Are employees suffering from survey fatigue?
The question is asked often, frequently because someone high up in the organization doesn’t want to hear what employees think. But if employees see change as a result of someone taking their feedback to heart, you can survey them all day long. If you’re sending emails, publishing articles, and posting videos, but not asking employees for their perspectives, you’re not communicating.
In this episode of On The Same Page, Steve and Shel discuss how to ensure employees’ voices are heard in meaningful ways to drive engagement and business success — and to avoid crises, since employees’ voices can serve as the organization’s smoke alarm.
Steve Crescenzo: Hey Shel, how are you?
Shel Holtz: I’m great, Steve. How’s everything with you?
Steve: Awesome. Friday, sunny. Got the boat this weekend. We’re heading out on the boat, so everything is good. We’re about an hour away from happy hour.
Shel: Anything to keep your mind off what’s going on with the Cubs, huh?
Steve: All right, enough is enough. Dodgers fan. Nothing’s worse than Dodgers fans with all your money. anyway, but you know, before we start, I know we’re gonna talk about the employee voice today and the importance of giving employees a voice. And before we start, you know, I’ve heard you talk about this, I’ve read what you’ve written about this, and I know in your communication model, which I really respect, you’ve got it as one of the four drivers of employee engagement, along with strategic narrative, engaging managers, which we talked about on our first podcast, employee voice and integrity. And I don’t argue with any of that. I agree with ninety five percent of everything you’ve ever written about this or said about this. Employee voice matters, I get that. Employees should be you know, communication should be a conversation, not a broadcast. Employees should be treated as part of the solution, not part of the problem. You know, all of that I get. No argument for me. But do you think maybe employees are getting tired of being asked about shit? And here’s why I ask. I mean, think about it. Surveys, pulse surveys, engagement surveys, stay interviews, focus groups, listening tours, town halls. The average employee’s been asked for their opinion so many times they’re ready to send the company an invoice. I mean, these employees have completed enough surveys to qualify for a minor in organizational psychology. And after all that voicing and talking, employees will still say in every company we work for, nobody listens. Which makes me wonder if we’re solving the wrong problem. Maybe companies don’t have a problem with employee voice. Maybe they have a leadership listening problem. I think most companies, I think, have plenty of ways for employees to speak up. It’s not whether they have a microphone; it’s that nobody on the other end is paying attention. So employees end up feeling like, you know, they’re yelling into a well. Which is why most face to face town halls when there’s Q&A time, nobody says anything. So the question is: Is it about giving employees a voice, or is it more about coaching leaders to listen? And that’s what I’d like to talk about.
Shel: Yeah, I would frame that just a little differently. I agree with you a hundred percent. The way I usually talk about this is saying that you know, we constantly hear about survey fatigue. Employees have survey fatigue. And my answer to that is there’s no such thing as survey fatigue. What there is is bullshit fatigue. And that’s being asked for your opinion and then finding that nothing is being done with it once you share it. I once had a senior VP of HR, I reported to him. This was on the client side many years ago. And I wanted to do an environmental survey, find out what employees thought about the environment in which they worked. And he said no. And I said, But Rick, you wrote a book about employee surveys. Why don’t you want to do one? He says, Well, if you read my book, you’ll find that the only time you should do a survey is when the leadership has an appetite to make changes based on what they hear. And the leadership here has no appetite to make changes based on what employees say. So there’s no point in doing a survey. And I think that other companies should take that to heart.
Steve: Ha ha. Bingo. You’re exactly right. Once again, I can’t disagree with you, Shel. I think the reason there is survey fatigue I think there is survey fatigue, but it’s not because they hate filling out surveys, it’s because nothing ever happens. Why waste your time?
Shel: Right. I think employees will fill out surveys all day long if every time they do they hear about what’s changing as a result of that.
Steve: Yeah, exactly. Exactly.
