Did you make it?

Practical learnings from our webinar on transforming employee frustration into high impact change

Are you struggling with high staff turnover and burnt out teams? Are you hunting for practical approaches to engage with employees and improve wellbeing? Do you agree with Johnston Carmichael’s Chief People Officer, Martin Osler, that ‘There has not been a more complex time to be a manager of people than now’?

If you answered, ‘Yes,’ to any of these questions, we hope you made it along to the first in our new Be The Change webinar series, where we tackled the issue of how to transform employee frustration into high impact change.

Using Dr Kevin Teoh’s groundbreaking report Organisational Wellbeing Interventions: Case Studies from the NHS, as a springboard for discussion, our expert panel (chartered psychologist and Birkbeck lecturer, Dr Teoh; Martin Osler; and Paul Reid, Founder & CEO of employee voice platform, Trickle) drew on their wealth of practical experience to consider how to put the report’s 6 principles for organisational change into practice, even when budgets and resources are limited.

You can watch the webinar replay here or read on for seven practical tips on employee engagement from our industry experts that you can start implementing today.

Start small and create a ripple effect

If you’re feeling overwhelmed by the combination of high employee demand and limited resources, start with something small that you can achieve.

Trickle CEO, Paul Reid, recalled an organisation that took the simple step of changing the structure of a meeting in response to employee feedback. Replacing a long-winded 7-hour case load review with a highly productive 3-hour discussion of priority cases transformed the session – and freed up a half a day a month for each team member.

Showing that you’ve listened and got a quick win boosts morale. This creates a ripple effect that puts bigger changes within reach. As Dr Keoh told us, ‘You can’t fix everything but you can do something.’

Make it easy for employees to speak up

If people feel able to speak up and see leaders take their suggestions seriously, it gives them a sense of psychological safety.

You can show your staff you’re listening by providing an easy-access route to give feedback anonymously, such as Trickle’s employee voice platform; through creating an open space for discussion, like the employee-led forum Martin Osler oversees at Johnston Carmichael; or simply by asking your staff what their issues are and how they would like them addressed.

As Dr Keoh reflected, ‘The reality is, many of us are overworked and the knock-on effect is we don’t have space to reflect, space to think and space to change. Giving people space to have those conversations is really important.’

Tailor the intervention to your context

An intervention that works well in one setting won’t automatically be effective elsewhere – it may be addressing an issue that is not relevant or providing a ‘solution’ that is not appropriate for that context.

Dr Keoh recommends that, before you implement a change, you take a step back and work with your team to evaluate: What is our context? What is our issue? What solutions are appropriate to us?

This will give your employees voice and agency – and help you create a tailor-made solution that is right for your situation.

Reframe feedback as a conversation

When you’re faced with a list of largely unachievable employee demands, change can feel difficult. However, if you reframe feedback as a conversation, the process becomes far more constructive.

As Paul advised, if an employee asks for something you can’t deliver, don’t ignore it. Instead, say: ‘We can’t do number 1 right now because… but we can progress numbers 2 and 3.’

This response is really powerful: it shows you’ve listened, it sets out what you will do – and the ‘because…’ helps people to understand why you can’t immediately take forward their idea.

Look at interventions as an iterative process

Don’t get hung up on trying to develop the perfect intervention. A key insight from Dr Keoh’s report is that it’s far more useful to view interventions as an iterative process rather than a distinct activity. In other words: try something, evaluate, learn and then adapt to make it better next time.

You can use features such as Trickle’s ‘How Was Your Day?’ tool, or ask your employees simple questions such as: What do you need to perform well? What do you need to be happy? to regularly take the pulse of your organisation and respond to the points raised.

Turn mistakes into learning opportunities

Support from leaders is not simply about freeing up resources - what leaders do and say also makes a huge difference. If managers take regular breaks, book holidays and get involved in wellbeing activities, their teams also will feel able to do this.

Similarly, taking responsibility and learning from mistakes needs to be modelled from the top. As Dr Kevin Teoh noted, it’s important to recognise that mistakes happen – and the best way to respond is to acknowledge them, learn and then try again. This can be as simple as starting a team meeting with asking: What went well for you this week? What didn’t work? What can we learn? How can we do it better next time?

Remember to say Thank You

When people are busy, we forget to say well done and thank you.

As Martin highlighted, the need for more recognition (distinct from pay or benefits) comes up every year in their people surveys. Staff aren’t necessarily looking for a monetary reward or a tangible benefit. The simple act of saying, ‘Thank you,’ or, ‘Well done,’ or giving an employee a shout out on Trickle can help people feel recognised and valued. Making this a core part of a line manager’s approach can have a massive impact on employee engagement.

If you were able to join us what do you learn from the webinar? Did anything surprise you? Do you have any practical tips on addressing employee frustration from your own organisation? Share your thoughts in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.

Start your journey towards high impact change today

If you’d like free, tailored advice on how to take your employee engagement to the next level, book your 30-minute employee engagement healthcheck It’s absolutely free – but we only offer five slots per month, so book in fast!

Sign up now for our next webinar on 26th June

We'd love for you to join us at our next webinar in our Be The Change Series which will cover the hot topic of: How not to alienate Gen Z: Master the art of attracting, engaging and retaining tomorrow’s leaders. For more information and to register click here.