On a scale of 1-5, how ugly is my baby?

Would you expect an acquaintance, or even friend, to respond with complete honesty if you asked them whether your beloved child was smart/attractive/well-behaved? I can’t imagine I would be that confident. At the very least it could be an awkward interaction for all involved.

Why would it be any different to assume your employees are going to give you an honest answer about how they feel about, and experience your other baby – your business? That’s why it is so important to regularly check in with your employees in a confidential, anonymous forum.

An annual or biannual engagement and feedback survey can be a great opportunity to check in with your employee cohort on a whole range of topics.

Engagement with Vision, Mission and Values

It can be important and useful to investigate how employees view and understand the purpose and drivers of the organisation. Their understanding of both the mission and vision, can provide a lot of the what, why, and how around the way they perform their work. If there is a disconnect or a lack of acceptance in these areas it can highlight an opportunity for discussion and cultural development.

Another useful exercise can be to collect real examples from employees on how they see the company values at play in the organisation day-to-day. These examples can then be circulated, provide a catalyst for discussion and be used to bring the values to life.

Management capability

Utilise the opportunity to gather feedback on how your management team are leading the organisation, and collect constructive criticism on what could be improved.

Feedback on initiatives

An engagement survey can be an opportune time to either inform the next steps of potential people initiatives, or to review the ROI of any initiatives that have been implemented within the organisation. An example of this might be the introduction or review of a reward and recognition framework or learning and development opportunities.
It can also be interesting to get insight into an organisations culture around particular areas including health and safety. Information gathered on these topics can steer internal campaigns, education and training into such areas.

Message directly to the CEO

The opportunity for employees to be able to have a direct line to the CEO via an anonymous forum can yield very interesting and valuable insights into the organisation, its story and future potential.

If you would like wattsnext to help facilitate and collect employee feedback about your ‘other baby’ please get in touch today!