Sometimes people change jobs because they’re ready to move onto a new challenge. Sometimes they need to relocate for personal reasons, or they want better pay for their job.
But sometimes they are just not happy, and this drives them to leave. They might have doubts about the business as a whole, the way it is run or the people on their team. And, before they even start thinking seriously about leaving, these concerns will begin to impact on their performance.
So What Can You Do to Turn This Around and Engage Employees?
People in all roles in the business have thoughts, questions and ideas that can drive improvements and make the organisation better for everyone. Often, these ideas start and end as water cooler chat. Nobody is listening to this in a structured way, so it is never collected or reviewed.
Maybe You Need to Find a Way of Gathering Employee Feedback
You might think, how is this different from an annual employee survey? Surely that’s enough to understand what is happening? Sadly, this isn’t the case. A lot can happen in a year.
Gathering employee feedback as free-form verbatim gives employees the opportunity to share their thoughts and their feelings with you, in the moment. If something isn’t going well, they can let you know. If something is a real success, they can share why this is the case.
Sending this unfiltered, free-form feedback to relevant people in the organisation then means you can take action.
Although in theory, employees can usually ask questions and share their thoughts with colleagues and managers, many don’t do this. Some people feel nervous asking managers questions, especially if it’s in front of a crowd. Other people prefer not to share their feelings because they’re not sure what reaction they will get. As a result, it is often only a small subset of employees that are vocal about their views and opinions.
Gathering employee feedback makes it easier for everyone who wants to share their thoughts and feeling to take part. Plus, it prevents the views of the most vocal people from dominating employees who are naturally more introverted.
Sometimes Employee Feedback Can Lead to an Uncomfortable Place
If this feedback is dealt with in an open and transparent way, then it will force business leaders to answer difficult questions. For example, if employees feel that they don’t have sufficient training and are struggling to complete the tasks expected, then the business needs to accept their training programme isn’t working. But this honesty helps to improve employee engagement, as people can see what is really happening.
Employees will have feedback to share; as a brand, the choice is whether to embrace this feedback and use it to grow or to ignore it and risk damaging employee engagement.
Want more? Grab our eBook: From Employee Engagement to Customer Empowerment to find out why the relationships betweeen your people can be the source of your competitive advantage