Steve: So before we dive back into that, and I can’t wait for that conversation, I got a nice comment from a Carrie Knight on Substack, believe it or not. She put it on my Substack, which I didn’t even post this podcast on my Substack, but I’m going start doing that. It’s about episode two when we talked about this mythical knights of the round table, get-a-seat-at-the-table. And she said, Currently midway through listening to On the Same Page, second episode: There is no table. And she quotes us and says, There’s no table, it’s musical chairs up there. She said, Brilliant. I’ve been on the side of earning a seat at the table, but this conversation is shifting my perspective from what I thought that meant to what I actually believe in real time. Then she quotes us again and says, We don’t need a seat. You know what we need? We need influence. We need access and we need respect. And how do you get those? You earn it. And she says, Carrie says, I don’t disagree with this at all. Perhaps it’s this concept of a table that’s broken. Leaders show up at every level of a business, which I love that line. Leaders show up at every level of a business. That’s brilliant, Carrie. In my honest opinion, leading from within is the biggest flex over having a seat or job title that demands leadership. And then she quotes us again and says, You do it by speaking truth to power, by letting leadership know that you can provide counsel. She said such an insightful episode that expands into the disconnect between leaders and employees’ cons and channel choices. And she closes it with another one of our quotes Leaders choose channels based on convenience, and employees choose channels based on trust. Fabulous episode. Thanks, Steve Crescenzo and Shel Holtz. Keep coming. And we sure will, Carrie. Thanks for the comment. love to hear feedback from our listeners.
Shel: Absolutely, Carrie. Thanks for listening. We had a number of comments come in through LinkedIn as well. one of them from Vincent Bruneau saying the seat at the table conversation has always been a proxy for the real question are you actually shaping decisions or just being informed of them afterwards? Consequential is the better word, and it’s available to more than one person at a time. referencing that notion that only one communicator in a company can have that seat at the table, regardless of how many. Communicators work there. Louise Thompson said, Hmm, not sure I’m with you guys. Moaning about it? Agree, that needs to stop. We know what we need to do and how, but as someone who has been in the room and out of it, there is no doubt that being an active participant around that table, and yes, it does exist, is going to lead to better outcomes for the organization. And yeah.
Steve: Right. I think that I don’t think we should read any comments that disagree with us.
Shel: That’s not a good idea, Steve. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That’s true. We’re gonna listen. Communication is a two-way activity. And yeah, I understand what Louise is saying, but again, you know, there are organizations with hundreds of communicators, there are organizations with dozens, there are organizations like mine with a handful. But if there is a communicator at that table, it’s only one.
Steve: That’s what most companies do. That’s what today’s all about. Employee voice. Our employee We are gonna listen.
Shel: So for every communicator to say, I want that seat at the table, that doesn’t fly. But any communicator can start to wield influence and have consequence. So I think that was our point. Janet Hitchen said, Halle-flippin’-lujah. That was her comment. Love that. Kathleen, yeah, Kathleen Bell said, Ha, so 1990, totally agree. And then Jared Brough, you know Jared, in New Orleans.
Steve: Love in Jared Brodkin.
Shel: Yeah, he said, I remember that discussion. My response is if you wait for an invitation it never comes. You get your seat by walking in the room and taking it.
Steve: I think he sa I think I actually had drinks with him in Orleans and he said, No, you don’t you know you know you kick down the doors, I think is what he said to me, which I was I always remember that.
Shel: Yeah. But you have to have built that influence and have developed that consequence or they’re just gonna throw you out of the room or have you escorted out of the room and away from the table.
Steve: Exactly. Or you’ll be or you’ll be a token. You’ll they’ll they’ll give you a seat, but you won’t have any influ I mean having a seat doesn’t give you influence. Influence being respected as a counselor gives you influence. You could have a seat at the table. I have a seat at my dinner table and I it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t no nobody listens to me. You can have a seat, but it doesn’t mean they’re gonna listen to you.
Shel: Well, you have mostly cats in the house, so they don’t listen to anybody.
Steve: Right, that’s true. That’s true.
Shel: So today we’re talking about the employee voice, which is, as you mentioned at the outset, one of the four enablers of engagement. you know, there are people out there who dismiss employee engagement in general, but I’ve I’ve made it one of the four inner circles of of my framework for internal communication. I do yeah if if you just do the Gallup survey and try to get to that final number, then it’s nonsense. But
Shel: If you’re looking at the elements that contribute to engagement and take action b on each of those based on the results of the survey, then it can have a real positive impact.
Steve: I think that’s I’m not a I’m not a big engagement guy because of the way it’s practiced with the Gallup stuff and the best friend at work stuff and all that nonsense. Employee engagement’s a very real thing, but it’s sh always shifting, right? If you could be fully engaged on Tuesday, you get a new boss on Wednesday and you’re disengaged. I mean it just shifts. It’s almost a it’s like nailing jelly to a wall, but go ahead.
