Benefits of an employee listening strategy

MX Bites / June 16, 2022

The employee experience (EX) has been recognized as an important driver of success however, the culture surrounding that success comes down to how employees feel at work and the chances they have to collaborate, work in teams, learn, and advance. A positive culture treats everyone fairly and provides opportunities for employees to be themselves and thrive.

Employees want to work for an organization that is respected and where they can feel good about their contributions. Being part of a team is meant to be a positive and a productive experience for employees, that encourages them to work together by providing staff with an environment where they want to come to work rather than have to. 

Defining the term employee listening is straightforward, however, implementing a strategy is an integrated approach to understanding the employee experience. It should aim to purposefully include employees, thus harnessing the ideas and responding in line with the goals of the organization. 

What we are learning is that most human resources report experiencing survey fatigue,  since questions are being possessed that are non-related to issues they are experiencing. These are fundamentally quite outdated practices, and it’s time to shift gears and explore methods that are organic and real-time-based. Allow employees to share their thoughts at any time, and ask specific questions at relevant times throughout the year. Try implementing “always-on” feedback channels and event-driven feedback capture during peak moments in the employee lifecycle.

Here are a few benefits to employee listening:

• • • Prioritizing employee listening is critical for improving engagement, and is an ongoing initiative that allows both managers and employees to learn about each other.
  • • By listening to employees and proactively asking for their feedback, insights, and opinions, businesses are much more likely to have happier team members, thus boosting overall morale.
  • • The approach becomes proactive since you are able to more easily understand your employee experience, therefore giving you a better understanding of the organization in the present, and providing insights into future predictive behavior.
  • • Your employees may be able to signal to you where something is about to go wrong or if the business is on the decline which allows you to take action early on.

In order to head down a path of success, it’s time to change how you listen to your employees and take action on their feedback. Employee listening gives your employees a voice. Investing in employee listening and prioritizing performance is not only vital to employee and team success—it’s also beneficial to your business. Employee listening enables companies to better understand what employees are feeling, especially when used along with the appropriate technology.