Employees are the most important part of any business. You can have the best product in the world, but without a workforce that can execute on its potential, you won’t get anywhere.
Businesses need creative, knowledgeable teams capable of completing a range of tasks and spotting new opportunities. However, perhaps above all, what businesses need from their employees is engagement.
When employees genuinely care about their assignments and are engaged from start to finish, they produce their best work. Plus, an engaged employee wants to learn everything about their job, find where improvements are possible and learn how they fit within the business workflow as a whole.
Work by Gallup lays out just how vital an engaged workforce can be. Their research shows that engaged employees lead to better business outcomes regardless of industry, company size, or location. Businesses in the top 25% for employee engagement have nearly double the odds of success. Engaged employees show:
- 41% reduction in absences
- 17% increase in productivity
Businesses with high scoring employee engagement achieve:
- 24% less employee turnover
- 10% higher ratings from customers
- 21% greater profitability
With this in mind, one of the biggest priorities for HR operations is developing an environment and culture that naturally generates employee engagement. Fortunately, there is a simple answer that goes a long way to getting employees engaged: listening.
The Importance of Employee Feedback
Receiving feedback from your employees is vital to improving how your business operates. You took the time to interview, hire, train, and develop these people. So it makes sense to go one step further and listen to their thoughts and opinions about their work and your business as a whole.
Your customers can switch to a competitor, investors can sell their stock, but your employees show up and invest every workday into the company. Taking the time to listen to the people with the most at stake offers genuine benefits, including:
- Productivity – with employee feedback, you understand how to get the best out of them, increasing productivity across your organisation.
- Awareness – being aware of the goings-on at every level of your business helps you understand what’s going well and what isn’t. This includes identifying bottlenecks in your workflows and spotting potential conflict areas before they escalate and affect productivity or employee morale.
- Innovation – good ideas can come from anyone within your organisation. When employees feel listened to and are engaged, they are more likely to come forward and offer new innovative approaches.
Generate Employee Buy-in – it’s nice to feel heard, and by implementing meaningful employee feedback structures, you can generate greater employee buy-in and engagement, leading to better work. - Reduce Employee Turnover – on a similar theme, engaged employees who feel listened to and part of a team are less likely to leave. Reducing employee turnover means holding on to valuable contributors and reducing the time and money spent recruiting and training new staff.
Employee feedback is a mutually beneficial process that improves the experience for employees and offers real advantages for management.
When employee feedback becomes a box-ticking exercise, it’s not beneficial for anyone. A poorly designed survey sent out once a year will not produce meaningful results that improve your business. To get your employees engaged, management has to show they are engaged in hearing from them.
So what does a successful employee feedback strategy look like in a digital world?
How HR Technology Transforms Employee Feedback
With HR technology, you can seamlessly integrate employee feedback into your business processes. This means feedback on how work is going in real-time and being able to efficiently spot action points where management needs to step in.
Plus, when integrated across your entire organisation, you get to see the whole picture, connecting the dots and learning where issues arise. Feedback and new ideas can often get lost within a single department. With HR technology, you can remove data silos and see feedback from everyone involved.
There are also platforms for improving employee feedback and boosting engagement that integrate straight into existing popular HRIS software. CultureAmp is one of these platforms that emphasise employee feedback, with simple and immediately implementable survey templates that ask meaningful questions.
Baselinked
Employees are the most valuable resource you have. By getting them engaged and listening to their feedback, you maximise their impact and get the most out of them.
Understanding how to transform your employee feedback strategies can be a confusing process. There are many approaches to take and tools available. Baselinked can help ensure you take the right approach and find the tools that match your business. So get in touch today and let our team of HR tech experts show you how to build an effective people-centric and HR Technology based feedback solution.
