What is the Future of Employee Listening?
In research conducted in 2022 with almost 80 global organisations as part of a co-creation on employee listening with member organisations of the Insight222 People Analytics Program, Insight222 concluded that there are significant factors that leading companies consider when they “do employee listening well.” They focus on business outcomes and key C-suite topics. They scale employee listening across the enterprise. And they take the insights they gather seriously to enable decisions to benefit both the organisation and the employees – the very people that are being “listened to.”
Employee listening can deliver substantial returns to the enterprise when leveraged effectively and is increasingly being coupled with people analytics. The same Insight222 study found that people analytics teams are responsible for employee listening in 61% of companies. Moreover, 69% of companies have a clear strategy when people analytics has responsibility for employee listening versus only 43% when people analytics is not responsible.
Indeed, as part of the recently published Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2022 study, we asked 184 companies where people analytics is adding the most value to their organisation (see FIG 1 below). For the second successive year, ‘Employee Listening’ emerged as one of the top five areas generating the most value for organisations – and, critically, employees too.
FIG 1: The top areas where people analytics adds the most value in organisations (Source: Insight222 People Analytics Trends 2022)
We’ve heard several examples of how employee listening adds business value in a number of episodes of the Digital HR Leaders podcast in 2022. Three examples came from Uber, DSM and Microsoft:
RJ Milnor talked to me about how Uber used employee listening to develop its return to office strategy.
Laura Stevens, Global Head of People Strategy, Analytics and Employee Experience at DSM, talked about the role of employee listening in connecting people analytics with employee experience.
Dawn Klinghoffer, Global Head of People Analytics at Microsoft, explained how employee listening had contributed to Microsoft shifting to measuring employee thriving instead of employee engagement.
One other episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast that I recommend people listen to if they want to understand the potential impact of employee listening is How to Understand the Business Impact of Employee Experience with Melissa Arronte, Employee Experience Practice Lead at Medallia.
Melissa started her career in people analytics before the term really even existed and her career has taken her on a fascinating journey where she has become a bonafide expert in employee surveys and continuous listening. So, who better to sit down with and discuss the future of employee listening than Melissa, which is exactly what I did recently along with Melissa’s Medallia colleague, David Ostberg.
Melissa and David, how would you describe Employee Listening today?
Today, most companies have an engagement survey, several lifecycle surveys such as onboarding, training and exit and run a topic specific pulse based on business need such as hybrid work, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), Wellness, etc. These surveys, while valuable for strategic decision making at the enterprise level for the C-suite or to inform HR of areas to improve policy and procedure, do not provide managers and employees with the information they need to continually improve. Many organisations feel stuck with the employee engagement survey and work on improving questions and reporting. However, it does not help the company improve. The scores remain fairly stable over time and often fairly high resulting in a false sense of security. Some executives even ask why any enhancement to listening is needed when the annual survey indicates most employees are already engaged.
Where do you see the greatest opportunity to evolve?
Actually, we see the greatest opportunity to evolve is in our perceptions of employee listening. When we talk to companies we find that they have a few common beliefs that hold them back.
How can we listen more frequently when it takes us months to run the engagement survey process?
We don’t have enough resources in HR to send surveys, analyse data and create PowerPoint reports more often than we do today.
We won’t get a high enough response rate to a more frequent survey.
We don’t want to take up employees’ time with more surveys.
Worries over the idea of survey fatigue.
With limited resources, we don’t know how we could possibly take more action on more data.
How do you suggest that companies evolve their perceptions?
It starts with being willing to abandon some of these traditional beliefs. For example, from #1 above, how can we listen more frequently when it takes months today? Does it need to take months today? Twenty years ago, when we were running annual engagement surveys, we had limited technology. We had to freeze employee data files, manually create slide decks and reports, manually distribute them and wait months for text analytics results. Today, all of this can be done in real time. There is no need to wait months. All of the six misconceptions above are just beliefs that hold us back.
What do you think the future of continuous listening will look like?
Continuous listening will be truly “continuous”. We will have “always on” or “anytime” surveys that empower employees to provide feedback and ideas in the flow of their work. Employees will simply be able to click a button sitting in a tool they commonly use or a place they commonly go and share feedback and ideas. Employees will be able to choose the most convenient way to provide their feedback whether it is by video, voice, text, QR codes, chat, message, etc. Companies will use text analytics to understand open ended employee comments rather than asking more questions. Employee surveys will not be the only way to listen to or understand employees. Companies will bring in data about employees such as their time off patterns, transfer rate in their team, performance level of their managers etc to better understand their experience before ever sending them a survey. Employee experience feedback will be integrated with customer and other experience feedback for a more complete understanding.
