Gathering employee feedback is an important part of the communication process. It boosts employee engagement, facilitates two-way communication, and helps you continuously improve. But many internal communication professionals are very busy. Initiatives like surveying employees (and following up on the results!) may take the backseat to other programs. Especially if you feel like you don’t know where to start, don’t feel like you have any help, or don’t have leadership buy-in.

How to Get Employee Feedback

Getting employee feedback is crucial for creating a positive work environment, improving employee engagement, and driving organizational growth. Here are five effective ways to make gathering employee feedback a routine part of your communication strategy:

1. Use Pulse Surveys. Long-form surveys (like annual employee engagement surveys) take a long time to create, a long time for employees to fill out, a long time to analyze, and a long time to create an action plan. You can speed up your process for collecting employee feedback with pulse surveys.
2. Leverage Town Hall Meetings. One great thing about your all-hands meetings is that you are gathering your workforce to talk about important topics. This is a great opportunity to allow open Q&A. Make sure you document what the questions are—asked live and anonymously ahead of time. And then analyze the trends in what people ask and care about.
3. Suggestion Boxes. Implement digital suggestion boxes where employees can anonymously submit suggestions, ideas, or concerns.
4. Stay Interviews. Managers should be conducting stay interviews regularly as a retention effort. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t also tap into the themes that come out of those meetings. Periodically gather managers to learn what kind of things their teams are talking about as both problems and opportunities at the company.
5. Focus groups. Once you have a better understanding of the negative trends at your company, it can be helpful to conduct focus groups to test out potential solutions and to get more detail about the issues.

Remember, it’s essential to choose a mix of feedback methods that suit your organization’s culture and employee preferences. By implementing these strategies consistently, you can foster a culture of open communication, demonstrate your commitment to employee voice, and gather valuable feedback to drive positive change.

Why is Gathering Employee Feedback Important?

Gathering employee feedback is not just a box to check. It’s a critical component of a company’s success. Here’s why:

• Employee feedback allows you to understand the factors that impact employee engagement and job satisfaction.
• You’ll glean valuable insights into the effectiveness of processes, policies, and systems within the organization. You can then test out your ideas to learn if certain programs, tools, or initiatives will help.
• Employees are often a rich source of innovative ideas and suggestions. Gathering their feedback gives you access to diverse perspectives and insights, fostering a culture of innovation and creativity. 
• Listening to employee feedback demonstrates that you value their opinions and are committed to their well-being. This fosters a sense of trust, loyalty, and mutual respect.
• Employee feedback helps identify areas where employees need additional support, training, or development opportunities.

By recognizing the importance of gathering employee feedback, you can create a culture of continuous improvement, engage employees in the decision-making process, and foster a positive and productive work environment.

Now let’s talk about how you can stick to a schedule and get feedback all year long.

5 Employee Feedback Gathering Tactics

1. Use an Editorial Calendar. Include employee surveys in your content calendar to make sure they are part of your day to day comms plan.
2. Set Realistic Goals for Getting Employee Feedback. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Start small with a cadence you can stick to and grow from there.
3. Set a Cadence. Survey employees are regular intervals to collect feedback and act on it throughout the year.
4. Get Leadership Support. Having a senior leader or member of the c-suite sponsoring an employee feedback plan is key to making sure you act on your results in a timely fashion.
5. Set Benchmarks. Make sure you are tracking your data over time and using it to set benchmarks. This will help you see where you are making an impact and what you need to focus on.

What To Do After Your Survey

Don’t just stop after your survey! It’s critical to follow up after surveying employees. Employees aren’t experiencing “survey fatigue”, employees are tired of taking surveys and never seeing any action taken afterward. So, make sure you build an action plan into your editorial calendar.

Collecting employee feedback through surveys is an essential step in understanding their perspectives, but the true value lies in what you do with that feedback. To maximize the impact of your survey efforts, it’s crucial to follow up and take action based on the feedback received. Here’s what you should do after getting employee feedback:

• Analyze your results and take the time to understand the broader implications of the data.
• Communicate the survey findings to employees so they can see the consensus of the whole company.
• Develop an action plan that you can realistically implement.
• Share progress updates with employees regularly as you implement your plan.
• Keep asking for feedback so you can make sure you’re heading in the right direction.
• Repeat!

Remember, employee surveys are not a one-time event but rather a continuous process of gathering feedback and driving improvement. By taking action and demonstrating a commitment to addressing employee concerns, you create a culture of trust, open communication, and continuous improvement.