What is employee feedback
Feedback is the reviews from your employees about their work in the company. Feedback tools help to obtain the opinion of employees about management, policies, technologies and processes in the organisation. They can also help employees come up with ideas for changing unwanted situations or for modernising the work environment.
It is important for your employees to be heard. The company's sincere interest in the opinion of the team demonstrates concern for subordinates, strengthens the loyalty of employees. Give people the opportunity to express themselves - they'll appreciate it.
Why collect feedback
The opportunity to express their opinions resonates with employees and gives them a sense of engagement in the development of the corporate culture. This strengthens the loyalty of the team, motivates them to contribute to the life of the company.
Collecting feedback only makes sense if the company is prepared to consider ideas from staff and implement change. Lack of management response to the situation in the company often becomes the reason for discontent or employees leaving. Of course, the company does not have to implement all ideas of its employees. But by making even some of them happen, the management show that they care about their subordinates.
Our survey shows that 85% of employees consider feedback important, but only a third give and receive it.
Unfortunately, most companies do not have a well-established feedback-sharing mechanism or a culture of feedback. In today's work environment, there is a tendency to give feedback either in an extremely negative way, focusing on employee failures, or in a way that is too vague. However, this tendency is detrimental to team motivation.
The right kind of feedback, on the contrary, motivates staff to develop, helps the team to unite and work more efficiently.
Benefits of Collecting Regular Feedback
High competition in the labour market forces employers to think about creating a comfortable working environment. Hundreds of companies are trying to lure the best exponents of their profession and are offering specialists flexible working hours, high salaries and an attractive corporate culture. Staff turnover is expensive: finding, hiring, adapting and training a new employee costs a business an average of 800,000 RUB.
Staff retention is becoming one of the main business objectives.
In half the cases of voluntary layoffs, the employer could convince the person to stay on the team. But it is still easier to avoid such a situation and by regularly finding out whether the subordinates in the company are happy, how they see their future and how their manager can facilitate their growth.
Collecting feedback plays an important role in building a company's HR brand. In the age of the internet and social media, it is easy to find truthful information about an employer. When you make an effort to improve your culture, employees speak positively about you, which in turn attracts strong talent - because the best professionals want to work in the best environment.
Happy Job Platform as a Tool for Collecting Employee Feedback
The Happy Job platform is an effective feedback channel from employees. With its help, staff can anonymously or openly share their views on the work environment and make suggestions for improving the corporate culture.
Happy Job makes the feedback process convenient and engaging for employees. After hours of intense mental work, employees are unable to fully participate in lengthy surveys designed to capture every aspect of the job. We found the way to increase our response rate: Happy Job surveys are short and varied. They consist of several question formats to keep the walkthrough interesting, and they have convenient tools for detailed feedback.
Surveys to assess employee engagement and loyalty are carried out on a Wednesday or Thursday. The survey report highlights the urgent needs of the team. Then, using the platform, staff can keep track of which of their ideas are being put into practice. With Happy Job, you will be able to assess all the metrics of employee engagement and loyalty and take timely measures to strengthen this or that indicator.
Survey Formats
Anonymous surveys are one of the easiest and most popular ways to collect employee feedback. Confidentiality means respondents are not afraid of a negative reaction from the manager and can be honest in their statements. Feedback from employees may be collected at different intervals. Let's consider several options.
Pulse Polls and Feedback
Pulse Surveys are quick online surveys to collect feedback. Their effectiveness is due to their convenience for employees: they are short and do not take much time to complete.
Pulse surveys consist of questions in different formats: variable, open, closed, etc. Every quarter, employees answer 59 questions related to their working experience in the company, level of loyalty and engagement.
For management, pulse surveys are an effective tool for tracking company sentiment in real time. Regularly collecting the opinions of employees allows you to identify problems in the team in a timely fashion and implement the changes necessary to solving them. Pulse surveys make it easier to keep track of the team mood.
Large-Scale Annual Research
Annual surveys are carried out 1–2 times a year. This format is especially relevant for large companies with more than 5,000 employees, when it becomes difficult to assess staff needs even through managers.
