An examination of the ways that the collection of employee feedback and the use of social media in the workplace affect employee retention and happiness for the June print issue of Talent Management magazine.
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The Future of Feedback
In an era of modern feedback, organizations that pay heed to employees’ voices and act on their concerns can almost guarantee improved retention.
As signs of a recovering economy emerge and greener pastures beckon, some talent pundits have predicted the long-awaited improvement will lead to a mass exodus of unhappy employees from jobs they’ve grudgingly performed for the last few years. Whether or not “The Great Recession” is followed by “The Great Walk-out” remains to be seen, but by updating the way employee feedback is gathered and — more importantly — acted on, companies have a powerful guard against turnover.
Many of the tried-and-true tools talent managers have been using to gather feedback are still useful, but this is the 21st century. And in this world, the ever-growing reach of technology has left no aspect of life untouched. Employee feedback is no exception, and the following is a guide to the newest tricks and philosophies available to gather, analyze and act on the employee voice.
Plot the Course
Direct feedback can be useful, but before companies draft lengthy annual questionnaires and create accounts with every social media channel, an overview of basic metrics is imperative. Sometimes, those numbers speak volumes — more so than any comments box.
“That is a key thing that we find, over and over again, is missing when it comes time to talk about the macro-level issues around employee dynamics,” said Trey Campbell, North American president of human resource services provider NorthgateArinso. Looking at these metrics is essential as an organization’s first stop when it comes to gathering feedback, he said.
“Before we can even move to the higher-end questions of what’s motivating them, how happy are they, are they an attrition risk, we have to get the basics down,” he said.
Campbell said NorthgateArinso begins its work with a company by first using the core data set from a system of record that all corporations share: payroll. “A foundational building block that we get into very quickly is: ‘Do you know where everyone is and what they do?’” Campbell said this question is increasingly difficult for some companies to answer as businesses grow more global.
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