Shel: There’s an organization out of the UK called Engage for Success. It’s a chartered organization by the government or the Crown or whoever does the chartering in the UK. And they say that the employee voice is the smoke alarm in the organization. I kinda like that characterization. that works real well for me. But yeah, bottom line is the communication is a is a two-way thing. if y communication is the act of sharing.
Shel: Knowledge and information. So it’s a two-way street. And a lot of organizational communication is not. It’s one way. We’re sending information to employees. We’re not listening to them. As far as I’m concerned, that’s messaging. That’s not communication. It has to be two way to fulfill that definition of communication. So finding the mechanisms to give employees that voice, I think, is important.
Steve: Yeah, I do agree with that, but I don’t think it’s a channel thing. I don’t think it’s a mechanism thing. I think it’s an ego thing more than anything else. I really I think these leaders get into a position of leadership and they think that they’re more plugged in, they think that they’re more knowledgeable, they think that they’re smarter probably, they think that there’s a reason there’s a leader, they’re supposed to lead, they weren’t put in this place to let the employees lead. So you could have town halls and suggestion boxes electronically and slack and w you know, whatever. You can have all the employee voice channels in the world. If leadership has too much ego to listen to it, I mean you think they’d be smart enough to realize that guess what? The people closest to the work might have a good idea on how to improve things. The people closest to the clients, the customers, the products, the people that are creating all those things, you think they might have good advice about the company? Well, of course they do. But I think most leaders are either afraid to listen to employees because they think they’re just gonna bitch, or B, don’t respect their ideas. So I don’t think it’s a matter of setting up the channels as much. I mean, you have to do that, I agree, show. But I think you also have to work closely with leadership to say, you gotta listen to people. You gotta listen to your employees. These people are way closer to the work than you. You may be up here in the stratosphere driving strategy and dealing with Wall Street and numbers and EBITDA and all the other crap that they do, which they’re very good at. But these people are down here doing the work. And A, they might be able to help the company. And B, if you want them to be engaged and have a good culture, then it has to be a two-way street. And I think unfortunately, a lot of especially the older leaders don’t let don’t have don’t don’t let that happen. I think a lot of younger leaders coming up today that grew up with social media, digital natives, so to speak, I think they’re I think things are gonna get better in this area. I think people are gonna start paying attention more to employees. I hope. I mean that’s my not my hope. But I agree. Set up the channels, but work the other end of it as well. Work the leadership end of it because a lot of those people just don’t listen.
Shel: Yeah, I think getting them attuned to paying attention to what employees are saying is one thing, but I think where communicators have a role to play here is in presenting what employees are saying in a way that is digestible and understandable for the leader. So they’re not getting hit by messaging of different types from all sides and not understanding what they’re supposed to do with it. I think if we can give them here’s the daily summary or the weekly summary of what we have heard. And put it in categories and make it something that they can actually get through and make decisions based on or factor into discussions that they’re going to have. that makes it easier for them to do exactly what you’re talking about. But if we’re not there coordinating this as an activity, then it’s just overload for them.
Steve: Yeah, yeah. I no, I agree. You know, I in some of my workshops I show a model that says, you know, it’s up to leadership with the help of communications to communicate the what and the why down to employees. And you do it very clearly. Here’s what we’re gonna do, here’s the initiative, here’s what it is, here’s why it’s very important to both us and the company, and then communicate the how up. And you do that through helping managers get the how and you c opening up these channels. Most companies just aren’t willing to do it. They’re more than willing to do the what and the why down and then forget about the how. And that’s the problem. But if you can tap into that how at that work level, at that employee level, I mean you’re unleashing a dragon there. I mean, you are unleashing a lot of power. But let me ask you a question, Shel. And you kind of alluded to this with your HR story to start the podcast. What’s worse? Not asking employees their opinion at all, or asking them and not doing anything about it?
Shel: I think asking and not doing anything about it is going to create tremendous cynicism and dissatisfaction. I think if employees understand that the culture is one where leadership makes the decision and you just do your job, I don’t like it. I wouldn’t want to work in that organization. And there may be people who decide that they’re not going to work in that organization, but at least they understand what the deal is.
