The Power of the Employee Voice: How Listening to Your Workforce Can Drive Business Results
With economic headwinds knocking at our doors, businesses are trying everything to stay competitive. And while yes, investing more in strategic workforce planning and finding innovative ways to cut costs can make a significant difference, the most overlooked business tool is often right under our noses – understanding the voice of your employees and leveraging it to drive desired business results. As we found with our 2022 Insight222 People Analytics Trends Survey, Employee Listening is one of the top five areas where people analytics adds the most business value.
During the pandemic, we saw employee listening become indispensable in monitoring the rapidly shifting employee experience and organisational change. Not only did it help capture the pulse of employees in unique and different working situations, and provided insight into how organisational decisions were perceived and interpreted by those who “work within its walls”.
Yelp is a brilliant example of this. They leveraged employee feedback to decide on their remote working model. But they also continue to measure the employee voice to ensure that employee experience remains a top priority. And as a result, they have reaped the benefits of high employee engagement.
Uber and Workday are two other organisations that have taken advantage of the power of people analytics and employee feedback to drive organisational change into deciding their return to work and hybrid working models.
But employee listening can do more than direct organisational change. It can also help prevent employee burnout and create a working environment where employees thrive. As Dawn Klinghoffer, Head of People Analytics at Microsoft and our Insight222 Board Advisor, highlights on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, the result of Microsoft’s Employee Thriving mentality helps employees “bring their best to work every single day”.
But to get the desired business results from your employee listening efforts, it is essential to have a clear strategy in place. Knowing the ‘why, what, and how’ of your employee listening initiatives can help ensure that you have a successful employee listening strategy that drives tangible improvements in your organisation.
In the cases above, each organisation’s ‘why’ was to create an employee experience (i.e., a working operating model) that could help drive business results. The ‘what’ focused on gathering employee feedback and gauging employee sentiment. And the ‘how’ was determining how to analyse, interpret, and use this data effectively.
Methods For Gathering Employee Feedback
The methods for gathering employee feedback and input can vary, but the key is ensuring they are tailored to meet your organisation’s needs. While some of these methods are common – thinking about common approaches in a new way can help accelerate your strategy (and, therefore, your impact on business results). Some methods to consider include the following:
Census Surveys & Pulse Checks
One of the most common forms of employee feedback, census surveys and pulse checks provide a great starting point for understanding how ALL your employees feel about different areas of the organisation. The survey data can be used to measure overall sentiment in the workplace or a specific segment or team.
But don’t be afraid of sending out more frequent surveys (e.g., weekly or even daily pulse checks). The good old survey fatigue myth only pertains when you don’t take action on your employees’ feedback. If you take your employees’ voices seriously and respond to them quickly, your employees will be happy to provide more insights over a sustained period.
In fact, according to David Green’s conversation with Ian Ballie, Dave Ulrich and Dianne Gherson on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, more frequent surveying and pulse checks are a rising trend in 2023 (and beyond). So, stay ahead of the curve and incorporate frequent surveying into your employee listening strategy.
Focused Conversations
Don’t forget about the tried-and-true approach of talking to employees in small groups! This can be an invaluable approach to gathering employees from different departments to discuss specific topics relevant to that area of the organisation. Focusing a conversation (e.g., about taking specific actions after an event) allows for deeper insights into how employees feel and can provide a platform to discuss ideas and collaborate on initiatives.
These conversations can be captured using different audio/visual recording AI technologies and then analysed to uncover common themes, trends, and insights.
Social Channels
A very underutilised and underrated method for gathering employee feedback is through social channels. Using tools such as Slack, organisations can leverage the power of social media to gain deeper insights into how their employees feel.
By monitoring employee conversations on these channels, organisations can uncover valuable insights into how their employees engage with each other and what topics they discuss.
Sentiment analysis tools can also be used to analyse the text from these conversations, allowing organisations to better understand how their employees feel about different facets of their job.
