Listen to Your Employees to be Successful in Business
Feedback is the most important and the only way to know what you are doing is working or not in your business. Every business has guidelines on how the feedback mechanism should work. A strong feedback culture in business can foster the growth of the teams, individuals, and the organization.
Your customers and employees are the only people who can make or break your business. Their voices & opinions should be valued. Companies with a feedback culture are investors of talent and this can in turn influence the growth of the business, boost employee job satisfaction and lead to a higher retention rate.
Fostering Business feedback requires a lot of time and effort, so let’s discuss a few points to build a strong feedback culture in your organization:-
1. Ask your employees for feedback and ideas
- Let them know that you respect their ideas by asking them to share their opinions. This goes for everyone- from the top management to your-entry level workers; let them share whatever they want to atleast initiate the feedback culture in business.
- It is important to hear your managers and especially employees who take care of the complaints department as they have a first-hand experience of what the customers are struggling with and their immediate pain points.
- Pay attention to each feedback as their valuable suggestions can help your organization grow.
- Neglecting their inputs can cause a disconnection between the employees and the management.
- Make sure your management welcomes all the feedback and considers it seriously.
2. Send an anonymous e-mail survey
- There will be some people in your organization who can feel uncomfortable in speaking up and sharing their ideas, in this case, you can send an anonymous e-mail survey and ask for their business feedback.
- Many employees feel more comfortable sharing negative feedback or a botheration anonymously.
- You can always use a different a mode of channel for the feedback survey. Provide your employees an opportunity to share their feedback in a way they are most comfortable with.
- Here are some of the different methods of conducting an employee survey:
1. Anonymous vs. attributed feedback
2. Group vs. individual feedback
3. Face to face vs. written feedback
4. 1 on 1 vs. 360 feedback
3. Focus on Relationship-Building
- It is easy to foster a business feedback culture in your organization if people have more trust in their co-workers and team-mates.
- Put an extra effort into relationship-building activities of your employees and improve your workplace collaboration. You can shuffle the seats; have team building activities, organize special days such as the Pot luck day or a Family day, or maybe an outdoor activity for your employees.
- You can felicitate or talk about the achievements of some of the employees before starting the meeting; it will also help you to develop a bond between the team members.
4. Be Transparent with your team
- Give your employees constructive feedback which can help them grow professionally within the organization. Be transparent with your employees to set a solid feedback culture in your organization.
- If you cannot act on their feedback, explain to them why it couldn’t be implemented so that they get the feeling that at least their feedback was considered and not ignored.
- Make sure you set the goal/objective of the feedback. You can also have regular and general business feedback surveys on management behavior, product innovation and the working environment.
Building a strong Business feedback culture is a great investment if you want to your company to be one of the best places to work in. The process will take time to roll, so continue your consistent effort to implement the feedback culture in business. Your employees will surely be more productive and bring valuable ideas that can make your business grow.