Shel: But to have that say do gap, right? We are interested in your opinion and we’re going to ignore it. I mean, there’s a great example of this. I’m trying to remember the company that did this. I think it might have been Amazon Web Services. it may have been JP Morgan Chase, but they had an employee feedback mechanism. And when they told employees that they had to come back from COVID after telling everybody it was okay to work remote, they shut off. The mechanism that allowed employees to share their opinion. When they said 99% of employees agree that coming back to the office is a good thing, they got a massive petition signed by a huge number of employees saying that’s nonsense. That’s just not true. So there are organizations that say we want to hear from you, and then when they hear from employees, they shut off the channel, they ignore what they’re hearing. It’s not good.
Steve: Yeah, no, no, no. No, I agree. I agree. And no th that l that leads me to another thing I was I was thinking about when I was thinking about this topic. You know, there’s an old theory out there that out of a hundred percent employees, you have you have the ten percent of the Kool-Aid drinkers, right? They’re the ones that wear the company windbreaker and the company hat and they love everything about the company. they love where they’re working, everything’s great. Then you have the ten percent of, you know, the lunatic fringe I call that are very, very discontent. They’re just unhappy.
Steve: You they’re just unhappy in mind, no matter what you do. They’re unhappy in life. They’re alcoholics, they go home and kick the dog at night. They’re just not happy people. And the eighty percent is the people we need to communicate to. I do you think that there’s a factor that le with leaders that they’re worried that when they open it up for conversation in a town hall, a Slack, online channel, they’re only gonna hear from the ten percent because the other eighty percent are, you know, they’re fine, they’re just going along doing their job, they’re fine. The ten percent
Steve: I love where they’re working, so they’re pr they’re probably not gonna go out there and say how much I love where they work. They’re just happy. So you’re gonna hear from the cry babies, the people that are unhappy, and it’s gonna give make the whole place look naked. Do you think that’s a thing or?
Shel: I think that’s a cultural thing. I think there are organizations where the 80% feel just fine about sharing their ideas or their opinions because they’re taken seriously. There’s a history in the organization of listening to those things. I think it’s the organizations that don’t give that shrift to those 80%, where they just shrug and say, What’s the point?
Shel: You know, and the ten percent at the bottom, yeah, they’re the ones who are gonnare gonna whine and that’s why these leaders don’t want to engage with employees at all.
Steve: Yep, I agree. I agree, unfortunately. And let me a let me ask
Shel: But I mean if you yeah, if if you look at organizations that have made a point of soliciting the employee voice, you get a sense of what you can get out of that. I mean, you know, look at look at Microsoft. When Steve Ballmer left, Satya Nadella was anointed the CEO. he inherited this culture of siloed departments waging internal political battles. Microsoft was falling behind on some pretty important Categories, mobile, gaming, social. And the turnaround was built on employee voice. He solicited honest feedback through surveys and meetings. He made an open show of being ready to listen. He bypassed hierarchy so low-level employees could be heard. He invited junior staff to meetings, brainstorming meetings that previously only senior people went to. And the mechanisms that they implemented, they were they were concrete, they were they were comms adjacent. they created employee hackathons to generate employee input on the culture change. Yeah, you remember that? even the leadership framework of model coach care was developed over two years using employee feedback surveys. And the outcome was improved sentiment scores, better, better customer feedback. And of course the market cap story everybody knows. it wasn’t a soft initiative running alongside their strategy. I mean, it was the strategy at Microsoft, yeah.
