A warm welcome back to our blog! In this article we discuss with you five ways you can encourage your employees to provide feedback freely and in a valuable way. Opening the door to feedback might sometimes seem daunting, however, it is a crucial aspect to the sustainability and growth of your business.
With 71% of managers stating employee engagement is critical to their business’ success and 69% of employees expressing that they would work harder if they were better appreciated, it is apparent that feedback and engagement are imperative. Let’s look into why that is so.
Why is getting feedback important?
Companies that are open to feedback are able to strengthen their employee relationship and retention, build their brand, adjust toxic behavior or environments and better meet their goals.
Your employees know what’s going on on the ground. They can be the sources of key information and tell you your bottlenecks, lacking resources and their own challenges if you provide them with the safe environment to do so.
Employees value a listening culture even more than compensation. According to a Deloitte study, employees value listening twice as much as they value compensation and benefits.
Furthermore, not being open to feedback will reflect to your employees that you do not value their input and will lead to them feeling unheard, having decreased motivation and lower morale. All this will contribute towards loss in terms of both productivity and turnover.
How to encourage feedback?
You understand that feedback is important, but do you wonder how you encourage your employees to provide you feedback? Here are five ways you can do so in a strategic manner.
- One on one meetings
It is difficult to open up or have a direct conversation while in a group meeting or on the sidelines of the office. Set up one-on-one meetings with your employees at different times. This will help you stay connected to your employees and build a rapport where they feel comfortable sharing their opinions. In these conversations you can ask them their feelings about certain processes or challenges in their work.
- Surveys and reviews
Another way to get feedback is to set up well formulated and structured surveys and reviews from time to time. Making these anonymous can help your employees feel more safe while submitting them. Such tools will also help avoid bias from managers who may give time to some employees and not others, it will provide everyone an equal way to submit their feedback. You can also address and ask specific or more task related questions in which you want to see your employees’ perspectives.
- Confidential complaints
A helpful mechanism for feedback is to ensure there is a structure for confidential compaintes. These can be in written or verbal form. You can set up a suggestion box for anonymous feedback or you can assign a specific manager who will take complaints and provide a solution with zero bias and full confidentiality of the employee reporting. Simply knowing this channel is open to them and building their trust will help facilitate feedback in an honest manner.
- Exit interviews
Even when an employee is leaving, you have the chance to learn a lot on what issues existed and how they could be improved. In fact, as an employee is leaving, they will often be able to be more honest with their feedback since they will not feel they have much to lose. If you listen carefully then you will get important feedback and perhaps leave the door open for that employee to return because they feel they have offloaded what went wrong in the job and you paid attention.
- Show you encourage feedback
Including the above steps to show that you care about your employee’s opinions also take steps to address criticism, reward feedback and engage with your employees. If an employee tells you about something they think is wrong, make sure you provide them a timely response if an immediate one is not possible. Furthermore, elaborate how you take their comments seriously and what actions you will take. Even if you disagree, it is important to express that you have noted their opinion and will try to find a better solution.
If you would like additional tips or support feel free to contact us and one of our experts will get in touch. AJ Connect is a people centered recruitment agency that matches candidates with clients with a first class hiring strategy.
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