Use employee feedback effectively. Develop a continuous listening strategy. Set your organization up for success.
Research clearly shows that employee engagement boosts an organization's bottom line. Yet many companies are in the dark when it comes to creating and sustaining a culture of engagement.
A recent report revealed only 11% of organizations with over 1,000 employees measure engagement more than once a year. With a continuous listening strategy, your business can use employee feedback effectively, increase engagement, improve the employee experience, and benefit the bottom line.
Watch this webinar to see Director of Employee Experience Kim Dawson reveal:
- What continuous listening is, and why every organization needs it
- How to start using continuous listening to gather employee feedback effectively with the HR tech you already have
- Specific practices you can use to see business benefits from continuous listening
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Why do we
need it?
Just 11%
of organizations measure engagement
more than once a year (Aon Hewitt)
4.6x more likely
to feel empowered to perform their best
when their voices are heard (Salesforce)
94% of employees
want to know their input has an effect on
the company (YouEarnedIt)
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Creating a Strategy
Give yourself a sense of what you're seeking
feedback on.
“Are there problems I can’t spot the source of?”
What are you trying to
answer or improve?
What is within your means
to focus on?
It's impossible to improve everything at once.
“Who aren’t we currently hearing from?”
6
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Common Mistakes
• Ignoring important parts of the employee lifecycle
• Annual (or infrequent) surveys
• Taking feedback, not action
• Asking leading questions
• Survey fatigue
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Biggest Mistake:
Not creating a safe space for
feedback
● Always avoid witch hunts for
negative, anonymous
feedback
● Instill a zero retribution policy
to use feedback effectively
● Have an address and correct
strategy for approaching
managers
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Analyzing Each Phase
1. How are we currently gathering
feedback in this phase?
2. What actions can we take on the
feedback we’re getting?
Employee
Experience
Lifecycle
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You can use your existing HR tech and other
resources to help with continuous listening.
Good News!
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Examples
• Interview reviews
• CEO approval
• Alumni impressions
Glassdoor Employee Rewards Program
• Number of rewards
• Types of rewards chosen
• Custom reward requests
12
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Examples
• Manager effectiveness
• Employees living core values
• Employee engagement
Employee Recognition Face to Face Meetings
• Recurring meeting agendas
• Effective manager 1:1s
• Consistent cadence
13
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Pulse Surveys
Standard questions for
taking the company's
"pulse" on a subject.
eNPS
A snapshot of
employee loyalty and
engagement.
Types of Surveys
15
Custom
Custom questions for
gauging employee
opinions.
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Survey DOs and DON'Ts
DO: Set a cadence
A consistent cadence for pulse or eNPS surveys allows the organization to compare
progress over time.
DO: Seek in-the-moment feedback
Even quick, one-question surveys can gather important feedback on day-to-day
operations or everyday culture.
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DON'T: Send surveys without a purpose
If you have no goals for a survey or don't intend to act on the feedback, hold off.
DON'T: Create survey fatigue
Always be aware of how many and how often surveys are being sent.
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Survey DOs and DON'Ts
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Results over time
Seen by measuring at a consistent cadence.
KPIs across each lifecycle effort
As the org listens and takes action, these metrics
should improve.
eNPS and employee engagement
When employees feel empowered and heard, trust and
engagement increase.
In a recent ROI study, 100% of YouEarnedIt customers
interviewed reported increased employee engagement.
Measuring
Success
19. |19
Questions?
Ask a question or enter the
chat.
Check your inbox for our takeaway
guide on using employee surveys
effectively:
Thanks for
attending!
Notas do Editor
When people talk about "feedback," it has a negative connotation. It can be thought of as "constructive criticism" or an opportunity for employees to vent unnecessarily - neither of those scenarios fix anything
We want to take the stigma away from that. To make feedback more effective towards real business benefits.
To do that, we're going to be talking about "continuous listening," which is something you will be hearing more and more about in the near future, and how to create a strategy around it.
