A happy employee is a productive employee. Ensuring employee spirits are always high, is as difficult to implement as it sounds. But, organisations can definitely take steps towards maintaining engaged and happy employees by fostering an environment of openness. And the first step towards achieving this is empowering them to speak up and share their feedback.
Feedback Culture and Decision Making: The Nexus
Not only does feedback help build a healthier workplace, but also equips an organisation with better decision-making capacity. When employees across the organisation feel like they are being heard, and that their opinions matter - it boosts employee morale and commitment thereby increasing employee engagement and making for a positive work environment. When Google launched a host of employee engagement programs,for instance, their employee satisfaction level increased by 37%. As for an organisation, feedback helps build overall workplace health and efficiency. By listening to employees, businesses are able to choose the best suited strategic or operational courses of action, keeping in mind employee opinions that will eventually contribute towards success. But for a feedback culture to settle, it’s imperative that the leadership team takes the lead on this to help employees realise that they’re on the same team.
Enabling Better Decision Making at the Workplace
While some employees are good at opening up and giving feedback, others may not be. Employees need to be eased into this process - especially at the beginning, given that not everyone is comfortable with one-on-one, or face-to-face conversations. If employees feel uncomfortable, the organisation must help them overcome this by integrating feedback into everyday situations. Which brings us to our next point - ensure regular or frequent feedback sessions to reinforce and normalise this process. With survey based tools employees can record their opinions in comfort and without worrying about being judged. And there’s a lot in store for you as an organisation as well.
For example if the tool measures that the majority of employees think they work even on their days off, the organisation is now equipped with data to understand why employee morale is on the lower side. Should you add a mandatory no email/call policy in the workplace holiday guidelines? Or should you add an anonymous complaint tab on the internal portal for more regular grievance redressal? Decision-making becomes easier when the problem or majority consensus is identified. At the same time, making such sessions and surveys a routine is just as important. After all, gathering feedback only a couple of times through the year is not the best practice as the feedback may be outdated by the time an organisation acts on it.
How Does This Make A Workplace More Efficient?
Feedback culture inspires growth. Just the way consumer data can be used to help customers, the same should be done for employees. In fact, a new report shows that 90% of surveyed organisations agree that success is dependent on data-driven decision making with employees. Additionally these organisations tallied their growth to be between 10% to 30%. The data you collect with relevant survey tools enables you to decide focus areas. Getting knowledge and data on critical topics like fair compensation, workplace politics and biases or unfair promotions, empowers organisations to improve employee experience with corrective actions. After all, increments and promotions are not the only solutions and crafting a positive workplace experience often depends on resolutions like appreciation and inclusivity - things that can be identified with data-driven insights.
Normalise Giving and Receiving Feedback
We have a long way to go as implementation is still as low as 7% amongst the 90% who agree that success depends on efficient decision-making. It’s time we normalise this culture. As an organisation, ensuring safety and trust is as important as encouraging employee feedback and this can only come with transparency and communication. A great way to foster this is to highlight the kinds of decisions you’ve been able to make because of their feedback. With the onset of a feedback culture, what will follow is an environment of positivity and happiness.