There are 59 mixed-type questions in the annual survey. This format covers almost every aspect of a company's life. It is needed to understand the holistic picture of employee engagement and loyalty and to develop strategic solutions to improve it.
Feedback Form
With Happy Job, surveys are available on any device. The information received through the form is sent for manual or machine processing. This process is called content analysis.
Content analysis is a quantitative analysis of texts in order to identify and decipher patterns. Analysis of the text will help determine what people are talking about, how they relate to the subject of their statements.
After completing the survey, you will receive comments from employees. They can be sorted and the most "noisy" ones can be selected - that is, those that are mentioned most often by the respondents. Include noisy topics in the sharing process so that people feel they are being heard.
How an HR Professional Can Share Survey Results with Executives
On the Happy Job platform, HR professionals responsible for the survey and managers have access to a personal account. The research information for the administrator and the managers on the platform will be shown differently. For example, a manager will see data for their department only if there are more than 5 people in it. They will also be able to read only those comments that the respondents made "open" for them. Other opinions are available only to the administrator.
Let's figure out what information from the study an HR specialist should provide to managers and how.
Start by emailing quantitative results to executives
After collecting the answers from respondents, the Happy Job platform automatically generates reports. Generate reports for departments and send them to the managers.
Share some comments "for the administrator" with managers
Send hidden comments to managers if they:
- do not refer to specific people,
- do not provoke a conflict between the manager and employees,
- are not an act of aggression towards colleagues,
- help to implement positive changes in the department.
Share a comment for each metric for the department head
On the Happy Job platform, each metric is accompanied by an explanation, recommendations for development. However, the HR specialist's perspective on the situation regarding the department's performance will be useful to the head.
Make a plan for implementing employees' ideas
Having a plan will demonstrate to executives that the company takes feedback seriously and is ready to take steps to implement employee suggestions.
How to work with employee ideas
Leaders are required to share only basic reports with their team. Discussing the survey results with employees allows you to create an open, trusting atmosphere and work together to achieve common goals. How often to implement changes based on survey results is up to each team to decide for themselves. Some people feel comfortable discussing changes once a quarter, some - once a month.
Collect Feedback to Promote Employee Happiness
Happiness in the workplace is not the abstract dream of employees. This is a very real indicator that affects the motivation and productivity of employees, and, therefore, the profit of the organisation. Many workers are prepared to change jobs for lower wages, if in return the work will make them happy.
Treat employees like customers.
The costs of finding and hiring staff can be reduced - by creating a workspace with an attractive corporate culture. The key to success in this difficult area lies in a simple rule: treat employees like customers. Learn what they really want through feedback-gathering tools, and a number of benefits will open up for you:
Conflict Resolution before Exacerbation
Collecting feedback gives both staff and leaders the opportunity to express their concerns. It is important that the feedback is a dialogue, not a monologue - this fosters trust between the parties.
At first, it may feel unusual for employees to participate in the exchange of feedback, but this will pass with time. As a result, the team will learn to cope with stressful situations openly and while respecting each other's feelings.
Professional Development
Feedback helps people to grow: the more comfortable an employee is asking for or giving feedback, the more new prospects will open up for him. For example, being able to move to a new position or to another project, if he asks about it openly. The manager, in turn, will be able to motivate subordinates to develop and learn new skills for their work.
Increasing Employee Engagement and Loyalty
When an organization has a developed corporate culture and a well-developed feedback mechanism, the level of employee engagement and loyalty grows. The staff feel more engaged in the overall processes and understands that they can influence the overall situation in the organisation.
For customers to love a company, it should
be loved by the employees.
How to Engage Employees in the Feedback Collecting Process
Low participation rates are a common problem that Happy Job can solve. Our end-to-end solution is user-friendly, intuitive, and relies on gamification techniques to make taking a survey really fun.
With an average survey duration of just 5-7 minutes, the engagement rate reaches 75% of employees, and the results help management take quick action to resolve disputes.
Find out more about the Happy Job platform here.
