Guide for New Admins: Getting Started

This article is focused on providing the necessary information to get you up to speed and learn how you can use our tools to improve your organization’s work culture and employee engagement, as well as associated best practices.

Last Updated: September 27, 2024

In this article:

 

Overview

First, congratulations on your new role. Second, bookmark this page. This resource is not meant to be read in one sitting. You will want to refer back to it in the future. 

Before you jump into the tool, learn about Quantum Workplace.

We here at Quantum Workplace are on a mission to make work better every day and our tool reflects our mission and values. Each of the tools we offer are designed and regularly updated to promote engagement holistically across an organization. To explore our tools in-depth and learn how they can apply to your organization, check out our Maturity Framework and Feature Checklist.

As a new administrator for your organization, you have access to all the features your organization has purchased. Some key admin-specific abilities include launching and managing cycles, survey analytics, and editing user demographics.

The rest of this article is focused on providing the necessary information to get you up to speed and learn how you can use our tools to improve your organization’s work culture and employee engagement, as well as associated best practices.

Where to Start?

We recommend starting by identifying what your organization has already launched, i.e. past surveys, feedback cycles, ongoing cycles, etc.

Start by logging into your Quantum Workplace account. From the Home page, click and expand Administration in the left-hand navigation menu. This is where you can access admin-specific abilities. 

Additionally, use this menu to view cycles for different features, i.e. Surveys, 1-on-1s, etc., and access the resulting analytics.

Points of Contact at Quantum Workplace 

You won't be on your own as you move into your new admin role. The Customer Success team here at Quantum Workplace are a talented group that can walk you through any concerns or questions you may have as you transition into this role.

Your contacts at Quantum Workplace include:

  • Customer Success Manager: CSMs act as your trusted advisor, providing ongoing guidance and support to accommodate your organization's needs. Your CSM will partner with you to meet your organization's engagement goals.
  • Customer Implementation Manager: CIMs will facilitate your onboarding and get you accustomed to Quantum Workplace's features, and provide best practices specific to your organization's use cases.
  • Insights Analyst: Your Insights Analyst uses expertise in employee engagement to coach best practices, aid you with survey or performance design, and help identify key data insights. This may or may not be included in your contract. If you are unsure, ask your CSM
  • Technical Support: The technical support team is your go-to for any one-off questions or any technical assistance you may need. They can be reached Monday-Friday, 7 am-5 pm CST by phone (402-519-2141), email, or chat on our website.

Administrative Functions

Helpful resources as an admin: 

  • Navigate the Homepage: Access the different analytics and administration menus available to admins
  • Guide to User Management: Create and manage the user accounts for your employees, this includes setting language preferences, user demographics, resetting passwords, etc. 
  • Test Access to Survey Analytics: Test and preview a user's access to a survey's analytics
  • Easy Impersonation: If enabled, allows admins to view and impersonate a user's accounts while protecting the user's confidentiality 
  • Editing Demographics: Manage the demographics displayed on the employee's profile cards

Depending on how your organization chooses to distribute administrative responsibilities, your organization may have general administrator roles or include focused admins who have limited access to specific subsets of your organization.

Learn about admins, focused admins, and survey-admins:

As an administrator for your company, it is likely that you will work with an IT team and an HRIS, Human Resource Information System. The following articles guide you through the setup process for HRIS/HRMS systems, Quantum Workplace's SFTP site, and Single Sign-On. Depending on your organization, the IT team may be more or less involved in these processes and should contacted for assistance and security compliance.

Goals

Meaningful and well-designed goals are critical for a productive and engaged employee population.

Quantum Workplace provides you with tools to launch effective goals like the goal wizard and an intuitive dashboard where you can track all your goals at a distance or dive deeper into specific goals for greater detail. 

Creating and managing goals is one matter, designing goals that help individuals and teams achieve an organization’s goal is another matter. Refer to the following resources to learn more.

