Money talks & feedback walks...

I heard many an Executive make comments about Engagement surveys and employee feedback and how these don't connect with or impact company revenue... (What? Are you serious?)

My initial response is one of annoyance especially when many of these individuals have years of experience in a leadership roles.

If I had a dollar, a Yen or a Pound, for each manager who said to me something similar along these lines that the HR soft stuff isn’t that important I would be very rich!

If I was CEO of a company I would connect the results of engagement surveys to the manager’s pay packet, the only real way if we truly want managers to take real ownership of the feedback we receive from our employees especially about them in particular.

What I would also do is have the finance team work with HR on all the data we get from these engagement surveys to work together and correlate the engagement data with the following numbers, cost of recruitment, cost of turnover, employee tenure, training and development costs based on employee turnover and new hire replacement onboarding, the key here is to find the potential loses from lower engagement scores versus money we save and even earn with a higher engaged workforce. What is amazing I have worked for some pretty amazing companies local and global yet not one of them ever did this...

For all you managers who simply focus on the numbers and profit you are only half a manager, you actually don't deserve to be a manager. I once had a CEO say we are not a charity and was dumbfounded with his lack of people understanding, I also had the APAC head of HR say something similar that we were not a charity and employees are hear to work not complain - that individual interestingly was not a well like individual...

Yes employees are paid to do a job, but not to be unhappy and in this incredible hot market this is the time to invest in getting feedback that matters and actually doing something with it! People want a life now and not just a job.

There of-course needs to be "a give and a take" but if a company truly wants to leverage the employees to their full extent and in a productive and engaging manner however, they need to take employee feedback seriously.

There are numerous reports out there that dive deep into how employee engagement impacts the company's bottom line, so why is it so hard for managers to get this?

What’s interesting plenty of managers will complain when they have a problem in their work to HR, or if they feel they are over worked and stressed and will expect the company to do something about it… And no surprise but looking at the data over the years and the managers who say the soft stuff doesn’t matter, are typically the ones who have the lowest engagement scores from their teams... ??

If you are an employee and your company asks you for feedback, you would hope that your company will appreciate any feedback you give and hopefully do something about this feedback. You do have to do your best and provide "constructive feedback" and not just complain though, along with provide potential solutions to the problem as we are all in this together...

In reality most companies don’t do much with the feedback, at best they share some of the feedback to the employees, acknowledging and thanking them for it but they take little action after… The less ROI employees get after investing their time to participate in these surveys on a regular basis, the less likely they will participate in future or take them seriously.

These surveys will only add value if we do something, if we listen to the overall voice of employees and take action to improve on a particularly important topic that the majority of the people feel are key to the success of the company. The key here is the majority vote needs to be listened to.

Not every single comment matters especially when (and unfortunately there are a few folks like this) use the survey as an opportunity to complain - You folks who do this, don’t add any value to your company, you take it away! At the same time it is important as well to recognize and not ignore this and help employees understand "how to give feedback" and also set some basic rules of the game up, to stop people abusing this opportunity. Pre-prep, pre-explanation of how to respond to surveys and how to give feedback is also key to success, explaining or providing training on this will certainly improve the outcome and provide value add results.

Let’s ignore the employees who are just intent on sharing their negativity, and focus on the majority of folks who all work hard and want the company to be better, as they know that their feedback impacts not only them but also everyone else and of course impacts even the clients they work with.

If you are in HR and most likely believe like me that the survey adds value and you feel your company could do more then consider these following steps.

First as mentioned above, set a meeting with finance and discuss the historical data for both revenue, employee turnover and the data gathered from as many surveys as possible and look for trends around these areas. Something else to think about is hiring. Talk to the recruitment team and ask them what kind of things both recruiters or candidates say about the company and what the overall image of your firm is in the market, companies with low engagement scores will very often also struggle to fill roles, as people who have left, talk bad about the company and share their negative experiences with other people directly or indirectly on such platforms as Glassdoor etc…

Companies who listen to employee feedback and use this feedback to improve work-life there, will most likely have a positive employee brand in their respective markets.

If you have dramatic plans to grow your business, have huge hiring needs etc, then a disengaged workforce is something you don’t want! You want folks to be happy and believe their work adds value to the bigger picture and the only way to know if they are happy is to ask for feedback and do it often.

We choose Presidents for office in many countries around the world based on the voice of the people, we make decisions that impact this planet’s future based on peoples feedback, so why the heck don’t we do that for our companies?

The next manager who tells me that the soft side of HR doesn’t matter is going to get my feedback, however this time around it won’t be constructive. I am passionate about HR and passionate about people, and I know that feedback is one of the most powerful underutilized tools in the company toolbox...

Feedback is also free, we can use it to gain incredible insights about how our employees think and feel about our organizations, but like any tool it is completely useless, unless we actually use it and know how to use it properly.

If you want to turn your employee engagement around and want ideas on this please reach out to me for a chat.

Article written by: Simon Cropper