Recognise this scenario? You send out an employee survey, you gather useful data, you sift through thousands of answers and you still have no idea what to do next.
Your employees have constantly changing concerns, which can negatively impact organisational performance if left unresolved. But traditional employee engagement methods, such as surveys, town halls, focus groups and questionnaires, don’t tell you which issues to resolve first.
Modern employee listening methods continually identify what matters most and produce a prioritised list of actionable insights, so you always know where to act and why. Here’s how.
No prioritisation = No resolution
Traditional methods of employee listening are not fit for purpose.
- Overload of information. Surveys, town halls, pulse polls. Focus groups, noticeboards, newsletters. Traditional employee listening might gather helpful data, but requires leaders to make sense of endless qualitative responses to work out employees’ common concerns and priorities.
- Overdue response. Traditional employee listening methods, such as monthly or quarterly surveys, are already sporadic - capturing employee opinion at a particular point in time. If you then spend more time analysing the unstructured data and putting together an action plan, employee opinions will have moved on - defeating the point of the exercise.
- Overwhelmed leaders. Without prioritised guidance, you will address what you think is a priority and encounter resistance from employees as a result. To avoid missed deadlines, stalled momentum, ineffective initiatives and stressed middle managers, you need to prioritise and resolve the issues that actually matter to your employees.
Prioritising actions = prioritising progress
Modern employee listening platforms continuously track employees’ concerns and provide actionable insights on resolving them, so you stay on top of emerging trends and know which issues to address first.
- Better decisions, faster action. With a modern employee listening platform continually monitoring, analysing and reporting on employees' most pressing issues, you can make faster, data-based decisions that drive meaningful change.
- Small changes, big impact. Modern employee listening platforms not only highlight where to act, but provide guidance on how to handle sensitive topics professionally at scale. You can therefore make small tweaks that have a wide-ranging impact across the company.
- Trace concerns, track progress. Modern employee listening provides data-driven insights and actionable reports on change initiatives, so you can see how your message lands and resonates with those directly affected (i.e. an individual’s comments and likes on leaders’ posts) and the wider team (i.e. interactions with employees from different departments).
Make prioritisation a priority
Driving organisational change without employee data is just guesswork, but leaders don’t have the time or resources to sift through reams of raw employee data or monitor employees' shifting needs.
However, with a modern employee listening platform, you have all the information you need to make small changes that have a big impact.
For more information, check out our guide on Employee listening in 2023: how to create a modern employee listening strategy.