How to Capture and Use Your Employees' Anonymous Feedback

Nearly all human resource practitioners understand the importance of gathering regular, objective feedback from employees. From this information comes new ideas, improvements, and a sense of how the organization is doing. But getting employees to share their opinions and feedback can be akin to pulling teeth at the dentist’s office. It’s a slow and painful process that no one looks forward to. That is, until the availability of real-time anonymous feedback platforms came into being. With a little bit of prompting, employees can find anonymous communication systems helpful for venting their concerns, sharing ideas, and offering feedback that they would otherwise keep to themselves. We know statistically that employee engagement is down across many industries and therefore it's up to employers to encourage workers to make use of anonymous communication systems that open up dialogue to solve problems. The problem can be how to get more employees to make use of this awesome resource.

Reasons why employees might not share

It’s understandable that some employees may be reluctant or unwilling to share their ideas, concerns, and problems with upper management. They may fear exposure and retaliation. Sure, you’ve told employees over and over again that the communication platform masks their identity and that they should feel free to share what they like, but asking them to do this requires a great deal of trust. Employees may be worried that if they share too much about how they really feel about colleagues, they will be treated badly by management. Is your leadership conveying this message to employees in other ways? In this day and age of data breaches and privacy issues, how can you prove to employees that they do not have to worry about being exposed or suffer negative consequences for sharing feedback? Anonymous communication ensures that no one’s identify will be revealed.

Things never seem to change for the better

Many times, employees fail to see the “What’s in it for me?” solution when they are asked to give anonymous feedback. If they have contributed ideas or vented in the past and nothing improved, they will feel defeated and give up. Employees need to know what they have to say is valuable and worthy of consideration through visible changes in the corporate culture. Two-way anonymous communication gives HR a chance to respond and make changes as needed, so they are more responsive to employees. When employees realize they are being heard, engagement improves and future efforts to gather feedback go much smoother.

Not everyone feels the need to vent at work

There are those employees who are outgoing, outspoken, and continually complain. Then there are employees who never make a peep because they may be introverted. These are the employees who may be disengaged, and disconnected the most so they need a chance to be heard too. In terms of measuring the true engagement level of your team, it’s important to give everyone a voice. Anonymous communication platforms give all employees a chance to share their thoughts in a secure and private way. Make sure employees know they will be heard, but that their privacy is respected.

Maybe you are not asking the right questions

In your engagement and employee feedback systems, are you focused on what really matters the most to employees? Questions may be overly focused on the company objectives instead of what employees need. Review feedback given through past means and determine what issues are important to employees by conducting a 360 degree survey, then set up questions that are more relevant to employees. Here's a suggestion: Ask, once a month, what is the best and worst thing that employees experience about their job? See if any of the responses can be correlated to particular negative events or changes in the organization or industry. Make feedback fun by giving employees an opportunity to vote on something that will make the corporate culture better. This can include charitable efforts or philanthropic endeavours. It gets everyone involved and it can be a great way to test the water with gaining feedback. Remember, gathering employee feedback should be an ongoing effort. A real-time employee engagement solution with built-in anonymous feedback and two-way communication can solve many of the above problems.

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Find out how you can enable your employees to express their anonymous views openly and truthfully by contacting Thymometrics; email info@thymometrics.com, call +1 646 760 9323 (US) or +44 (0) 1223 750 251 (Europe) or visit thymometrics.com. Image courtesy of nenetus at FreeDigitalPhotos.net