The Engaging Power Of Employee Feedback

Does your organization listen to its employees? I mean, really listen and act on what they say. Based on what our research has uncovered, it’s likely that the true answer is “no.” Check out some data from our recent research:

• In our Q3 2018 Consumer Benchmark Study, we found that 40% of full time U.S. employees strongly agrees with the statement, “My company asks for my feedback and acts upon what I say.”
• In the report, Employee Engagement Competency & Maturity, 2018, we found that only 40% of executives within large organizations put a high priority on taking action based on results from employee engagement studies.

Does it really matter? Yes! While there is enormous value from using employee feedback to improve your business, the true win might be in how it improves the engagement level of those employees.

To understand this phenomena, we examined the relationship between how employees think their company listens to and acts on their feedback, and the degree to which those employees are willing to do something good for their company even if it’s not expected of them. Eighty-two percent of employee who strongly agree that their company takes action on their feedback are likely to do something good for the company, compared with only 30% of those who do not agree.

We decided to dig deeper into the data and look at how this relationship differs across employee roles. As you can see in the chart below:

• Executives (87%) are the most likely to do something good for the company if their feedback is acted upon.
• Financial services sales or relationship management employees (19%) are the least likely to do something good for the company if their feedback is not acted upon.
• The “do-good gap” is largest for B2B sales or relationship workers, where there’s a 65-point difference in employees’ likelihood to do something good for the company based on how the company deals with their feedback.

The bottom line: Employee feedback is an under-appreciated gift.