"But I'm already doing continuous listening!"
What continuous listening IS NOT:
Annual survey
Interview survey
Exit interviews
KIM:
Research shows when you have one smart person on a project, they can do ok. But when you have a group of people collaborating, you get bigger, better results. That's what continuous listening can provide - feedback and input from everyone to reach better results for the business.)
Continuous listening forces collaboration.
Just because you are doing interview surveys, and annual surveys, and exit interviews doesn’t mean you’ve adopted a culture of continuous feedback or continuous listening — these are just 3 things that you should be doing at a minimum.
Just because we’re using continuous listening doesn’t mean we can address everything.
Before you create a strategy, think of some areas you THINK could improve
You can't tackle everything, so ask yourself - What is within our means to focus on? What should I prioritize?
EXAMPLES:
"I want a higher eNPS score"
"I want to uncover hidden problems in our interview process"
"I want to streamline our marketing process"
"I want to increase sales"
Who AREN’T you currently hearing from? Are there problems that I CAN’T spot the source of? — These are some baseline questions as you create a strategy
Before we talk about building a strategy, here are some common mistakes your organization might be making that get in the way of a continuous listening strategy.
Ignoring important parts of the employee lifecycle (interviews, onboarding, MUB opportunities, etc.)
Annual / infrequent surveys only
Taking feedback, not action (if you don't intend to act, asking for feedback will backfire)
Asking leading questions: when you do this, you limit how much information people are going to give you
Example: "How much do you love working here?" vs "How do you feel about working here on a scale of 1 to 10?"
Survey fatigue
BUT THE BIGGEST COMMON MISTAKE is not creating a safe space for feedback - trying to find out the person who gave the anonymous feedback
Employees must have a safe space where they feel they can provide feedback.
If my boss asked me how I felt about a person, then they turned around and told that person, I'd feel less inclined to share after that, shutting down feedback
This requires managers to have training - a "zero retribution" policy. For example, if managers did retaliate in these ways, they could be fired on the spot per the policy.
If you or managers are seeing feedback during continuous listening and wondering, "I wonder who said that," stop. Step back from that thought and correct yourself – how can you take positive action on this to improve the company as a whole.
Approach managers with an "address and correct" strategy, do not just drop feedback on them and hope they take appropriate action in a vacuum.
There is a natural instinct to want to find these people or hear who's giving that feedback. We have to learn to combat that.
Now that we've identified common mistakes, let's talk about how to go about creating a strategy.
Continuous listening can sound like we're being asked to improve everything at once.
To make the process easier and start creating a strategy, think of the employee experience lifecycle (pictured here).
You can break the “everything” down into these specific phases of the lifecycle.
(WE’RE GOING TO PUT OUT A POLL QUESTION) We’d like to quickly poll the audience – do you think you’re currently gathering feedback across the entire employee lifecycle?
Yes, we have every phase covered
Only across some phases
No, not at all
Continuous Listening happens across the entire employee lifecycle. This is an easy exercise to find out where your organization isn't listening and identify areas you can (or can't) start taking action on.
Here are some examples of areas and ways to gather feedback within these phases:
Pre hire: Even if you don't think the prehire phase is important, I personally think it's one of the most valuable phases of the employee lifecycle for feedback.
We can make sure we're defining our roles correctly; we can gather feedback from people currently in the role to make sure we're describing it accurately; I also want to make sure the stakeholders are helping the recruiting team define the pre-hire process that's likely to come up.
Hiring: Am I listening for good fit for our current roles from our candidates? I also want to be able to provide a feedback outlet for candidates after they're invited - e.g. email them after, ask for review on Glassdoor, send them a survey about the experience
Onboarding: Goal is to set each new person up for success. Listen to feedback from managers as well as everyone who interacts with that employee day-to-day to make sure they're set up for success.