1-on-1s

Quantum Workplace's 1-on-1s feature gives users a dedicated space to hold guided conversations around a predetermined agenda for more focused and impactful interaction. Holding consistent 1-on-1s strengthens relationships, builds a more engaged work culture, and helps keep employees on track with goals.

1-on-1s are launched as single or automated cycles. Cycles can be launched with best-practice templates or custom question templates. Alternatively, templates can be edited as needed to suit the cycle's needs.

As an organization using Goals and/or Feedback, Conversation Boosters are a streamlined way to highlight an employee's Goal and/or Feedback activity to encourage dialogue and accountability. As an admin, manage Conversation Booster permissions.

Holding effective and engaging 1-on-1s requires that managers have the necessary skills to guide and coach their direct reports. Refer to the following resources to learn more.

There is still more value to be had after the 1-on-1 has been held. Quantum Workplace provides a robust analytics tool to examine data points and trends across all 1-on-1s. Responses for a specific 1-on-1 or across an entire cycle can also be exported.

Feedback

Quantum Workplace's Feedback feature provides an effortless way for employees to give and request honest, productive feedback. This has the benefit of giving managers insight into an employee's performance and how to individualize their development plans.

Feedback also allows employees to see their strengths and opportunities from peers and managers, as well as a more regular look at their performance, as opposed to annual performance reviews.

Depending on your organization's workplace culture, Feedback may or may not be a celebrated and encouraged value. Countless amounts of research have shown that organizations perform better and have a more engaged population when employees can share feedback comfortably. Below are a few strategies you can implement to build a feedback culture. 

Recognition

Employees feeling valued consistently ranks as a key factor in employee engagement. It is important that organizations show recognition and appreciation for their employees in ways that make employees truly feel valued, rather than an over-reliance on awards and empty celebrations that accomplish little for employee engagement.

The Recognition feature enables anyone in your organization to recognize colleagues naturally. Whether it’s calling out good work, seeing someone go above and beyond, or someone excelling a goal they had set, Recognition provides the space to empower your employees to take recognition into their own hands.

Now that you understand how to use the tool, it is important to understand the psychology and research behind recognition to nurture a workplace culture that encourages and welcomes recognition. Refer to the following resources to learn more.

Surveys & Pulses

Quantum Workplace's comprehensive survey tool gives you the ability to create customizable surveys that capture employee voices and measure engagement in a variety of scenarios.

Some of these scenarios include:

  • Automated New Hire & Exit Surveys - measure employee perception over time as they onboard or if an employee voluntarily leaves an organization
  • Pulse Surveys - quickly capture employee engagement to gauge sentiment following organizational changes, i.e. new benefits plan, organizational strategy, etc.
  • Engagement Surveys - a comprehensive measure of employee engagement that when coupled with Quantum Workplace's analytics provides robust data to strategize means to increase engagement

Follow the links below for walkthroughs on creating and launching the different surveys available with Quantum Workplace.

Survey analytics are available in real-time during a survey cycle. It is common for new admins to feel overwhelmed when trying to make sense of the survey data. The following links will guide you through the fundamentals of understanding the analytics tool. Remember, you can always reach out to your CIM/CSM or Quantum Workplace’s Help Library for more information and assistance.  

For best practices and research-backed strategies, consider the following articles.

Talent Reviews & Succession Planning

Quantum Workplace's Talent Review and Succession Planning offers a streamlined approach to managing and developing your employee population for future roles.

Gain insights from performance potential assessments to identify high-potential employees and craft effective succession strategies to ensure organizational continuity and employee development that aligns with business goals. 

Talent Reviews

Talent Reviews allow you to prompt managers and other people leaders to assess an individual employee for performance, potential for growth, and likelihood of staying to better retain and develop talent. 

Refer to the following resources to learn more about Talent Reviews.

Succession Planning

Use Succession Planning to identify critical positions within your organization and develop action plans for employees to effectively move into those critical positions. Ensure you have the right people in the right positions, both now and in the future. 

Refer to the following resources to learn more about Succession Planning.