People give you 9-months-notice before the notice letter
Does your organization have an annual employee engagement survey and then nothing else to gather feedback from your people?
No Pulse Surveys?
No communication channel where employees can provide their feedback whenever they feel like it?
Well, how then could your organization accurately capture those 9-month warning signs?
People do give you notice 9 months before the notice letter, as per a report by Heartbeat.
But does your organization notice it?
A missed opportunity to proactively do something about that sky-high attrition rate organizations suffer under.
In Singapore, for example, the average attrition rate in 2018 was 22%, according to the country’s Ministry of Manpower. More than twice as "good" as the globally desired Best Practice of about 10%.
Why not make employee feedback as essential as oxygen?
Because it actually is.
Without employees, your organization would not exist.
Now by asking someone for their opinion - whether it’s about work or what they’d like for lunch - you imply that you care about it and create an expectation that you’ll do something based on what they have to say.
When you don’t act on what your people tell you the most important issues they face are, your company’s culture doesn’t just stay the same.
It gets much, much worse.
When you don’t act, your people, who were asked to speak, don’t feel heard.
They feel hurt.
Pulse surveys help you visualize trends
No marketing executive worth their salt would poll their customers once a year, provide zero feedback and then act on the information many months later. Yet, with annual work surveys, this is what organizations are doing all the time.
While annual surveys can give a snapshot overview of the year, employees and the whole company will flourish with more constant two-way communication.
How would you feel if you were asked your opinion only once a year and on the other 364 days to just shut up and work?
People deserve to be part of the conversation more than once a year.
With regular Pulse Surveys employers are able to get a baseline for employees, trend survey results over a period of time, and then ask more tailored questions based on actively listening to the results of previous surveys.
Some pointers to bear in mind
- Pulse Surveys for engagement should consistently ask a set of same questions (not more than 3 to 5 to monitor trends.
- But don't only ask the same questions over and over, but rather add fluid questions that pay attention to the employees’ responses and generated insights from previous surveys too.
- Feedback is effective when it sheds light on the present and offers a window into the future — without dwelling on the past.
- Just as customer feedback has transformed the customer experience, employee feedback is transforming the employee experience. You may want to provide a continuous feedback channel in addition to your Pulse Surveys and invite feedback often.
- Celebrate critical feedback: How often do we publicly and graciously recognize employees for being a voice of dissent? For asking tough questions? For calling out mistakes? For being flat-out honest in our organizations? Feedback is a gift; accept it.
- It doesn’t end at those Pulse Surveys. Listening through them is only half the battle because employee engagement is about a conversation. It’s about action. Listen first, and then, armed with those insights, take action.
But not just trans-ACTIONal but transformational.