7 Ways To Gather Employee Feedback

Customers may be the lifeblood of your business, but your employees are at the heart of any company. They continuously pump efforts–from marketing to customer service–to ensure that customers continue to patronize and 'flow' throughout your company.

And with the increasing trend of employment exodus, employee satisfaction and engagement have never been more critical than today. While you can employ numerous retention and engagement strategies, employee feedback can ensure that each team member feels seen and supported in their role.  

So, this article shares seven ways to get employee feedback and gain insights into your employees' overall mood and satisfaction.  

1. Set-Up Online surveys And Polls

Online employee satisfaction surveys are a great way to gather significant amounts of feedback from your entire business in just a short period. It also offers convenience and practicality to both employees and managers, allowing for the accessible collection and analysis of survey data.  

You can use online tools to conduct surveys that offer valuable insight into your current corporate mood. Also, you may be already using team management tools like Slack that allow you to implement employee surveys.

2. Conduct Pulse Surveys

Regular online surveys are essential, but they may bore out your employees. After all, long-form surveys with complicated questions are time-consuming. As such, most employees bail out such surveys if possible. Others will write quick, short answers, which may reduce the quality of feedback you collect.  

Instead of bombarding them with formal survey questions, it can be helpful to conduct pulse surveys. They're quick questions sent to employees. As its name suggests, pulse surveys are regularly carried out to gain employees' views on specific subjects such as workplace relationships, communications, roles, and overall work culture.  

One of the best ways to conduct pulse surveys is to create fun, engaging, and short polls to boost your employee engagement while gathering valuable feedback. Most team management apps can integrate with poll apps (if they don't already have one) to help create quick, interactive polls for your team. For instance, most Slack poll apps allow team managers to create engaging polls from many templates and themes.  

3. Leverage Employee Net Promoter Score Surveys

Another type of short survey, an employee net promoter score (eNPS), uses a series of questions where they can choose an answer from a rating scale. This rating scale divides employees into three groups, passives, promoters, and detractors, allowing you to weigh the number of promoters against detractors.  

The higher your score is, the better your overall employee motivation and experience. Companies with high levels of employee satisfaction and engagement should report an eNPS of about 50 or more.  

Short and quick, eNPS surveys are a breeze to fill and easier to review and record, helping you understand your overall employee satisfaction.

4. Hold One-On-One Interviews

One-on-one interviews or meetings are fundamental for establishing a productive and healthy work environment. It gives you a chance to directly converse with your employees, talk to them personally and ask the right questions they can instantly relate to. As such, one-on-one interviews help build a feedback culture in your company.

Regular interviews can help you get all the data you need while peeking into a team member's opinions and feelings that guide their mood and productivity. You can ask a question like, 'how have you been these past few weeks?'. It can show understandings that can help support your employees better.    

Interviews can help you understand your employees at a deeper level, which increases your chance of winning them with better experiences in the future. That said, when interviewing, always start the conversation with open-ended questions to help them become comfortable. Then, dive into the specific questions you need. Make sure to listen patiently and be fully engaged in the process. 

Make sure to do one-on-one interviews at regular intervals–monthly or weekly–depending on your team's context. Most importantly, you schedule recurring interviews with each team member to exchange feedback.

5. Set Up An Online Employee Community

Creating an online community where employees can freely ask questions with fellow team members, discuss pain points, and talk about overall workplace culture without the fear of being judged is an excellent way to gather feedback.  

Such online communities are quick and easy to implement, giving you access to feedback while bringing light to delighted team members and those on the verge of burnout.  

Team supervisors and HR managers should constantly check conversations in these communities, respond quickly to negative and positive comments, and actively engage in discussions.  

While an online employee community is a fantastic medium for collecting essential feedback, it's also critical to creating a solid relationship that can stand the test of time.  

6. Check Review Websites

Some team members will never share feedback directly with their managers or employers but may prefer sharing it on review websites. Monitoring these review websites is essential to get critical feedback, making them the primary sources of candid feedback from current and former employees.  

Make sure to register your business on these review sites, so you can receive alerts when someone mentions your company. These can be insightful in identifying overall trends instead of focusing on a single complaint or incident.  

7. Don't Forget The Traditional Suggestion Box

Since most offices are now becoming more digital, it may be tempting to rely exclusively on online surveys and high-tech solutions to collect employee feedback. However, conventional methods should still be available.  

Creating a suggestion box is still valuable for gathering informal suggestions and feedback without fear of retaliation. Plus, most employees like to offer feedback anonymously since it's less intimidating. That said, for a traditional suggestion box to be anonymous, you need to place it in an easily accessible and private place where employees can submit comments discreetly.  

Takeaway

Gathering feedback is essential to maintaining your team's health and productivity. Employees witness your company's everyday ins and outs, and their satisfaction and engagement can make or break your brand.  

Whether negative, positive, or constructive feedback, effective communication, and feedback collection can help you keep a pulse on what's enabling or blocking your employees' happiness and success.