What are the most common questions you hear from companies?
What are two or three things companies can do to significantly improve their Employee Experience programs that don’t require a lot of effort or resources to get going?
The most underutilised tool we see is text analytics. Companies run surveys with multiple open ends but do not leverage the text analytics for insights. Simply running out of the box topics and using natural language processing (NLP0 will result in significant insights with little work). When we do see companies using text analytics they often only look at the overall topics or themes. They don’t use it to answer a question such as, why do some employees report feeling valued while others do not. Comparing the text analytics and comments between those who feel valued and those who do not is often very insightful.
What are the best EX companies doing differently?
We recently conducted a study to understand this. We surveyed over 600 organisations to understand their employee listening practices. We then compared the top 10th percentile (leaders) with the bottom (laggards) to understand the differences. We found three key differences.
Leaders ask for feedback far more frequently and through multiple channels.
Leaders ask the tough questions. They do not stay with the safe topics but ask about the uncomfortable things to make real change.
Leaders don’t just run a survey they create a strategy to address a business issue and include a survey as part of the solution.
Specifically for People Analytics teams, what are some untapped opportunities they can focus on to help understand how to improve EX within their organisations?
We have an opportunity to spend more of our time combining survey feedback with other data about employees that exists in our systems for a more robust understanding of their experience. We can also learn so much more by comparing one persona to another. If we look at scores and comments overall, they tend to be fairly stable but when we cut them by female versus male managers or new hire hourly versus new hire professional we have a wealth of insights. Leaving all the data combined limits our insight. Cutting the data by every possible demographic leads to a bunch of differences that we can’t explain. However, using the scientific method - ask a question and apply data to answer it leads to insight in areas where we need insight.
Can you provide an example of an organisation that is generating value for the business – and employees – through continuous employee listening?
One Medallia client, a national restaurant chain, was finding that customers were not purchasing their most recent limited time offer, a key investment for the company to reach their sales goals. Customer surveys were not useful in this case since customers cannot comment on a product that they don’t buy. The company added a question for employees in their always on survey asking employees why customers are not purchasing the limited time offer. The employees were not only able to identify the issue, they were also about to suggest creative solutions. In a short time, the limited time offer was modified resulting in the required increase in sales.
Thank You
Thanks to Melissa and David for sharing their immense knowledge on how to generate value through employee listening and employee experience initiatives. You can find our more, by visiting the Medallia homepage as well as by connecting with Melissa and David on LinkedIn.
If you’d like to explore more of Melissa and David’s work and that of their team, do take a look at some of the links below:
ABOUT MEDALLIA
The #1 enterprise experience platform for mission critical insights and action.
Medallia is the pioneer and market leader in customer, employee, citizen, and patient experience. As the No. 1 enterprise experience platform, Medallia Experience Cloud is the experience system of record that makes all other applications customer and employee aware. The platform captures billions of experience signals across interactions including all voice, video, digital, IoT, social media, and corporate-messaging tools. Medallia uses proprietary artificial intelligence and machine learning technology to automatically reveal predictive insights that drive powerful business actions and outcomes. Medallia customers reduce churn, turn detractors into promoters and buyers, create in-the-moment cross-sell and up-sell opportunities, and drive revenue-impacting business decisions, providing clear and potent returns on investment. For more information visit www.medallia.com.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Melissa Arronte
Melissa is the Employee Experience Practice Lead at Medallia. She holds a BS from Cornell University and a PhD from the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Prior to joining Medallia, she was the Head of Workforce Analytics at Liberty Mutual Insurance, the Head of People Analytics then the Head of Customer Research at Citizens Bank.
David Ostberg
David Ostberg is an Industrial/Organizational Psychologist with over 20 years of specialization in employee experience and HR technology. David kicked off his I/O career building artificial intelligence-based hiring models at Kronos and Evolv On-Demand to help global organizations better predict employee performance and retention outcomes. Prior to Medallia, David was Director of People Science & Performance at Culture Amp.
David Green
David is a globally respected author, speaker, and executive consultant on people analytics, data-driven HR and the future of work. With lead responsibility for Insight222’s brand and market development, David helps chief people officers and people analytics leaders create value with people analytics. David is the co-author of Excellence in People Analytics, host of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, and regularly speaks at industry events such as UNLEASH and People Analytics World. Prior to co-founding Insight222, David worked in the human resources field in multiple major global companies, including most recently with IBM.
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