Using Employee Feedback For Solving Business Gaps
"We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve." — Bill Gates. As per a study conducted in 2022, more than 43% of highly engaged employees received feedback at least once a week, in comparison to 18% of low-engaging employees who did not receive feedback. The numbers clearly indicate the importance of feedback. The main intent of the feedback is to improve the working environment. Employee feedback serves as an interaction between you and your team members.
Feedback helps in identifying gaps in the business process. A gap is identified by taking into consideration both the positive and the negative aspects. To build a continuous development curve, feedback provides the employees with the urge to learn and improve performance. For successful implementation of feedback, you must know the importance of the feedback and the process to make it successful.
The Importance Of Employee Feedback For Business
For retaining employees, you need to create a conducive work environment. This ensures a predictable environment for working as well as a wonderful base for learning and growing. Employees want feedback. 75% of employees who do receive feedback feel that it is incredibly important to their work. Although employee feedback may vary from one company to another, it is an important part of understanding the critical behavior of the employees.
Advantages Of Feedback
1. Improved Performance
Feedback is the prime method for improving performance. Managers should report on the performance of the employee. The feedback should also be shared with peers as well. With more emphasis on feedback, the entire team is more focused on performing better.
2. Increased Employee Engagement
As there is an increase in the feedback process, employee engagement increases. This is because the feedback system helps in solving several issues quickly. This gives the employees motivation to work hard. Highly engaged employees like their company and genuinely want the best for it. They see its success as aligned with their own.
3. Better Awareness Of The Office Environment
The management will be aware of the different situations persisting at different levels in the office. Employee feedback will help you in understanding the exact work atmosphere. As a manager, you will not be aware of the actual gaps in the workflow. However, feedback allows employees to point out those gaps to the management. It then becomes your responsibility to take action for plugging the loophole and creating a better strategy for the organization.
4. Retention
Feedback provides employees with an opportunity to express themselves. They feel their voices are heard. This encourages them to give more value to their work. Employees concentrate on working toward achieving the business objectives.
- Tip
Employees who see that their feedback is taken seriously show more interest in their work. Therefore, as a manager, you do not want your employees to lose interest. So, buckle up and take action before you start losing good employees.
Collecting Employee Feedback For Business From Geographically Dispersed Workforces
The COVID-19 era has seen more teams working from remote locations. With minimal to no human interactions, feedback is the only way to understand the actual work progress. Feedback helps in assessing the performance of remote teams and provides ways to improve. Of late, it has been observed that praises (such as “you did a great job”) and punishments (like shouting or verbal insults) are both ineffective. Simple, information-based messages with clear instructions are the best way to give feedback. Insights from past tasks serve the right purpose for feedback.
Ways To Collect Feedback From Geographically Dispersed Workforces
Regular collection of feedback from remote teams can be challenging. However, by using tools and other mechanisms, it is possible to engage your employees and get proper feedback.
1. Internal Communication
By fostering an open and transparent communication culture within an organization, employees are encouraged to share their thoughts and suggestions with their peers and superiors. Regular staff meetings, team building activities, and brainstorming sessions can provide valuable opportunities for employees to voice their opinions and provide feedback. When used effectively, internal communication can help organizations identify areas for improvement and implement strategies to enhance overall performance.
2. Use Feedback Tools
Using tools for feedback helps in saving considerable amounts of time. Having a feedback tool also improves the effectiveness of the overall process. These tools can be used to create surveys, polls, and feedback forms, which can be customized to fit the specific needs of the organization. The collected feedback can then be automatically analyzed, and the results can be presented in easy-to-understand visual formats, such as graphs and charts. By leveraging feedback tools, businesses can enhance their decision-making process, increase customer satisfaction, and ultimately drive growth and success.
3. Conduct Surveys (Pulse Surveys)
Surveys provide organizations with the ability to monitor important employee parameters regularly. The number of questions in a pulse survey depends on the repetitive frequency of the survey. It has also been seen that employees want to participate in more than one pulse survey in a single year. The data collected from pulse surveys can help employers identify areas that need improvement and implement targeted interventions. Pulse surveys are also an excellent way to measure the effectiveness of any changes made to the workplace, providing a continuous feedback loop that can help drive ongoing improvements.
4. Focus Groups
Focus groups help in gathering feedback about pulse programs. They are useful for understanding the mindset of the employees after the introduction of a major change in the work process. Such focus groups are a good option for HR. They are able to analyze the feedback on the basis of the groups. This helps in ensuring a quicker implementation of changes, leading to a better workplace.
Analyze Employee Feedback And Identify Business Gaps
You must spend time analyzing the feedback. As a manager, this can be one of the most daunting tasks you have to do! Try to inculcate the habit of listening more. This will help you to improve your skills and become a better leader. After analyzing the feedback, you should make the findings open for all the employees to know. This will complete the feedback process and help each employee understand where they need to improve.
