Why does your organization need employee listening strategies?
What do your employees feel and think about on their work days? What challenges do they face? These questions can be difficult to answer to some managers and leaders, especially in the age of remote and hybrid work. However, we do not deny that understanding the experiences of employees within the organization is essential for overall success and retention. For this reason, more and more leaders are actively seeking ways to prioritize employee feedback and strengthen employee voice. This article explores the benefits of employee listening strategies in terms of productivity, retention, inclusion, and other factors that ultimately contribute to employee experience.
What is an employee listening strategy?
Defining employee listening strategies is not so simple. Because that can mean different things in each organization. Some organizations may utilize research, while others may prefer interviews and various other methods. At its heart, employee listening strategies define an organizational and targeted effort to gather feedback and ideas in real time from employees. As a result, it goes beyond annual performance reviews and weekly discussions with supervisors.
The main difference lies in the purpose of these interactions. Performance reviews and one-on-one meetings with management are intended to assess the progress of various goals and goals. In contrast, all types of communications included in employee listening strategies do not focus on goals, but on employee thoughts, feelings, concerns, and hope for the future. Information collected through this systematic process is used to improve employee experience and increase engagement.
Six Benefits of Implementing an Employee Listening Strategy
1. Improve productivity
The most important benefit of employee listening strategies is a noticeable increase in employee productivity. This is a direct result of the engagement that is nurtured when employees take more active roles in the workplace. Their involvement increases as employees see more and more frequently comments and recommendations are taken into consideration to improve their daily work experience. Before you know it, they are motivated to share their ideas by knowing that they will be invested more in their work and hear their voices. The result is a significant increase in employee satisfaction and efficiency, and productivity within the organization.
2. Promote trust and psychological safety
Creating structures around employee listening ultimately fosters a culture of trust and psychological safety. Employees need to be convinced that they will not be targeted or punished when talking about inefficiencies in the way the company operates or the challenges they face on a daily basis. Organizations that build trust consider their opinions and use them to make meaningful changes. This is also closely related to inclusion. Companies that prioritize their employees embrace diversity, amplify underrated voices, and actively seek to resolve issues that could undermine equality and inclusion policies.
3. Supports effective collaboration and teamwork
Employee listening is important not only for individual employees but also for the team in general. It is certainly true that you will mention issues with their own team and colleagues in other departments during your research or discussion with them. As a result, it’s easier to identify what team and company dynamics are and how they can be improved. Additionally, it may detect individuals causing problems with multiple colleagues and facilitate targeting measures regarding them. A comprehensive employee listening program ensures that employees are in a good relationship with each other and effectively collaborates towards shared goals.
4. Promotes talent retention
You will be surprised to see how much an employee’s listening strategy can affect retention levels within the organization. The presence of secure communication channels between employees and senior management is often an important factor that distinguishes organizations from strong corporate cultures and poor people. Data shows that only 15% of employees who perceive the company’s culture as good or excellent are considering other employment opportunities. If turnover rates begin to rise in your organization, a comprehensive employee listening program can help them to take action before they leave to identify released or burned-out employees.
5. Promote employee development strategies
Another benefit of implementing employee listening strategies that need to be considered is to strengthen the company’s employee development strategy. Many companies implement employee training programs, but in many cases they cannot tailor their interests and needs. This is usually due to poor communication or ineffective feedback loops. A well-designed employee listening strategy solves this problem by providing real-time employee feedback on individual development goals, the skills needed for development, career paths they want to explore, and more.
6. Supports innovation
A common misconception in the business world is that innovation is a top-down-only process led by a strategic team. But that is often the opposite. Groundbreaking ideas are often offered by employees at all levels who keep an eye on opportunities to make daily tasks easier to perform. In a company where communication is not frequent or natural, such ideas can be lost. Therefore, it is essential to implement employee listening strategies that encourage staff to share ideas, support co-brainstorming, and streamline the process of transferring ideas across different corporate levels. In this way, you will uncover many opportunities for innovation and make the most of them.
Optimize your strategy through employee listening
This does not mean that businesses never collect employee feedback. As mentioned while trying to define employee listening, leaders have been implementing performance reviews and regular meetings for quite some time. However, the benefit of implementing employee listening strategies is that they are more systematic in collecting feedback as they engage in meaningful conversations with employees more frequently than ever before and compare and contrast the information they collect to constantly influence them. This way, by ensuring employees feel important and sound, they can successfully promote organizational success, increasing productivity and engagement, and lowering turnover. And don’t forget that happy employees are willing to run the extra distance for the customers they serve.
Conclusion
Employee listening can transform your business and help you build a culture of open communication and trust. By providing employees with space to express their needs, concerns and desires, you are helping them build their engagement and become more productive and efficient. In return, you will gain valuable insights needed to optimize your company’s culture, processes and overall profitability. Having employees listen to integral parts of the organization, these are just some of the benefits you enjoy.