Steve: I heard about those, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It was as strategic right. Well, you know, let me let me let it brings me to another topic, not another topic, another angle on this thing. Do you do employees really want a voice? And here’s why I ask. just in the last couple of years, Cindy and I worked for a large, very large healthcare institution, and they were going through hell. They were going through hell. They were losing money after COVID, they were ha gonna have to downsize, they were gonna have to cut funds, they were gonna have to cut funding to certain programs that people loved, people were being shifted into different positions. I mean it was like a you know the big Chop consultants got involved the at the at the big level it’s the business consultants and it was ugly. But they had a fantastic CEO and when he brought us in we got it we h we had him start doing town halls, right? And they were not regular town halls. We said we outlawed PowerPoint. We worked with him and his executive team there was four of them that sat up there as a panel for the town hall And we said it’s gonna be 30 minutes of you guys having a conversation, talking about what’s happening, what’s what’s being decided, what’s you know, all the good stuff, and then 30 minutes of Q&A, guaranteed. And the town halls were fantastic. And the people that were there and the chat, which I don’t know if they would have the nerve to stand up live and do this. That’s why I love virtual town halls. I don’t even want to do live town halls anymore because virtual, they get to that chat and you can vote questions up and down, and so. We would run that chat and we would feed the leaders the questions and it was a fantastic system. We did two a month for four months. And even then, with all the change that was happening, with all the turmoil, with all the angst, with all the fear, we still got like thirty-five to forty percent of people to show up to these town halls. And it was it wasn’t mandatory, obviously, but anybody could come. All you had to do was log in. Now Granted, it’s healthcare, so a lot of people are working. But even the recordings weren’t weren’t that great. I mean, what do you do when you’re doing everything right and you’re opening up the channels and they did everything right? They begged for the employee voice. They took their they hard dealt with hard questions. They you know, all they did everything right. And they still had a minority of the people showing up to participate. I mean, what’s that all about?
Shel: Well, yeah, I mean I don’t know. my answer would be to ask, to go out to employees and say, hey, you know, we’re giving you this opportunity. Why aren’t you taking advantage of it? And you know, find out. Are they too busy? are they intimidated? do they not care? there is data that shows that employees increasingly don’t want to be involved in, say, extracurricular stuff at work. I mean, there have always been employees who don’t care, right? They just want to come in. Do their work, get paid and go home. They’re not going to get involved in volunteering for a task force or a committee. they’re not going to do volunteer activities after work. They’re not going to go out with people for a beer after work. they just they just wanna do their job for eight hours, pull their lever for eight hours and then and then go home. which is fine. You have to respect those people and what they want out of work. But a lot of people, you know, work is their purpose.
Shel: Work is what gets them up in the morning. And that’s frankly the majority, from everything I’ve seen. I have seen data that says the number of people who don’t want to do things that are extracurricular is growing. And I don’t know what is behind that. But it I’ll find that. I have that report somewhere saved. But yeah, you have to ask. And again, that’s giving employees a voice, right? Asking them why.
Steve: Really, I’d love I’d love to see I’d love to see that.
Shel: Don’t you want to take advantage of these opportunities to share your voice? One thing that we do where I work, when there’s going to be a town hall, is about a month before the town hall, because they’re quarterly, we’ll open up an anonymous comment line. Yeah, it’s it we use a tool, it’s on the web called Free Suggestion Box. It’s absolutely anonymous. It’s a third party thing. So Employees know that it’s anonymous and we’ll get questions through that from people. Maybe they know that they can’t be there at that meeting, but they still want their question asked and they can watch the video later or read the transcript. maybe they’re just not wanting to share their name with the question that they’re asking. But I mean, even having a card on the seat, if people are coming into an actual room that says, write your question down, no need to put your name on it, we’ll collect these.
Steve: Yeah, we’d I’ve done that. I’ve done that.
Shel: Right. I mean that takes a lot of the intimidation out of asking a question of the senior leaders. I mean, a smaller company, most employees know the leaders. in a bigger company, I mean, you know, if Jamie Dimon is your is your CEO and he’s doing a town hall standing up and asking him a tough question, I th that can intimidate a lot of frontline workers, you know.
Steve: Yeah it sure could. It sure could. You know, one of the other things is I think a lot of I think a lot of leaders confuse voice with venting. they think that employees are only going to complain. If we if we open up the channels, they’re gonna complain because employees complain about a lot of stuff. how do I’ve always struggled with this. How do we coach leaders into understanding that voice isn’t e i Well, it’s a venting. I mean some people might vent. Sure, there’s always gonna be people who vent. But voice is more about constructive conversations. And I think if leaders could understand that, that yes, there’s gonna be some venting, don’t let it kill ya. I mean that case study I was talking about, you should have heard some of the questions that came in through the chat. It was pure out venting. Leadership of this company has never demanded accountability from leadership, and that’s why we have a bad culture. I that kind of stuff came in and we fed it to the leaders and they answered it. So there was venting. But I would say 85% of the comments were A, I really appreciate you taking the time to communicate to us this way. And B, here’s what we need to do about this and that and the other thing. Here’s my suggestion. I mean, it was mostly positive. And I think the leaders in that organization, I don’t know if they expected that, but I know they got we got resistance about allowing people to just ask questions like that. So I think leaders are always afraid.
