Employee engagement surveys are a core component in contemporary HR ‘good practice’. But poorly-handled feedback could do more harm than good to your corporate culture.
Asking for employee feedback is essential to keeping your workers happy – but only if you know how to act on their responses appropriately. We don’t have all the answers, but we do have three things for all HR managers to avoid.
Ignore it
Asking for employee feedback could actually be detrimental to your company if you fail to do anything about it.
Blessing White, an employee engagement consulting firm, found that a third of employees became disengaged when they felt their employers hadn’t reacted to the responses.
Place blame
“When we receive negative feedback, we immediately want to know who said it,” said HR pro Sabrina Son, “but how are you going to improve your culture or gain trust from your employees by calling them out for voicing their opinion?”
Son said it’s more important that HR managers focus on the “what” instead of the “who” – that way leaders will be able to analyse problems more effectively and concentrate on figuring out a solution.
“Stressing about who said what will only cloud your judgement and potentially breed bias against certain employees,” she added.
Keep secrets
Knowledge may be power but keeping the overall feedback results from your staff is a bad move.
According to a recent employee engagement survey by TINYhr, transparency was identified as the number one factor that contributes to happiness in the workplace.
It’s almost inevitable that you’ll receive negative feedback at some point – after all, whose company is perfect? But you shouldn’t be overly selective about the information you share with your team.
“You must be ready to share all of that news with your team to show that you’re receptive to hearing everything they have to say,” said Son.
