Are You Listening? Here's Why and How

In the past, an annual employee survey may have been enough to keep people happy. These days, however, your team expects far more investment from you when it comes to gathering anonymous feedback on the employee experience. A hefty pile of multiple-choice questions handed out once a year simply doesn’t cut it. 

Changing your listening methods doesn’t have to mean more work for you, and by doing so you can unearth big benefits to your business. 

Why You Should Listen to Your People

When you take the time to listen to your team’s feedback on the employee experience, you may be surprised to find extremely valuable information that, when used to implement change, yields impressive results. 

Listening Increases Retention, Productivity, and Engagement

Most people likely aren’t looking for flashy perks like catered lunches and free donuts. Instead they want to work for a company who understands the basics of engagement like healthy communication. 

Healthy workplaces and positive employee experiences are built upon a foundation of good communication. When people feel heard, they thrive. They know their voice matters and can make a difference, which greatly improves their engagement and productivity levels. And as we all know, engaged people rarely leave. 

Listening Saves Your Money & Reputation

One major cost of doing business is employee turnover, and the financial losses alone can be staggering. From lost productivity to hiring expenses, and even to training costs, the price of a lost person can add up fast. 

High turnover rates are a red flag to job candidates. The best candidates may even choose to steer clear of your organization entirely if you suffer this major problem. With sites like Glassdoor which feature employee reviews of companies, you can bet that people will call attention to your painful turnover rates online. 

When you hold onto people by getting fundamentals right like listening, you lose fewer people and thus retain your funds and public reputation. 

Listening Improves Management Decision Making

Let’s assume you vetted every person on your team to ensure they were the right fit for your vision, mission, and culture. They’ve spent years helping you reach company goals from the inside out. Are they not the perfect people to provide feedback on how to improve your practices?

When you take the time to listen to the advice of your people, you may find some of their ideas to be extraordinary. Tap into this amazing resource and see your organization grow. 

Businesses with their eye on the future know the value of listening to their people. Productivity, finances, employee engagement levels, and decision-making processes all improve as a result of such practices.

How to Gather Anonymous Feedback

It’s essential to get the feedback process right as not just any employee feedback will do. The good news is it’s never been easier to learn how to listen.

Sign Up for an Online Anonymous Feedback Platform

There’s no excuse to skip out on the incredible feedback technology available today, and you need technology that operates at your business’s rapid pace with remarkable ease. At Olumo, we offer just such a platform. People receive simple text-message surveys and managers can monitor 100% anonymous responses in real time. 

Gather real-time feedback data and quickly view actionable results. Pinpoint exactly where your weak points lie so you can make better choices to improve engagement. Protect the identities of your people with anonymity. 

In the contemporary workplace, you simply can’t keep up with the competition if you don’t 

actively engage with your people. With technology that allows you to tap into the mindset of your people, you have no excuse. It’s easy to sign up. In fact, there’s no need to install an application. Test it out for free and see for yourself!

Make Surveys Simple and Easy to Use

Keep your employee surveys as user-friendly and short as possible to get accurate results. 

As humans, we can only focus on a task for so long before succumbing to distraction. Annual employee surveys certainly don’t do us any favors in this respect, often consisting of pages upon pages of questions. 

As you can imagine, so many questions warrant a serious time commitment to complete. If you provide your people with the survey on a busy workday, you can all but guarantee they’ll rush through it as quickly as possible, or perhaps not even bother with it.

If you use technology like Olumo, however, you can provide 1-2 questions at a time regarding a single issue via text message. It only takes a matter of seconds for a person to respond quickly and easily with anonymous feedback. As you can imagine, you’re far more likely to get truthful answers on the employee experience when you respect everyone’s time by asking for just a few brief moments instead. 

Provide Employee Surveys Frequently & Consistently

Rather than distribute surveys just once a year, offer a mini survey every week. Show your team you’re in tune with their daily experience by staying in consistent contact with them. 

By providing 1-2 questions a week, you remain on the ball and able to address issues immediately as they arise. Nip problems in the bud before they become major concerns and save your organization time, conflict, and money.

Don’t Ignore Responses – Take Action

You need a platform that turns people’s feedback into live, easy-to-read dashboards. You need the ability to quickly view historical trends or even create advanced custom reports. 

It’s up to you to act on the results, though. Don’t just listen but respond. Show your people you truly care by enacting changes where necessary and see your company grow.

Not only is listening to your people incredibly important for your business, it’s remarkably easy to implement a simple and user-friendly feedback system. 

Your outdated methods of gathering feedback (if you even implement them) aren’t doing you any favors. A CareerBuilder study found that one-third of companies in 2012 reported losses of top-performing employees. That’s a club we’re sure you don’t want to be part of.

Start Listening to Your People Today

Make a change before you suffer financial and productivity losses. Now’s the time to change the way you gather feedback. It’s time to ditch your annual employee survey and instead adopt a more effective approach. If you don’t, you may be left behind. 

It may be easier to bury your head in the sand and ignore that the employee experience is poor, but you do so at your organization’s peril. Your people are truly the lifeblood of your organization – they know you better than anyone, and it’s best to listen to them.

It’s not hard to get started. Watch our brief video to learn how easy it is to set up simple, consistent, anonymous surveys. Sign up today and leverage employee feedback!