Shel: Yeah. I think it’s a I think it’s a matter of tying this to a strategy. rather than, you know, we’re just gonna have this free for all where people can s say whatever they want through these channels that we’ve set up. But yeah, I think there’s a number of ways to approach this. First of all, there are initiatives. You know, we are going to be developing this program, we’re gonna be developing this process. We would like your input to make sure we’re doing something that is going to meet your needs. satisfy your expectations. Please participate in this. There is feedback on things that have been said and done. I mean this is as simple as having a comment section on your intranet for every article that gets posted, things like that. then there’s just the ongoing stuff. I mean there are companies that have had these, companies like Volkswagen for example and Boeing, where you know they said these are channels where you can tell us what’s going on, so that we can be aware. And then employees at Volkswagen said, Well, you know, this debt on the diesel emissions is not right. This is going to cause problems. Boeing, people said, you know, the safety culture here is really deteriorating. There are problems down here. We need to address these. I think it was Boeing. I’m not sure, but one of them actually had a process for finding a way. To get rid of these employees. You know, monitor the ones who are raising these concerns. And you know, if we see them coming in two minutes late, we have cause to to terminate them. Yeah. So I mean, you know, but companies that want to take this seriously can have these mechanisms, and like Engage for Success says, this becomes a smoke alarm for something that could cause you real grief down the line. I mean, look at what happened to Boeing, look at what happened to Volkswagen when
Steve: And look and look at Boeing now. Yeah.
Shel: The arrogance at the senior level saying this is what we’re doing and yeah. Yeah. I mean, a Boeing, it was all about profit. It was the people who came in and said, you know, we have to cut costs so that we can return greater amounts of money to shareholders. At Volkswagen, it was, well, our emission numbers have to look good, so we’re gonna we’re gonna game those numbers. this if they had listened to what the issues were, they might have taken action and prevented
Steve: Right, ego goes back to that.
Shel: The consequences of those things. And I and I think this is what we counsel them on. Yeah, there are going to be people who whine. Why don’t we have a larger share in our 401k plan coming from the company match? thing things like that. But I think counseling them to say, look, there are some real issues that might surface that you’re not aware of, or a decision that you made is backfiring. And you need to know that. as the communicator who is going to help you process this two way communication, we’ll we’ll filter all that and give you summaries. Yeah, we if twenty employees are saying the same thing, we’re not gonna make you read twenty comments. We’re gonna give you a summary of what they’re what they’re saying. Make this all something that you can manage. Yeah.
Steve: Yeah, we’ll help. And you know what, Shely? You just you stole my idea like you often do because you’re smarter than me. that’s the key, what you just said. Structured voice, structured feedback. You don’t have to open it up and say, Here, if you want to complain that your coworker has body odor, this is the place to do it. If you want to complain that you have to work on Fridays or you gotta come back and then No, you structure the input, you structure the feedback around certain initiatives and that’s A great way, we’ve done that at companies where they didn’t have any feedback, you weren’t allowed to comment on articles on the intranet. The way to kind of break the ice a little bit with leaders who are either you know s suspect or they’re just suspicious about the whole idea of listening to employees, you structure it by tying it to initiatives. Here’s what we’re doing, it’s incredibly important that we do this right, and we’d love to hear your feedback on on this on this particular initiative or this particular project or this particular something. And if you tie it to actual things in the workforce and not just open it up to say, hey, it’s the wild west, say whatever you want about anybody you want and whatever, it’s in you know, I don’t know where you stand on this, but I don’t like anonymous comments on intranets. I love having your anonymous suggestion box. That’s perfect. And you can filter out the nut cases and the nut jobs and everything else and take the real ones. But when you allow anonymous comments on the intranet, not sure how you stand, I think it opens up it’s a bad it’s a bad I think it sets a bad precedent.
Shel: Yeah, I agree with a caveat. my general view is you should have the strength of your conviction when you say something. And if you’re not going to stand behind it and be identified, don’t say it. in organizations where there where the culture has been one where people are not comfortable sharing and you’re trying to change that culture, I think having an anonymous intranet input.
