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10 min
Why Regular Feedback Takes Your People Analytics to the Next Level
Written by
Alexandre Diard Generally, employee feedback can be defined as the process where you guide employees by providing constructive suggestions and opinions (both positive and negative). As a manager, you cannot do everything on your own and one should be open to receive feedback. Yes, everything you do will be for the business’s good, but ideas and criticism both to and from the employee (i.e. employee feedback) can go a long way in helping you steer the team towards reinforcing success.
Employee feedback is essential for your people analytics. For one, you will know whether your teams are on the right track through constructive feedback. They can point out your strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to give and receive the best services. This makes employee feedback an integral part of your experience and job; you can use it to better your services as well. This shouldn’t be interpreted as constant negative-feedback but give feedback that is constructive to elicit growth constructively within the company.
Related articles:
The Ultimate Guide for People Analytics
What are the Best Employee Engagement Strategies?
Employee Feedback: Why It Matters
Does employee feedback really matter? Is it an important aspect of the business, and why should it be incorporated into your business? What will my business gain from the numerous performance reviews and employee engagement? Employee feedback is known to be vital in the development of your employees. Below are some basic benefits of providing and receiving employee feedback.
Your Employees Will Feel Heard and Valued
Paying attention to employee feedback goes a long way in instilling confidence in your employees. When you pay attention to their performance reviews and other evaluation tools used to provide employee feedback, they will feel valued; they will know that you also have their interests at heart.
At the same time, employees whose feedback is listened to will be more enthusiastic about working for you. By knowing that they have a voice, they will be more than ready to use it by reinforcing their performance management process.
Once your team feels accepted and valued, you will benefit from that because you will be receiving honest feedback and constructive criticism. Let’s say you have introduced a new system of work within your business, and you want to know how well or poorly it is being perceived by employees. In such a scenario, you can ask every team member to give you feedback on this system’s performance and general conditions. You can ask them whether they think that the system is making things easier for them or if you should consider replacing it with another one. This way, they will realize that you want them to be comfortable in their work environment for better productivity and a good employee experience. This will help you achieve an effective employee-employer communication channel that will benefit the business through reaching its performance goals.
You Will Have More Ideas to Choose From
There are situations where, as an HR manager, you will be required to provide some solutions concerning your business and its success. In fact, one study proved that while managers and other members of the company’s hierarchy are looking for better ways to improve the business, more than 80% found that their employees already have helpful ideas to help improve the business. This can be attributed to the fact that they are the ones dealing with the business firsthand. By knowing the ins and outs, they are better positioned to pick out the specific elements that should be changed or improved to make the business more productive and successful.
Unfortunately, most managers ignore specific feedback from their employees. You might be overlooking constructive feedback that would have helped you and your business improve and do better in the industry. Therefore, it is a good idea to just take all the feedback in and pick out the valuable bits.
Eliminate Conflicts Before They Even Occur
Listening to employee feedback neutralizes conflicts even before they develop. A strong culture of feedback within a business gives all employees all the tools necessary to address any issues before escalation. Imagine what would happen if your employees noticed things going south but didn’t raise the alarm since they can’t be heard. It can affect our business badly.
When you let your employees share feedback with you, even concerning the more minor things, you stand a chance to suppress these issues before they can transform into bigger ones. Let’s say, for example; you have assigned a group task to your team. If they are already in the habit of giving feedback, they will be ready to offer any corrective opinions to improve their productivity and efficiency on the given assignment.
Performance Levels Will Improve
Employee feedback is an important component of improving the performance of your team. It is a two-way traffic kind of situation; it’s not only the manager who is supposed to provide regular feedback. The more the feedback exchange rate increases, the better your team will perform.
In addition to this, we have seen that when you listen to employee feedback, you will motivate them, making them feel accepted. This morale will be reciprocated in their performance. So, do not be surprised when your business starts attaining higher productivity levels after you start paying attention to employee feedback. It’s one of the best HR measurement tools you can have in place at your organization.
