How to get real, unfiltered feedback on your workplace experience

The value of a great workplace experience is undeniable. Employers invest in finding talent and bringing people on board. Losing employees because of low engagement, poor company culture, or other workplace issues is not only expensive, it’s avoidable. Workplace teams play a big role in building an experience that keeps employees engaged, excited about their work, and encouraged to stay. And they often have to meet key objectives tied to the engagement and satisfaction of their employees.

To do a good job, your workplace team must have a strong culture of iteration based on employee feedback. This will help your team understand which parts of the workplace experience work and which need improvement. It’ll also keep your team engaged and get them excited about creating new solutions. In this post, we’ll go over what you need to do to make this happen.

Provide more than one method for people to share feedback

Give people the option to choose the feedback method they find most comfortable. For example, you may want to create a #workplace-feedback channel on Slack and an “always-on” survey that allows feedback submissions from employees at any time.Here are a few other ways to collect feedback:

• Workplace suggestion box - This is feedback written on slips of paper that employees can add to boxes located around the workplace. This type of feedback works best when boxes are placed in common areas.
• Monthly pulse surveys - These are short surveys on topics like employee satisfaction, communication, professional relationships, and work environment.
• Quarterly engagement surveys - These are longer-form surveys with a mix of multiple-choice and fill-in-the-blank answers. They cover the same topics as pulse surveys but dig a layer deeper.
• Annual feedback sessions - These can be in one-on-one settings with select employees. They can be formal chats or interview-style conversations led by members of the workplace team.

Choose two to four ways to collect feedback. It’s important to give your employees the right amount of choice. You don’t want to be too restrictive, but you also don’t want to overwhelm people with options. Too many options can result in no action taken at all. As with anything, keeping a regular cadence will help boost participation.

Give employees clear direction

To collect feedback your team can act on, make sure employees know how to provide constructive feedback. Here are some ways you can get commentary that’ll be useful:

• Prompt people to be as specific as possible when sharing feedback.
• If you have more than one workplace, be sure to ask which one they’re sharing input on.
• Encourage employees to share examples when possible.
• For open-ended questions, tell employees how much feedback is ideal. For example, you might say, “please share 2–4 sentences describing your experience.”

Sharing feedback isn’t always a comfortable thing. Remember, you want to get more from employees than “keep up the good work!” and “you’re doing great!” comments. You want to know how you can improve the workplace experience for your employees. Providing them clear direction will help ensure you get constructive feedback.

Send out regular feedback nudges

Encourage people to take ownership in shaping their workplace experience. Send out monthly reminders asking employees to share feedback, and reiterate the channels and process they should use. You’ll have more success if you send these nudges out across multiple channels.

For example, you might send out an email, Slack message, and include a short plug for feedback in your weekly all-hands meeting. Some companies even send out calendar invites to remind people to provide feedback. It’s also good practice to ask managers to help by encouraging their teams to complete feedback requests.

Don’t forget to close that feedback loop

Let employees know when you’ve incorporated their input. It’ll show them that their feedback helps shape the workplace experience. If your team decided to backlog the action item, let the employee know where their feedback sits on your list of priorities.

If you don’t take action on a piece of feedback, circle back to the person who shared it and let them know why. This way, employees will know their feedback was received and thoughtfully considered. To encourage people to remain engaged, invite these employees to participate in future focus groups or other workplace initiatives when they come up in the future.

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Without the feedback of your employees, you can’t make critical improvements that’ll help engage, support, and retain them. Too often, companies learn about employees’ needs after they’ve put in their notice. To prevent getting to this point, you need to get feedback from your people on a regular basis. Your team should send out regular reminders with a clear ask and always remember to close the feedback loop.

Keep on top of your employees’ needs as they return to work. Find out what’s top of mind for people headed back to the workplace in the new ebook: Employees have a vision for the future of work and it’s hybrid.