Strategies For Analysing and Interpreting Employee Data
Once you have gathered the data, it is essential to execute on your strategy for analysing and interpreting the employee voice. Here are some strategies that can help organisations make sense of the data they have collected:
Benchmark Against Other Organisational Data
Combining employee feedback, such as survey data, with other organisational data (such as customer satisfaction scores or sales results) can help provide a more holistic view of the organisation and its performance.
For example, if you have gathered employee feedback and customer satisfaction scores, look for correlations between the two. Does higher employee engagement relate to better customer service? Do more productive employees mean more satisfied customers? Answering these types of questions can help organisations identify how they can better utilise their resources and what areas need improvement.
Categorising Feedback
Consider categorising employee feedback by topics such as inclusion, well-being, productivity, performance, etc. This will help you identify patterns in the data and can be used to prioritise initiatives or develop action plans for improving a particular area of the business.
Additionally, categorising feedback according to department or team can provide insights into how different teams within the organisation are feeling. For example, if team A’s feedback is consistently positive, while team B’s feedback is consistently negative, this could be a sign that there are different dynamics within the organisation, and further investigation may be required.
Use Data Visualisation Tools
Data visualisation tools can be used to create interactive graphs and charts that can help illustrate employee feedback in an engaging way. It can also be used to communicate insights to stakeholders clearly and concisely and provide a platform for further discussion around the data.
On the Digital HR Leaders podcast, Caroline O’Reilly, GM of People Analytics at Workday, shares an excellent example of how she uses data visualisation to better understand her data analysis:
“I can get a heat map of my whole organisation across region, by managers, by management area, and it’s telling me where I need to focus my attention, where things are okay, and then where I need to focus my attention.
So, for instance, areas it might tell me to focus on are career growth or salary conversations, or do people feel they have autonomy in certain organisations; are they comfortable with their environment now they’re coming back to work; of course, lots of comments about our environment; do they feel they have good management support?”
Data visualisation can make it easier to communicate complex insights and help organisations understand the results of their employee feedback data.
The Power of the Employee Voice
The power of the employee voice is undeniable – when organisations take the time to listen to their employees, they can identify areas of opportunity and create meaningful change within the business – which can have a direct impact on business results.
Most of us are good at collecting employee feedback – but to really accelerate our impact, we need to be sure to combine listening data with other organisational data. Doing this enables organisations to better understand their employees, how they engage with the organisation, and the specific factors that can be adjusted to really drive business results.
At Insight222, we partner with businesses to help them build a vision and strategy for employee listening and connect this to their organisation’s mission, team, and technology. If you’re interested in discovering how you can use employee feedback to drive better business results, or have more questions on the topic, please feel free to contact us.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jay joined Insight222 in 2022 and leads our products and services team. He is a globally respected leader with extensive experience in consulting, product management, and business leadership, with particular expertise in employee listening. Previously, Jay led strategy and revenue growth for EX solutions at Qualtrics and he’s also worked at KPMG, Korn Ferry, IBM, and Kenexa during his career. He holds multiple degrees including a Ph.D. from the University of South Florida in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Jay has lived in several locations across the USA, as well as in Toronto, Canada. He now resides in Nixa, MO and spends much of his free time watching his daughter play soccer and discussing the latest video games with his son.
If you’d like to connect with Jay, please visit his LinkedIn here.
Discover How Employee Listening Changes the Way You Connect With Your People and Deliver Value to Your Business
You may have the initiative for an employee listening strategy, but you’re not sure where to begin. If that's the case, book a free consultation with one of our experts for our Consulting Discover service. Our Discover engagement helps you understand how employee listening can accelerate your people strategy. Together, we will explore what and who you should be listening to, why listening is important and what your goals are. We will build a compelling story and vision for employee listening and connect this to the your mission, your team, and your technology. This typically delivered over a 12-week period and looks to deliver tangible business value to your organisation.