Best Practices For Analyzing Employee Feedback
The process of analyzing employee feedback requires undeniable skill. You should not skip any point, or evaluate certain points with a lower value.
Collect Feedback From A Variety Of Sources
It is important not to trust feedback from only one particular source. This could lead to biased decisions. Further, there are possibilities for intentionally biased comments in certain feedback. Different sources help in providing the real picture in the feedback.
- Tip
Basing responses on a single source of feedback not only makes you biased but also discourages employees from providing honest feedback. Employees should not get the feeling of being left out.
Use A Structured Approach
Having a structured approach is essential in an office feedback system. Feedback essentially provides self-realization to employees about their successes and failures. This provides them with a view of where their work is leading them. A proper structure to the feedback will provide deep insights and have the ability to provide results and better task execution continuously. The structured approach provides credibility to the feedback.
Prioritize Feedback Based On The Impact
There are two different approaches by which feedback may be given. Each approach has a different impact on the employees as well as on the office.
- Specificity
The primary objective is understanding if the feedback given is specific or if it is general. Specific feedback is effective because it directly points to the area that requires improvement. General feedback is vague and requires multiple interactions between you and the employees before arriving at a solution. - Action
When the feedback is specific, then there are high chances for the feedback to be actionable. This brings about a clear change in the working process. It is essential to consider if the feedback is actionable or not before taking action.
Organizational Focus
The most important consideration before taking action based on feedback is analyzing how it will modify the work focus of the organization. For instance, if there are multiple feedbacks for integrations into the current workflow, then ensure that the integration does not violate the work tradition in your office.
- Tip
Changes should always be implemented slowly and in a step-wise manner. Do not bring about huge changes overnight. Give time for your employees to adapt to the new work process. Continuous feedback during the implementation process is also important.
Identifying Business Gaps Through Employee Feedback
Employee feedback can be leveraged to identify several areas of improvement in an organization. By analyzing feedback, businesses can identify patterns and common themes that point to areas of the business that need improvement, pinpoint performance issues, highlight communication gaps, identify areas of dissatisfaction, and identify areas of success that can be leveraged to drive further growth. Additionally, employee feedback can also be used to identify areas for innovation within the organization, including new ideas for products or services, ways to improve processes and workflows, and other opportunities for growth and development.
Improving Business Strategies Based On Employee Feedback
Honest feedback from employees provides you with a clear understanding of the changes necessary in the organization.
Implementing Changes Based On Employee Feedback For Business
Prioritizing Feedback
Change is a long process. And in this competitive world, organizations and workplaces change at an extremely fast pace. Feedback helps you in listening to how your employees are feeling about a particular change. This helps you and the management in taking subsequent actions.
Developing An Action Plan
It is essential to implement a proper change channel as a response to the feedback. Failure to do so may cause resentment among employees that their feedback is not taken seriously. Creating an action plan helps in the easy implementation of feedback. This makes it possible for all employees to follow the process and be a part of the change.
Communicating Changes
When it comes to communicating changes, make sure that you are completely transparent and honest. Keeping clear communication also helps in quick and easy communication of the changes. A "call to action" is an important aspect of communication. Make sure your employees are clear about your expectations, and provide a roadmap that will help them to focus on working toward that goal. The human factor often gets in the way of feedback, and managers start connecting, for instance, employees’ poor performance with their personal qualities. This is a counterproductive way to provide feedback, only increasing the levels of workplace stress.
Providing Resources (Tools)
Change management tools are often the best solution when it comes to implementing changes. These tools play a very big part when it comes to creating an action plan and engaging employees in training sessions. Tools provide an easy and effective method to track the improvement of performance in various employees. Some of the most common tools that can help in improving the business strategy include:
- Gantt Charts
This tool lets managers know the exact progress in each task. Further, you are also able to set task dependencies that indicate the workflow progress. - Calendars
Plans and event tracking are easily organized and managed using calendars. All team members are in the same place, so there is no possibility for anyone to lose track of their task.
Monitoring Progress
Feedback tools help in monitoring the progress or development in the performance of the employees. After developing an action plan it is important for you to keep track of the employees and the work progress. This will help in the successful implementation of the feedback. As a result, the overall progress of the organization remains on track.
Conclusion
Overall, feedback improves the confidence of the employees. It helps in identifying the areas that require focus and modifications in the existing work process. Employees are widely aware of the business gaps. The management can then act on these gaps with the information received from employee feedback. This helps in improving the work process and delivering a better outcome. Also, employees feel more engaged and spend more time on tasks and working on both their personal growth as well as the overall improvement of the workplace.
