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New research shows that as many as one in four employees plan to quit their job after the pandemic subsides. While many changes are causing people to rethink their options, career advancement, flexibility, and work culture top the list for what they’re looking for in a new role.
Connection has taken on a whole new meaning in a largely remote world, and employers who aren’t actively building a culture and a voice of the employee program could be at risk of losing their best talent. Most employers assume that their best intentions towards listening to employees might be enough, but a formal program is really necessary to both attract and keep your dream team.
What is voice of the employee?
Employee voice refers to the ability and willingness of your workers to share their input, questions, concerns, and suggestions with your company for both internal and external company issues. An official voice of the employee program is a way to systematically collect and respond to that feedback.
There are a few key signs you might already have an informal voice of employee program in place, including:
- Employee willingness to speak up in meetings and make suggestions
- Team members coming forward on a regular basis with unique proposals, suggestions, and questions
- Workers who problem-solve on their own and then share the insights with the team
These all show that there’s a solid work culture where people are encouraged to share their ideas and have confidence that they will be heard.
But most employers start and stop their employee voice program either there or with a simple suggestion box. Voice of the employee is about so much more, including the implementation of strategies where employee voice is captured intentionally and regularly.
Why is employee voice so important?
Without the support of employee voice, workers will learn (and learn quickly) that new ideas are ignored or even shot down. Those workers will stick to the old way of doing things, even if they know that system is broken. This stunts company growth and innovation and makes it all too easy for them to take that call from a headhunter or start scouring job boards.
After all, if they were hired for their expertise but it isn’t being appreciated, there’s no motivation to stay. Appreciating employee voice doesn’t mean you take every idea from a worker and run with it immediately, but it does mean taking the time to listen and document proposals.
Beyond better engagement and loyalty, your employees are often the ones closest to your customers. They not only bring unique puzzle-solving abilities to the table, but are essentially on your front lines hearing and experiencing what customers need on a regular basis.
Even for those roles not customer facing, many of your employees are the closest to the problems challenging the company and can bring a powerful perspective towards potential solutions.
As Stephen R. Covey said, “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” If you want your customers to feel heard and validated, structure an environment where that flows all the way down.
Listening on remote teams
Remote and hybrid teams need their own spin on an employee voice program.
With no watercooler talk or the possibility of regular physical outings with the team, a digital company needs to be much more intentional with how they connect with their workers. Sometimes, digital team meetings have strict agendas and purposes that leave little to no breathing room for new ideas.
It’s the role of a leader to cultivate worker insight and maintain that in an ongoing culture. There are three ways to really drive an employee voice program for a remote workplace:
- Anonymous survey programs like those administered by Gusto are great for monthly check-ins and allow new and experienced employees alike to speak up about things that might not be on your radar.
- Intentional digital meetings to discuss ideas, brainstorm, or evaluate possible solutions to ongoing problems where there’s an appointed team member present to make sure everyone in the “room” has a chance to speak up.
- One-on-one digital meetings with team members without an agenda based on current projects. Use loose questions like “What’s working and what isn’t?” or “What’s one challenge we have as a team?” to open the door for a personal conversation.
Working together, this approach presents a few opportunities to hear from your valued team members and really hits home the message that you’re serious about the voice of the employee.
How can you start to gauge the voice of the employee?
Collecting feedback about someone’s perception of their job, management, or the company as a whole is the foundation of an employee voice program, but it shouldn’t stop there. Employee thoughts should be collected on a frequent basis in addition to leveraging retrospective moments to collect data.
Don’t forget to close the feedback loop. When someone on your team presents a new idea, give them a clear understanding of the next action step in that moment. It might be telling them to add it to an ideas board, that you’ll bring it up at the next department meeting, or telling them to get busy researching what this might look like. This helps employees feel heard and understand that their ideas are connected to actions.
Even if you don’t take action on their idea, give some feedback about why that decision was made. Employees still feel engaged and excited when
Go beyond the simple survey to capture feedback. Surveys yield limited responses and retroactive ones that don’t capture the full picture. Make sure that employee voice is captured throughout various parts of your process, not just as quarterly reviews or the end of projects. Just as you’d collect customer voice information at each stage of their journey, view your employee voice program the same way. You’ll get more valuable and actionable data in a timely manner.
Here are some ways to authentically incorporate regular employee voices into the mix:
- Anonymous online engagement surveys that include questions with scales and some with open-ended responses.
- Face to face meetings with managers or teams to share ideas and openly brainstorm without making active commitments to projects.
- Creating an online ideas board where employees can chime in to support other people’s concepts or provide new perspectives on issues.
- Big group sessions followed by breakout groups where smaller cohorts of employees brainstorm or work on problems together, then come back to the main group to share their findings.
Find the mix that works for your company and fosters open communication.
Use digital tools to listen to employees
Sometimes a face-to-face meeting is too much pressure for an employee or is too out of the ordinary for it to be trusted by the worker if your employee voice program is brand new. Thankfully, there are some great tools on the market that can help you get that employee pulse.
Systematize your feedback system with options like:
- Tinypulse, which allows you to collect real time data on employees
- Kudos, which celebrates accomplishments of employees based on your company values
- Koan, which leverages weekly team status reports for better collaboration and productivity
- Workhuman provides a suite of social recognition tools to engage employees in your digital workplace
When done the right way, a voice of the employee program encourages participation, problem solving, and forward thinking.
Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash
New research shows that as many as one in four employees plan to quit their job after the pandemic subsides. While many changes are causing people to rethink their options, career advancement, flexibility, and work culture top the list for what they’re looking for in a new role.
Connection has taken on a whole new meaning in a largely remote world, and employers who aren’t actively building a culture and a voice of the employee program could be at risk of losing their best talent. Most employers assume that their best intentions towards listening to employees might be enough, but a formal program is really necessary to both attract and keep your dream team.
What is voice of the employee?
Employee voice refers to the ability and willingness of your workers to share their input, questions, concerns, and suggestions with your company for both internal and external company issues. An official voice of the employee program is a way to systematically collect and respond to that feedback.
There are a few key signs you might already have an informal voice of employee program in place, including:
- Employee willingness to speak up in meetings and make suggestions
- Team members coming forward on a regular basis with unique proposals, suggestions, and questions
- Workers who problem-solve on their own and then share the insights with the team
These all show that there’s a solid work culture where people are encouraged to share their ideas and have confidence that they will be heard.
But most employers start and stop their employee voice program either there or with a simple suggestion box. Voice of the employee is about so much more, including the implementation of strategies where employee voice is captured intentionally and regularly.
Why is employee voice so important?
Without the support of employee voice, workers will learn (and learn quickly) that new ideas are ignored or even shot down. Those workers will stick to the old way of doing things, even if they know that system is broken. This stunts company growth and innovation and makes it all too easy for them to take that call from a headhunter or start scouring job boards.
After all, if they were hired for their expertise but it isn’t being appreciated, there’s no motivation to stay. Appreciating employee voice doesn’t mean you take every idea from a worker and run with it immediately, but it does mean taking the time to listen and document proposals.
Beyond better engagement and loyalty, your employees are often the ones closest to your customers. They not only bring unique puzzle-solving abilities to the table, but are essentially on your front lines hearing and experiencing what customers need on a regular basis.
Even for those roles not customer facing, many of your employees are the closest to the problems challenging the company and can bring a powerful perspective towards potential solutions.
As Stephen R. Covey said, “Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.” If you want your customers to feel heard and validated, structure an environment where that flows all the way down.
Listening on remote teams
Remote and hybrid teams need their own spin on an employee voice program.
With no watercooler talk or the possibility of regular physical outings with the team, a digital company needs to be much more intentional with how they connect with their workers. Sometimes, digital team meetings have strict agendas and purposes that leave little to no breathing room for new ideas.
It’s the role of a leader to cultivate worker insight and maintain that in an ongoing culture. There are three ways to really drive an employee voice program for a remote workplace:
- Anonymous survey programs like those administered by Gusto are great for monthly check-ins and allow new and experienced employees alike to speak up about things that might not be on your radar.
- Intentional digital meetings to discuss ideas, brainstorm, or evaluate possible solutions to ongoing problems where there’s an appointed team member present to make sure everyone in the “room” has a chance to speak up.
- One-on-one digital meetings with team members without an agenda based on current projects. Use loose questions like “What’s working and what isn’t?” or “What’s one challenge we have as a team?” to open the door for a personal conversation.
Working together, this approach presents a few opportunities to hear from your valued team members and really hits home the message that you’re serious about the voice of the employee.
How can you start to gauge the voice of the employee?
Collecting feedback about someone’s perception of their job, management, or the company as a whole is the foundation of an employee voice program, but it shouldn’t stop there. Employee thoughts should be collected on a frequent basis in addition to leveraging retrospective moments to collect data.
Don’t forget to close the feedback loop. When someone on your team presents a new idea, give them a clear understanding of the next action step in that moment. It might be telling them to add it to an ideas board, that you’ll bring it up at the next department meeting, or telling them to get busy researching what this might look like. This helps employees feel heard and understand that their ideas are connected to actions.
Even if you don’t take action on their idea, give some feedback about why that decision was made. Employees still feel engaged and excited when
Go beyond the simple survey to capture feedback. Surveys yield limited responses and retroactive ones that don’t capture the full picture. Make sure that employee voice is captured throughout various parts of your process, not just as quarterly reviews or the end of projects. Just as you’d collect customer voice information at each stage of their journey, view your employee voice program the same way. You’ll get more valuable and actionable data in a timely manner.
Here are some ways to authentically incorporate regular employee voices into the mix:
- Anonymous online engagement surveys that include questions with scales and some with open-ended responses.
- Face to face meetings with managers or teams to share ideas and openly brainstorm without making active commitments to projects.
- Creating an online ideas board where employees can chime in to support other people’s concepts or provide new perspectives on issues.
- Big group sessions followed by breakout groups where smaller cohorts of employees brainstorm or work on problems together, then come back to the main group to share their findings.
Find the mix that works for your company and fosters open communication.
Use digital tools to listen to employees
Sometimes a face-to-face meeting is too much pressure for an employee or is too out of the ordinary for it to be trusted by the worker if your employee voice program is brand new. Thankfully, there are some great tools on the market that can help you get that employee pulse.
Systematize your feedback system with options like:
- Tinypulse, which allows you to collect real time data on employees
- Kudos, which celebrates accomplishments of employees based on your company values
- Koan, which leverages weekly team status reports for better collaboration and productivity
- Workhuman provides a suite of social recognition tools to engage employees in your digital workplace
When done the right way, a voice of the employee program encourages participation, problem solving, and forward thinking.
Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash
