Does your organization need a feedback culture in place?

Employee engagement and employee wellbeing is increasingly playing a central role in the business world. For a very long time, these concepts have been deemed to be the sole responsibility of the Human Resources department, and not as an integral part of the organizational strategy. In order to effectively work on employee engagement and employee wellbeing, a feedback culture must be created in organizations.

Today, employee feedback, is becoming even more valuable and popular thanks to Glassdoor. And sorry for the spoiler, but with Glassdoor’s presence, now there is no way to escape your employees’ feedback.

What is Glassdoor?

Glassdoor is an American company bought by a Japanese holding company that allows employees, job applicants, and recruiters to simultaneously search for unedited opinions about a company’s work environment, along with details about salaries, company screenings, interview questions and reviews, office photos, as well as benefits and CEO approval ratings.

As you can see in this review at Glassdoor, a lot of things, both good and bad, can come to light.

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From our point of view, the first thing we think when reading the review is: … How truly unsatisfied does the employee feel to openly express themselves this way? Has their employer really done nothing to stop this individual from being pushed to their limit?

In essence, this seems like a scenario where the connection between employees and the organization doesn’t match.

The cost of not listening to your employees is very high

Your business can suffer from:

  1. Excessive employee turnover: “89% of management believe that employees quit because of the salary. But only 12% of them leave an organization for this reason. – Leigh Branman (7 Hidden Reasons Employees Leave)
  2. Lack of productivity: “69 percent of employees would work more if their efforts were better recognized” – PwC “and would be 43 percent more productive” – Hay Study Group
  3. Customers don’t come back – Unmotivated employees don’t provide the ideal service for your customers. “Customers do not come first. Employees come first. If you take care of your employees, they will take care of the customers” – Richard Branson

The solution?

According to the consulting firm Best Place to Work, the best valued work environments are those in which companies maintain a constant dialogue with their employees through feedback. Knowing that leaders are listening to people, seeking ideas and asking for opinions creates a genuine sense of happiness at work.

How is this achieved? A feedback culture is born from the combination of pulse surveys + anonymous feedback, integral parts of what we call The Happyforce Way.

What are pulse surveys?

Pulse surveys are known as such because they allow companies to “take the pulse” of their team’s commitment and satisfaction. This means they can collect real-time information to measure how their employees are feeling at any given time. Pulse surveys allow for continuous, two-way conversations, helping companies determine what they need to stop, start, change and continue to improve the culture and drive the business forward.  Pulse surveys are conducted on a regular basis and will usually only include a few questions.

Through pulse surveys at Happyforce, you can understand the level of engagement of each of your teams, their wellbeing, their commitment, they’re overall satisfaction, and more. Through the Happyforce real-time analytics, managers are able to prioritize their actions, understand the perceptions of your employees, in what to invest, and what to do. Everything is analyzed instantly and in real-time.

The average participation of employees worldwide in Happyforce is around 80% monthly and 50% daily participation of the entire staff of a company. According to Forbes, the average participation in a climate survey falls between 30 and 40%. Our high levels of participation are due to the formula for building trust at work, based on anonymous feedback which encourages an open feedback culture.

Don’t end with a sad story on Glasdoor

Don’t let your company end up with a sad story on Glassdoor, there is a lot you can do from an organizational point of view. But if you start to promote a culture of feedback internally, where employees can openly and honestly feel comfortable and free to express what they love about their work, and what they would like to see improved, you are doing a lot for your culture and your employees, and in turn your overall business. It’s not easy, but it’s worth it!