Keeping good talent is essential to the success of a business. Therefore, it’s vital to create a workplace culture that encourages employee engagement. Some bosses think adding perks such as coffee machines and free lunch is enough to keep good talent. But elements such as long-term development and growth, along with opportunities to advance their career are often more important. Diversity, inclusion and flexibility are also key factors for keeping talent long-term. The best way to figure out what will keep your talent long term though, is to ask them.

Lead with Authenticity

Getting good, honest employee feedback can be tricky. Employees often fear being reprimanded or think their opinion won’t be heard. To create an environment where employees feel they can open up is to lead from a place of authenticity. Authentic leaders drive a sense of connection and clarity that helps teams engage. And showing employees your authentic self, helps them to bring their authentic self to work too.

Use a People-Centric Feedback Model

Most organisations gather employee feedback using a ‘survey-centric’ feedback model. This model is a series of disconnected surveys that leave employees feeling like they’ve wasted their time. Conversely, a ‘people-centric’ feedback model is much more effective and puts you ahead of any issues that might arise from employee dissatisfaction.

Data Collection:

Suggestion Box

A suggestion box is a great outlet to collect employee feedback and can provide anonymity. It also lets your employees know that their opinions are welcome outside of other formal feedback collection methods.

Regular Employee Performance Reviews

Talking one-on-one with your employees is a great way to collect employee feedback on engagement and satisfaction. If reviews are too far and few between, employees might feel their input has no value or may bring up months-old issues.

Team Meetings

Although one-on-one meetings are necessary, you can also collect employee feedback from holding regular team meetings. Sometimes employees find it easier to share and give input in a group setting.

Regular Employee Surveys

Overall, employee feedback surveys are the top method of getting feedback from your employees. Having said that, there are a few factors to consider when creating surveys to get quality feedback:

• Broad, overarching questions such as “Are you satisfied with the company” are not very helpful. These kinds of questions not only invite biting, unhelpful criticism, but they are not narrow enough to pinpoint where the dissatisfaction is.
• Avoid leading questions such as ‘Don’t you love the car parking for staff’. ‘How do you feel about staff car parking’ is much better and won’t leave your staff feeling manipulated.
• Address specific topics with targeted questions, this encourages deeper thought on a subject and provides opportunity for honest answers.
• One survey a year can leave employees feeling like the surveys are just a formality. It‘s also likely that issues that were pertinent a month or more ago would have been forgotten by this time.
• Find a good balance between survey length and frequency, so employees don’t feel overwhelmed or undervalued.

The first step in embracing employee feedback is to get over the initial fear of hearing the feedback. Once you can do that, you will find it easier to dive into conversations about the environment you want to create for your team. If you inspire people, embrace feedback and lead from a place of authenticity, your employees will walk out the door each night excited to return the next day.

Let Odyssey Training Teach You On How To Manage Talent

Contact Odyssey Training on 1300 793 951 to talk about our range of training courses designed to help individuals and organisations to manage talenty. We empower clients with hands-on training, let our expert training facilitators help to develop your organisation.

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