The importance of listening to your staff

How much does your company value listening to their staff?

When it comes to customers, businesses know that listening is critical to retaining buyers and propelling growth. When it comes to employee feedback, the same holds true. Employees want to be heard as much as clients do. And listening to what they have to say may be more than an eye-opening experience. In fact, a company’s thoughtful employee listening practices could lead to increased employee engagement, progress, innovation, and overall success.

It’s not hard to imagine how dissatisfaction might apply to the employee experience. When employees leave without providing a reason, particularly when the short employee lifecycle occurs repeatedly or within the same team or department, they may simply be exercising their right to move on without complaining to human resources. But why? Do they think that no one will listen to or care about what they’re thinking or experiencing?

Leadership’s failure to listen to their workforce can result in lost talent. Furthermore, employee recruitment and retraining costs are high and tangible. The cost in diminishing morale and productivity is more challenging to measure but can be just as significant. It may be worth considering your company’s current investments in the employee feedback process.

The real benefit of listening

Employees who know they are heard are typically more engaged and productive. When staff members have a voice, they’re willing to use it. Is your company missing out on opportunities to innovate, improve efficiencies, and serve your customers? There’s a good way to find out: by creating a continuous listening strategy and often the best way to do that is by getting your staff & customers to complete a survey.

As a business Syntech is built on our culture & people values, so it’s really important to us to find out what we do well and what we could improve on. As well as speaking to our customers regularly we like to engage with our staff too. At our last quarterly event, we got the team to write down (anonymously) exactly that, it was nice to get such honest and positive feedback.

Things like good communication, team morale, feel valued & nice working environment all featured highly.

By listening to your staff you can improve on the following:

🤗 Building trust – When employees feel heard, they are more likely to trust and support the company.
👨‍💼 Improving productivity – Employees who feel heard are more effective at work and more likely to share their ideas.
😆 Enhancing employee experience – Listening to employees helps you understand their needs and challenges, and can lead to a better employee experience.
🙋‍♀️ Driving innovation – Happier and more satisfied employees are more likely to be innovative.
🤗 Increasing loyalty – Companies that support their employees during difficult times can earn their loyalty and respect.
😒 Preventing issues – Alienated employees can lead to decreased morale, productivity, and job satisfaction.

Active listening

Most people know that if your’e training staff asking them how to do something rather than telling them how it’s done gets a better result. Giving people an opportunity to work it out themselves allows them to think through the problem, devise a solution, and take pride in their accomplishment. Once an employee is fully trained, continuing to ask for their input and ideas and allowing them to work through problems provides these same benefits.

You may think you listen to your employees all day; they’re always talking. But an active employee listening strategy involves more than sitting still while they speak. Be proactive in seeking opinions and concerns. Look for ways to involve staff in the idea process and bring them into the implementation. Front-line staffers have the pulse of the organization. They know what customers want, what works best, and what drains time and resources. Tapping into that knowledge base through thoughtful employee listening programs or practices is smart business. And leveraging the information you receive could mean a boost to the bottom line.

How does your company collect feedback and engage with their staff?