Open communication and employee feedback should be an integral part of any organisation. Our Chief HR Officer, Phil Ashton, shares why it is important, the benefits it can bring and how, at Quant, we use this to improve the employee experience.
Encouraging trust and transparency
Open communication is a style of communication where people can share information, feedback and ideas freely, transparently and without judgement. When we apply this concept to the workplace, it means sharing information across all levels of an organisation.
However, fostering a culture that actively promotes employee feedback and open communication requires commitment from everyone within the organisation. For it to work effectively, there must be the appropriate channels and tools in place.
Why it matters
A survey revealed that 41% of employees left their jobs because they felt they weren’t listened to at work.
This is why open communication and employee feedback are so integral to an organisation. Not only does it make employees feel heard and respected, but it also means they become more engaged with a business’s vision and values. In turn, this helps to build stronger relationships, retain talent and strengthen the employer brand.
The power of employee feedback
When used correctly, employee feedback can be an incredibly powerful medium through which businesses can truly understand how their organisation is perceived. Actively encouraging your people to voice their ideas and contribute to finding better ways of doing things can have a positive impact on organisational performance.
We understand the many benefits of employee feedback and open communication, and have actively worked towards building an environment that is centered around the following key principles:
- Improve connectivity and awareness
- Build an open and honest culture
- Increase productivity
- Facilitate collaborative working
- Minimise workplace conflict
What’s our approach?
Spending time hearing directly from your people provides access to insights across all levels of the organisation. Not only does this support effective decision making, but it also highlights areas of success and opportunities for change.
However, deciding upon the best approach for gathering employee feedback is a crucial first step. We devised an informal method for receiving feedback through a forum we coined ‘Coffee Connect’. These sessions are hosted quarterly and include one or two members of the leadership team, plus a handful of employees from all departments.
The meetings’ informality is designed to encourage employees to be honest, open and transparent with their feedback. Often, waiting until a performance review or a 1-1 with your manager or an all-company town hall can hinder openness. Instead, we wanted to remove the constraints of traditional reviews and the pressure of large audiences, so that employees feel comfortable sharing their individual perspectives. The regularity of ‘Coffee Connect’ was an important consideration, it ensures employees don’t have to wait until a particular milestone before they can voice an opinion or idea.
The groups are made up of cross-functional teams of no more than eight. Another member of the leadership team and I will take the group offsite to ask for open feedback. While the sessions follow an informal framework, questions will vary from session to session to help to encourage active participation and feedback. Any views shared within the group remain anonymous and are never attributed to any individual.
Acting on employee feedback
Hearing and gathering feedback from employees are a fantastic way to improve your organisation‘s culture and engagement.
Once feedback is gathered, our leadership team will allocate time to cluster all ideas into a series of key themes, which are then fed into specific actions and opportunities that can be executed.
Following feedback we heard from employees, some of the actions we’ve implemented over the past year include:
- Improving company-wide communication: We have committed to more frequent all-company events. We’ve also adapted the way that we cascade information and have altered the Coffee Connect sessions to become a regular monthly reoccurring event
- Training and development: We have completely overhauled how we support individuals with their on-going personal development, developing an employee-driven ’learning framework‘ that has resulted in increased participation in impactful learning opportunities
- Investing in social events: We have introduced several collective all-company social events per year, in addition to providing support for smaller teams to meet informally
Empower your organisation
Effective employee feedback has many advantages. Leveraging open communication and encouraging your staff to share their thoughts and ideas is essential in building an open, transparent culture. Providing a regular, safe and informal means through which team members can share their views and perspectives presents an invaluable opportunity for employees to influence, shape and own an organisation’s culture.
How Quant can help
