact on the attendees. This highlighted the power of face-to-face communication, with respondents commenting on how inspiring it was to hear the purpose of the company and its vision from the person ultimately responsible for it. Stories around what they had achieved and the impact on their customers drove the feeling of “pride”.

At the end of the event, the Heartbeat survey highlighted the success of the event. “Inspired” (27%), “motivated” (27%) and “energised” (15%) were all the dominant emotions, and free text responses stressed the power of gathering with colleagues, being equipped for the year ahead, and hearing why we do what we do.

Talking with the client afterwards, we concluded that running a survey at a live event can be a leap of faith, but one that if taken can bring huge benefits. These include:

• Ability to make ‘running repairs’ in real-time; if respondents complain of too many PowerPoint slides, then adapt the next session to be more interactive.
• It gives a real opportunity to have two-way conversation with a group; attendees don’t just want to be talked at, they want the opportunity to be listened to, ask questions and have a conversation.
• Results can be used to improve future events; results and responses give you a clear indication for what needs to change and recommendations for how to improve the event.
• Ability to track the employees’ emotional journey throughout the event; understanding how attendees feel throughout the event and at different stages offers invaluable insight and equips you to address any moments of high disengagement.
• Highlights issues whilst everyone is together; if there is a topic that everyone wants to be discussed or addressed then you are able to do this in person with everyone.

I’ll sum up in the words of one organiser of the event, ‘asking for people’s thoughts on the day was scary, but I’m delighted we did it. It brought us together and made everyone feel involved. It really helped them ‘own’ the day and gave it power.’