Contents

• Introduction
• What is Employee Voice?
• What are the benefits of Employee Voice?
• How can we protect our people’s safety when feedback is anonymous?
• What wins can we expect to see using employee voice?
• What if we don’t get much feedback?
• What is a good Employee Voice score?
• What do we do with the feedback we get from Employee Voice?
• What if we can’t action the feedback we get from Employee Voice?
• Measure Your Impact With The Happiness Index

Introduction

In this eBook we’ll be explaining the value and power of always-on listening. It’s vital that you give your people the chance to tell you how they’re thinking AND feeling whenever they feel the need to share. Let us tell you why!

Discover how our platform makes it super simple for your HR, People or Leadership teams to collect, analyse and act on employee feedback!

What is Employee Voice?

Employee Voice (EV) is an always-on listening tool which provides a safe and anonymous platform that empowers your employees to give feedback on their terms. EV is not designed to replace other aspects of the listening strategy. It allows your people to feedback when they want and about what they want.

This means you get feedback in the moment, when it’s most relevant - enabling you to create meaningful and emphatic action plans. It also allows your people to air what is most important to them, rather than around set themes that HR has chosen.

The tool is designed to give voice to your people. They are given the chance to answer one simple question - “On a scale of 1-10, how are you feeling today?” and then asked to explain why in a free text box. This allows you to see, in the moment, how your people are thinking, feeling and behaving.

What are the benefits of Employee Voice?

Ultimately, Employee Voice gives people another opportunity to feed back, and share how they are feeling - any hour of the day, any day of the week. The benefit of agile feedback, rather than waiting for the next big survey, is the introduction of a lighter-touch approach.

This creates (and reinforces) a feedback culture that demonstrates that you are serious about listening to your people and creating positive change.

Having an always-on listening tool improves feelings of safety and acknowledgement for your team. And it demonstrates additional commitment to ensuring everyone has a voice.

How can we protect safety when feedback is anonymous?

Although it’s not common, sometimes always-on listening can be used in ways it’s not designed to be. Your team might use the platform to disclose worrying comments. For example, concerning their mental or physical health and safety.

They may also use it as a channel for whistleblowing or serious allegations. To minimise this we recommend signposting at launch and managing expectations about what the tool is and isn’t for. It’s not designed to replace other feedback channels, or whistleblowing avenues, nor should it replace conversations with managers or leadership.

We cannot prevent people from leaving feedback that is best left somewhere else, we can only empower and inform. We recommend communicating as and when feedback comes up that would be better placed elsewhere. This can be done by giving regular reports on EV feedback. You should include the sort of feedback you received, where it should be directed, and why you can’t do anything about it through the platform.

It is also vital to remind managers that they are still responsible for communicating to people other channels of providing feedback, and encouraging employees to talk to them directly too if they have serious concerns, e.g. mental health or safety reports.

Our Close the Feedback Loop tool is designed to help with signposting too, as you can respond directly to employee feedback and ask for more information around their comments. The tool preserves complete anonymity, unless the other person self-identifies.

What wins can we expect to see when using Employee Voice?

It is very difficult to isolate variables and prove correlation with this kind of tool. This means that it’s hard to say ‘when X company launched EV, Y happened’. But, as part of a wider Action Plan, we have seen scores around the key neuroscience themes of Safety and Acknowledgement (specifically trust and feeling listening to) increase significantly within organisations who are using EV.

Many of our customers have told us that EV helps promotes a culture of listening and feedback. For example, initially there might have been a lot of feedback directly through the tool. But then slowly as people become used to having their voices heard, they will begin to give more direct feedback in meetings and other settings. One customer said there is now a culture where even junior team members feel able to voice their opinions to leadership. There have also been specific changes implemented by customers off the back of EV feedback. These might range from tangible changes like buying an extra coat stand in the office or recording team meetings for those who are missing from them. It can also include more subtle changes.

Feedback acquired through EV can also bolster and inform the wider listening strategy, with more ideas, further context, or being able to understand that something is a day-to-day issue so may need to be prioritised.

What if we don’t get much feedback?

It’s perfectly normal not to get much feedback when you first launch an always-on listening programme. Your people are getting used to the programme and beginning to trust the anonymity of their feedback.

It can take a while to build up the feedback you’re getting on a weekly or monthly basis until everyone figures out the cadence that works for them.

When you launch Employee Voice with us, we’ll provide you with all the resources you need for a successful launch. This will include advice on how to communicate and explain the tool to your people, and how to manage expectations around feedback. We’ll also provide posters, digital materials and more to help familiarise your team with our platform.

What is a good Employee Voice score?

Our platform is based on a 1-10 scoring system. We’d typically say that any score above a 7 is a positive score, with 5-6 being seen as neutral and anything below a 5 is negative. However, this can depend highly on your team and the individuals you’re surveying.

The main thing we’ve learned from working in happiness is that you shouldn’t have a target when it comes to happiness. Instead, you should see your EV score as a weather report - it helps you know when you need to pack an umbrella or stick the snow chains on the car. Similarly, if you know your team’s EV score is low, you can increase communications, signpost extra support or help your team come to conflict resolution strategies. It all depends on what they need.

The important thing to remember is that all emotions are part of being a human, which means that sometimes you’re going to get low scores. This provides a great opportunity for you to make improvements! Try to avoid toxic positivity, or forcing everyone to be happy all the time. Part of #FreedomToBeHuman is accepting that everyone is going to have ups and downs, and both positive and negative emotions are part of the human experience.

What do we do with feedback from Employee Voice?

The most important thing to do when you get feedback through any kind of survey is to report back to your team. You want to make sure that they’re not feeling like you’re using this as a box-ticking exercise or that leaving feedback is a waste of time.

We encourage you to create a clear communication plan which allows you to share the results with your organisation at a cadence that works for you and the wider team.

We always advise customers to share both negative and positive feedback, to make sure that you’re providing an accurate view of what your people are saying. People will know if they’ve left negative feedback and it isn’t mentioned in your reporting, which will cause people to doubt the programme. How you share the feedback, whether it’s in a written report, a meeting, or a recorded video, will depend on your team and what style of communication works best for the individuals you’re working with.

We recommend paraphrasing feedback, and grouping by theme. This will help ensure anonymity, and avoid people trying to “guess” who left what feedback based on word choice etc. Some people may also use the platform as a place to vent, or work through difficult emotions. In this case, it may not be best to share quotes directly, or at all. You may instead ask for further clarification, or respond using our Close The Feedback Loop tool.

Measure your impact with The Happiness Index

Stay proactive and agile to the needs of your neurodiverse team by using our always-on listening offering - Employee Voice.