This can be attributed to the fact that people will now be able to make informed and better decisions to succeed in their specific roles. Surveys and studies have shown that 70% of employees whose feedback is listened to in the workplace contribute more than those whose feedback isn’t heard. Additionally, workplaces have experienced performance improvements after adopting a culture of listening to employee feedback.
It Increases Employee Engagement
Employee feedback and employee engagement are closely related; one of them can affect the other. This means that the more you listen to your employees, the higher their engagement rate will be. For one, the speed at which issues are resolved within the business is high since people can better share knowledge. Then, there will be an open-door to new ideas and this will take down the barriers between employees and supervisors.
It is important to keep in mind that employee feedback is not all about critiques and development issues. You can also use it as a platform to celebrate the business’s wins. You can use it to appreciate the effort of your team members to make them feel more engaged. What impacts employee engagement better than recognition?
It is easier to make improvements and give your employees what they want. Your team can use employee feedback to their advantage and request some improvements in the work environment. For example, maybe your office has been using the same sets of chairs for ages; they are now worn out and need to be replaced. However, you might not know this since you do not use them. These issues can be captured in the employee feedback and be rectified, making the workplace ideal for the team to be more productive.
One advantage of such improvements is that your employee retention rate will always be up where you want it. Employees are less likely to leave a company where their grievances are heard and acted upon in due time. Therefore, the probability of having your top talent on board for a long time will be high.
How Do You Go About Handling Employee Feedback?
Every employee likes being heard by their employers. Hearing what they have to say can also help you progress. With that in mind, how do you handle employee feedback?
To begin with, ensure that you have an all-inclusive platform where all your employees feel comfortable and confident to provide honest feedback. Additionally, do not rely on a single method for employee feedback; there are dozens of options out there for you to utilize. Some of them include:
New Employee Surveys
Employee surveys can be essential tools to get employee feedback, especially if you have fresh recruits on your team. You can give them a survey to fill in after the first two or three months to gauge their experience with your company. Providing feedback can help both ways and even help with future employees. Giving you feedback shouldn’t be seen as a short-term goal but can even be done as an annual performance to see in which parts there was more impact in an employee’s journey.
Employee Engagement Surveys
You can have an annual employee feedback policy where you will collect various kinds of information concerning the workplace conditions and other aspects. These surveys can provide extensive, comprehensive, and detailed insights.
One-to-one Interviews
This will allow you to connect with your employees personally (one-on-one), allowing them to confidently provide accurate and real-time feedback.
Reviews and Review Sites
These are also effective in getting customer feedback. The good thing about them is that they are all-inclusive; employees who cannot yell out their ideas or complaints in public can use such platforms to express themselves. There are numerous anonymous review sites out there such as Glassdoor where your employees can share their feedback. All feedback should be anonymous and should not be a guessing game of “who said this”. Appreciate your feedback and think if it is something that can be changed or if it isn’t possible now. Address this and say the reasons why this isn’t being done already or how this may bring a negative effect on the long-term.
Suggestion Boxes
Yes, we are already in a digital innovation era. However, this does not mean that the old-fashioned ways won’t get the job done for you. Methods such as a suggestion box allows employees who wouldn’t be able to provide honest feedback through other means to leave anonymous feedback. You can also use more modern methods. This can be done through applications. It all depends on how you want to get feedback and which methods will work best to accelerate the feedback process and convert them into an actionable task. The only thing that matters in this are the intentions and how the feedback is act-on.
Stay Interviews
These interviews can be used to collect feedback from your team, especially the top performers. This way, you will be better positioned to provide favorable working conditions and a conducive environment to retain them in your company.
Conclusion
In short, employee feedback is the perfect tool to provide a better employee experience and improve the employer-employee relationship. Employee feedback can also serve as great data points to HR predictive analytics. As a manager, it is up to you to find the best possible ways to get employee feedback and use it to change your business for the better. Find the best way to ask questions and get instant feedback to induce a collaborating environment for your employees.
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