Shel: Functionality can be a temporary benefit to the organization. People say, look, they listened to that comment. maybe next time I’ll put my name on it. So yeah, I think as a transition thing, it might be helpful. Yeah, but generally, no, I agree with you. I don’t I don’t like it. I think people should stand behind their you know, the interesting thing is that Zoom, if you’re doing your webinars or your feedback sessions on Zoom, there is the ability to share a
Steve: Yeah, could be, could be.
Shel: A question anonymously if you if you’ve got the q and i’m pretty sure it’s the default i may be wrong about that but i notice a lot of employees are anonymous and i don’t think they mean to be it’s just the way it’s set up but let me share two stories with you real quick you know the first one this was when i was consulting i had a client it was a big company in the consumer package goods space
Steve: Is it really? I didn’t know that.
Shel: And they brought me in because employees weren’t paying any attention to the intranet. Their analytics sucked. And I took a look at their intranet before I came out and met with them. And you know, by God, the intranet was great. I mean, this was a great intranet. The articles were short and concise and relevant and useful and aligned with strategy and values. They did a lot of short videos that were very consumable. I was really impressed. So why weren’t employees paying attention to this? I really wanted to know. And we started off by interviewing the executives and they said, the intranet is great. We really want employees paying attention to it. This is the official source of truth in the organization. And then we did focus groups. And the focus groups from the middle managers and the focus groups from the frontline employees told us the same thing. The frontline employees say, I can’t be looking at the intranet. My boss is gonna see me doing that and give me a hard time. And the middle managers say if my employees are looking at a video on the intranet, they don’t have enough work to do. So that’s where the problem was. And you know, if you didn’t go out and surface that employee voice, the leaders would have never known that middle managers were undermining their approach to getting the word out to employees. Yeah. But where I work, we have an annual survey. This is nothing that my department
Steve: Yeah, I heard that. Happens all the time. Happens all the time.
Shel: Is responsible for. We do the communication on it, but this comes out of HR. And it’s a leadership survey. And you will get the survey specifically, will identify the leader you’re being asked to evaluate. It’s the person who runs your project or your department or your team. We’re not talking about the senior leadership unless you report to somebody in senior leadership. And every leader gets the results of that survey and has a meeting with an HR business partner to develop a plan. To make things better based on the results of the survey. And I did an article for the intranet with one of those people who was the subject of the survey. And he said, were one of the lowest rated projects last year. My light went off. We were one of the Lowest rated projects last year. did the survey. I got the results. I made some changes. This year were the top-rated project. So employees notice this when they give feedback and things change. You know, they do notice that. And I think that leads that leads to engagement, that leads to commitment, that leads to all good things from employees in the organization.
Steve: Yeah, without a doubt. I couldn’t agree more. I just don’t think it happens very often where leaders actually listen. My close would be: I think you need three things. And I think very few companies have all three things. One, you have to have the channels and the mechanisms to listen. you have to have those set up. Two, you have to have leaders who actually give a damn, who will actually listen to constructive feedback. And three, you have to have employees who feel enough trust in leadership that they feel trusted enough to speak up and they feel engaged enough to speak up. So if you have engaged, responsible, professional employees, leadership who can check the ego at the door and actually listen to those employees, and the communications people have set up easy to manage channels, it would be nirvana. But getting all three of those things lined up is very, very hard.
Shel: And that’s where our counsel comes in. I think we need to explain to leaders and we share examples, right? And if you can share examples from the same industry that you’re in, so much the better of what happens when leaders listen to employees, what happens when they don’t. And you know, take baby steps. try something that is not that consequential initially.
Steve: Exactly. Yep, yep. Yep, try to hook it to an initiative. Yeah. Yeah, I’m a big fan of taking baby steps. They need the baby steps. They’re not gonna run into this thing. So start small, let it build, let it but realize that, my God, the sky’s not falling because we let people talk and offer opinions and ideas and surface problems. The sky didn’t fall. And once they realize that then it can kind of build and build and then you get to the kind of culture where people feel empowered to use a really bad buzzword. They feel confident that they can be heard and they will speak up.
Shel: And then we get two way communication.
Steve: Which is the end goal.
Shel: Yeah, praise be. See you next time, Steve.
Steve: All right, Shel, I’m off to happy hour.
The post Episode 3: If It’s Not Two-Way, It’s Not Communication appeared first on FIR Podcast Network.
