4 Questions To Ask Before Conducting An Employee Listening Session

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When tragedy strikes, employers should seek ways to provide employees with a space for healing.?Listening sessions ?can be an impactful method to help employees process traumatic events that have occurred outside of and within the organization. These sessions often consist of guided discussions where employees can converse about a particular event and their feelings surrounding an event or incident that took place. When the decision has been made to conduct a listening session, there are important questions that must be considered. This article explores four questions that should be asked before conducting an employee listening session.

1.?Who will facilitate this conversation? Before conducting a listening session, one of the most important questions that should be considered is who will be facilitating the conversation. Who is equipped to lead this discussion? It is never a good idea to have employees, especially those from marginalized backgrounds, facilitating or lead these types of conversations. There is often a?misguided assumption ?that every person from a marginalized background wants to and is equipped to lead these types of conversations—we must rethink this. The person who leads these types of conversations should have demonstrated abilities to hold space for marginalized communities. A person who has a background in equity work, racial trauma, racial healing or transformative justice will be well-equipped to guide these crucial conversations. It is also important that the individual leading this discussion has some sort of lived experience to speak from. A?2011 study ?found that a facilitator’s race impacted perceptions of diversity training effectiveness—white facilitators were rated as less effective than Black facilitators. Ensure that the facilitator has both lived experience and has the ability to hold space for marginalized employees.

2.?What is our ultimate goal with this listening session? After deciding who is best equipped to guide the listening session, the next question to ponder is what the ultimate objective of the session is. Is it to provide a voice for employees who may want to share their feelings? Is it to provide a space for learning and understanding? Is it to give marginalized employees a safe space to share with others from their community? Think about what you want to accomplish by conducting the listening session. If you are conducting a listening session following a?mega-threat , your goal may to be to provide employees from a racially marginalized community with the space to process what they are feeling. If you are conducting the session based on an interpersonal issue amongst employees, your goal may be to rebuild and repair employee trust. An important piece of advice is to ensure that you are prioritizing the needs and desires of marginalized employees over the needs and desires of those in?positions of power ?within the organization. Marginalized communities should not be expected to share their experiences for the sake of white enlightenment, unless this is something that was specifically requested by marginalized employees.

3.?Who is our intended audience? Are you trying to provide a safe space for employees from a particular identity? Listening sessions can be an effective way to allow marginalized employees to commune with others with similar experiences. If your company does not have a formal employee resource group or affinity group to support a particular community, consider whether a listening session for just members of that particular community would be beneficial. Ask employees if this is something they would find value in. If you’re conducting a listening session because of an internal issue that employees are experiencing when it comes to inequity, mistrust, or injustice within the organization, you want to prioritize those who have been harmed. What does repair and restoration look like, for example, for an employee who was the victim of biased treatment? How are you prioritizing?their?needs in the listening session? You should never force employees to attend these sorts of discussions and above all, you should never force employees to speak or share feelings unless they are willing. Never call on employees or ask them to share during a listening session, even if there is not a lot of discussion. Silence does not necessarily mean disinterest or disengagement. Silence could mean employees are holding space for and processing what is happening in real time.

4.?What steps will we take after this session? The most critical question to ask after the listening session is what steps will be taken after the session. Don’t conduct a listening session just for the sake of conducting a listening session. Ask yourself: are these sessions something that could be regularly implemented when needed? What additional resources can you provide for employees? If there isn’t a space employees can go to regularly share their feelings and experiences, think about how to create this space within the workplace. Think about employee check-ins. How do you regularly checkup and check in with employees? Are there additional ways to take temperature checks of employees outside of what is already being done? What are tangible ways to help your employees?navigate tragedies ?that affect them or their communities? Lastly, after the session, be sure you are assessing employee sentiments whether through surveys or other feedback methods.

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