How Feedback Fuels Your Business
Have you ever been blindsided by an employee giving their notice? As far as you could tell, they were enjoying their work and making great progress. You thought everything was going smoothly. But in their exit interview, they gave a list of complaints about your company — and even your leadership skills. What went wrong?
Getting their feedback earlier — before they reached their limit — would have made all the difference. In fact, in a 2020 study on engagement and retention, Achievers reported that 90% of employees are more loyal to companies that ask for, and act on, their feedback. (Page 11)
Feedback can be uncomfortable. It takes time and intention to collect. But its value is immense.
Leaders and Feedback
Leaders who consistently request and incorporate their team’s feedback have a massive advantage over those who don’t.
Think about the last time you made a big life decision — buying a home, moving cross-country, or taking a new job, for example. You most likely asked friends and loved ones for feedback before you made your decision. With so much hanging in the balance, it’s only logical to want a few different opinions. The same is true in business.
When you’re making decisions that affect dozens or hundreds of people, it’s only logical to get their feedback. And when you do, incredible things happen.
Attract and Retain Talent
If you want to create an attractive company culture but aren’t sure where to start, go to the source: Ask your people what they want! No matter how strong your leadership skills may be, the people who currently work for you are in a better position to anticipate what new talent would like to see in your company culture.
It’s also easier to retain your current talent pool when you incorporate their feedback into your processes and culture. Even if you can’t implement every idea, the act of hearing them out signals respect and recognition.
Boost Your Resiliency
Many leaders avoid feedback because it’s uncomfortable. Even the most constructive criticism can sting. But as we’ve discussed before, discomfort is a valuable tool for growth and progress. The more you practice asking for feedback, the more comfortable it becomes. The resiliency you build when you’re open to criticism is useful in every area of business — and life outside of work.
Widen Your Perspective
There is near-endless value in incorporating new perspectives into your decisions. Say you want to create a new fitness app. You ask a group of runners what kind of guided exercises they’d like to see and then incorporate their feedback. Unfortunately, when the app launches it’s not very popular with people interested in yoga, weight lifting, cycling, and other fitness activities. If you had sought feedback from a wider pool of people, your app would attract a much larger audience.
The more perspectives you incorporate into your decisions, processes, and culture, the wiser your choices will be.
Employees and Feedback
One of the greatest things about feedback is that it benefits everyone, from the CEO to the greenest employees. When you seek out feedback, you’re helping your team members as well as yourself.
Job Satisfaction
Just like in the example story at the beginning of this article, your team members could have any number of issues with your company. You’ll only be able to address those issues if you’re aware of them.
Ask for feedback to understand your people and how they prefer to be treated. Feedback can reveal:
- Which processes prevent progress
- The benefits your team members truly want
- Areas where communication can be improved
- Where potential conflicts lie
- How your team likes to be recognized
- And much, much more
With your team members’ ideas, preferences, and unique insight taken into account, job satisfaction soars.
More Progress
Progress is getting incrementally closer to where you’d like to be. Or, getting the right amount of better in the right amount of time. Your teams — the people on the ground, doing the actual legwork day after day — will have true gems of wisdom when it comes to progress. Make no mistake, there will be aspects of management and company culture that interfere with progress. Maybe leadership requires too many meetings, or perhaps documentation isn’t clear. Team feedback will reveal these pain points, allowing you to eliminate or lessen them. This paves the way for more progress.
Recognition
Recognition isn’t just about rewarding your team members for their good work, though this type of recognition is great. It’s also about making people feel seen and heard. Asking for feedback shows your team that you care about their input — that you recognize the value they add to your company.
You’ll no doubt want to implement many of their ideas, but even if you don’t, asking for feedback is appreciated as a form of recognition.
How to Gather Feedback
By now it’s obvious that feedback is important, for you and your team. But how do you collect it? There are many ways to get your teams’ insight, from informal conversations to more official strategies.
Surveys
Surveys, especially anonymous ones, will reveal a lot about how your team is feeling. We use several types of surveys at Saturday Drive, including:
- Employer Net Promoter Score (or, eNPS) for a quick overview on job satisfaction. This survey asks, “On a scale of 1 to 10, how likely are you to recommend our company to a potential employee?”
- Fulfillment Surveys, which ask deeper questions about how much they connect with their role and align with the company’s vision.
- Employee Opinion Surveys, which give your team a chance to offer broad opinions on a certain topic, such as benefits or team communication.
There are benefits to each type of survey, so we like to use all of them throughout the year. Just make sure they are short and simple enough to be a benefit, not a drain.
1:1s
Hopefully, you’re already hosting regular 1:1s with your team members. Use this valuable time to get their feedback. 1:1s shouldn’t be dry update sessions, nor should you be the only person giving feedback. Make it a mutual exchange of ideas to get the most out of your time.
Interviews
While it may be harder for your team to be honest in a face-to-face interview (as opposed to an anonymous survey), it’s still important to have these conversations and give them a chance to speak openly. Exit interviews are helpful for future employees, but they’re a day late and a dollar short for the team member leaving your company. That’s why I also like to periodically conduct “stay interviews” with top talent. Basically, I use this time to pick their brain about what’s working, what isn’t, and what they’d like to see to stay with our company long-term.
Feedback Fuels Your Future
Asking for feedback takes courage. None of us want to open ourselves to criticism. But it’s the fastest way to improve your company culture and grow as a leader.
Instead of thinking of feedback as a chore or an exercise in judgment, think of it as an opportunity — your greatest opportunity, in fact, for building the kind of company where people love to work.