Employee feedback is the key to providing a better employee experience that allows you to retain your team. Consider that for a moment. Who can advise you better than your employees on how to enhance the employee experience and deter employees from abandoning ship?
Here are eight smart methods for gathering employee feedback so you can figure out what you need to do to boost your employee experience and increase employee retention rates:
- New Employee Surveys
The first three months at a new job are crucial for an employee’s overall contentment and engagement. During this time, offer them a new employee survey to understand about their first few months on the job.
Some employers may send surveys after a month to measure new employee satisfaction, while others may only send one survey after a period of 90 days. Make the best decision for your company’s employee onboarding process and culture.
Inquire about whether the new hire feels welcomed on the team, how they’re adjusting, and whether they believe their goals are realistic. As you receive comments from other sources, update this survey. If your exit survey data reveals that bad manager relations are to blame for a high employee turnover rate, be careful to inquire about the same with new hires.
- Employee Satisfaction Surveys
Employee satisfaction surveys are a fantastic method to get a lot of feedback from a large number of people at once. These are usually quite thorough, concentrating on everything that can affect employee satisfaction, engagement, and attrition.
Increase survey participation rates by informing your staff about why the survey is being conducted and making sure that feedback is kept confidential. Sharing the result and focusing on the feedback can help to guarantee that future polls are also positively received.
- Employee Pulse Surveys
Pulse surveys take far less time and effort to complete than employee engagement surveys, and they may be conducted more regularly. Some organisations will perform Pulse surveys every week with 1-3 questions, while others might conduct them every month with 4-5 questions.
This is an excellent way to keep a regular check on employee satisfaction and receive immediate feedback.
Pulse surveys can also be used to monitor the status of important initiatives. For example, if you’ve been dealing with complaints about a lack of career development, use your Pulse surveys to evaluate if your strategies are working or if more work needs to be done.
- One-on-One Check-Ins
One-on-one meetings are an excellent method to get feedback from your staff and improve retention. You should sit down with your teams and find out what employees like and dislike about their positions, what holds them at your organisation, and what would tempt them to look for other options.
The information obtained from these interviews can be utilized to develop “stay plans” for your best achievers. You must address training and development prospects, as well as any other feedback received.
- Review Sites
Some employees will never give their bosses direct feedback, but instead, post it on review sites. It’s critical to keep an eye on these sites to ensure you don’t miss any essential employee feedback.
The following are some employer review sites to keep in mind:
- Glassdoor
- CareerBliss
- InHerSight
- Great Place to Work
- Comparably
- Indeed
Register your employer page and, if relevant, sign up for notifications to see feedback from current and former employees as it becomes available.
- Communication With Managers
In organizations, managers act as a mediator between the management and the employees. Managers often receive both formal and informal feedback from employees. They’re hearing it in one-on-ones, group discussions, and at the water cooler. They may also have instincts about what contributes to team satisfaction, retention, engagement, and productivity—as well as what hinders it.
Maintain open channels of contact with your managers and make it clear that no piece of feedback is unimportant. You want to know whether it’s a one-off employee statement about salary or an indication that women are departing the team at a faster rate than men. You can ask related questions in employee surveys to see if the rest of your team shares your sentiments.
- Employee Suggestion Box
An old-fashioned employee suggestion box still has a place in an age of digital innovation. Employees may be hesitant to provide candid feedback through alternative channels for fear of repercussions. They can provide anonymous feedback in a comments box without leaving a digital trail.
Place the box anywhere that is easy to find but not where people congregate. Employees could, for example, drop their criticism in a box at the front counter on their way back home, but they could feel uneasy if the box was in a highly used cafeteria.
- Exit interviews
An exit interview is effectively your final chance to get employee feedback before it ends up on employer review websites. Employees may have one major reason for leaving—for example, a chance for advancement in their career—but numerous other variables could be influencing their decision.
Find out what they are and what they aren’t using an employee feedback software. Directly inquire your departing employees about their manager, salary, perks, group dynamics, growth possibilities, and everything else you’re curious about.
Final Thoughts
Employee feedback is essential for creating a great employee experience and increasing retention. Make use of these resources to ensure that your employee feedback is detailed — then act on it.
Sixty percent of employees in the United States claimed they had a mechanism to submit feedback about their own work experience, but only 30% indicated their employer acted on it. Employees who believe their boss responds to their feedback are four times more likely to work with the organisation than those who believe their criticism has no impact.
In today’s competitive employment market, employee feedback can help you increase retention—but only if you use it to improve your workplace.