Employee engagement: These are the programs and tactics you're using day-to-day for everyone who hasn't put in their two weeks' notice
Advancement and promotion: More of a 1-on-1 between manager and employees to talk about what their career goals are and what their L&D goals are to make sure they're meeting those
Transition/termination: This can happen at any point; it's about what you're doing well, what you could be doing better, making sure your feedback loop is set up to find everything that could be improved.
Alumni: Hearing how people think about the company once they've left it.
Regardless of what you do, there are people who won't share until they're gone. Doesn't mean you should discount their opinions.
Now that we know what “continuous listening” is and we’ve described some ways to build your strategy, getting started with Continuous Listening doesn't have to be a major undertaking.
You don’t even have to buy dedicated tools for continuous listening — there are ways your existing HR tech can help. I’ll run through some examples…
Glassdoor: Glassdoor is one resource available to all of us today. Areas of Glassdoor can reveal feedback about the pre-hire phase (interviews), leadership, and from alums of the organization.
Rewards program: Whether you handle employee rewards manually or use software for them, employee rewards can also provide insights:
Is no one earning them? This could indicate the perk isn't meaningful.
Do employees favor a type of reward? (Monetary, charitable, customized, etc.)
Are employees frequently requesting different rewards?
Employee recognition: If you have a nomination or voluntary recognition program, those are also ways to hear from employees and turn that into a point of feedback.
- Managers: Are managers getting called out by employees, or are they recognizing employees themselves? This speaks to manager effectiveness.
- Are the nominations or recognition you're giving tying to the core values of the company?Employee recognition: If you have a nomination or voluntary recognition program, those are also ways to hear from employees and turn that into a point of feedback.
Face to Face Meetings: These are low-tech, but still a valuable resource for feedback.
- Setting agendas for recurring meetings can make them more effective; over time, get feedback about the agenda and change as needed
- Making manager 1-on-1s more effective is incredibly important or many areas, not just your continuous listening strategy [TALK ABOUT EFFECTIVE 1:1s]
- Setting a consistent cadence for face-to-face meetings
Surveys are one of the tools we all have access to that we could be using more effectively for our continuous listening strategy.
There are many types of surveys we can use to gather feedback; these are some of the most common [DESCRIBE 3 TYPES]
Surveys can be used at all places in time; I have “Make us Better” surveys for existing employees, but I also adapt those questions for exit interviews or onboarding
Speaking of onboarding, one important point is to know WHERE the person you’re surveying is in the employee lifecycle
I don't want to ask for onboarding feedback with EVERY employee every time I want onboarding feedback. Year-three employees will skew my onboarding survey data by people who had an old onboarding experience.
You can easily use any survey tool you have access to — things like Survey Monkey, Google Forms, or even YouEarnedIt.
For example, put your cultural interview into SurveyMonkey and send that to applicants; this enables anyone conducting interviews to pull up that candidate's SurveyMonkey responses
The “Pulse” surveys allow me to regularly ask about areas we might need improvement in and spot problems before they become catastrophes
Examples: "Do you have the tools you need to be successful" ; "did you have the training you need to be successful"
If you're using a cadence, you should be seeing a change in results to surveys over time; you can pinpoint areas so you can address those problems early on.
In the moment: ask point-in-time questions that help you with change management
[TALK ABOUT THE TWO DON’Ts LISTED HERE]
Another problem is these tactics become routine; surveys that are just scored on a 1-10 level; leader of team needs the score to be good for his/her KPIs. Becomes something where you're not getting the real value of it.
It's obvious when you do nothing that you didn't care about the results.
So, what are some of the business benefits of doing all this? How do we know if we’re succeeding?
[TALK ABOUT ITEMS LISTED ON SLIDE]
We’re very proud of that ROI study. Improving the employee experience isn’t just something I do here at YouEarnedIt, but something we get to help our customers with.
If you’re curious about this, we’re putting up one more poll question for anyone who’d like to see a demo of YouEarnedIt for their organization:
[LAUNCH POLL]