The Employee Experience: Listening

Most of the previously written blog posts touch on the employee experience. In fact, you will be hard pressed to find an employer blog that doesn’t stress the importance of this. Yet still it can be one of the most overlooked aspects of being an employer.

It isn’t that you don’t value your employee’s work experience, because you do. And great employees will be one of the first things you credit to your company’s success. But when your nose is in the account books or client prospecting out of office, how accurate is your perspective on your actual employee experience?

Bottom line, you want to be successful. David Joseph Schwartz said “The success combination in business is: Do what you do better… and: do more of what you do.” Most employers focus predominantly on doing more, and not enough on doing better. And if you are looking at doing better, you’re often looking at it from the desk in your office.

Getting onto your employee’s level and actively listening to them is one of greatest ways one can do what you do better. In order to do this you need to give them a comfortable forum with which they can speak.

Begin with something small, a Wednesday afternoon company break. Get everyone together, stop working and simply talk. This doesn’t have to be a long extended time but it can be extremely valuable. By spending casual time with your employees everyone becomes more comfortable. Giving you the opportunity to talk and listen to an individual employee’s issues, concerns or positive feelings. In the end, knowing what your employees love about working for you can be just as important as knowing what they dislike.

Sometimes it’s best to bring in an outsider. Retreats led by mediators who can help be the conduit between your employees and you. Getting out of the regular office environment can help everyone see each other in a more personal light. This maybe a great option for companies whose employees don’t often get into the same room together. Even if you don’t go outside of the office having someone else lead the session can help keep everything more honest.

These ideas can be great starting points to help you get your employees speaking. But are you actively listening to them? In each meeting try and use active listening skills such as keeping eye contact and summarizing what was said. And after a meeting or retreat make sure to have a few or even just one great idea to change something for the better. Make a point to follow through on your plans. Consider putting one of your employees in charge of it and check to make sure the change happens.

Your ideas can be as simple as changing the volume on ringing phones to help give the office some peace. Or as big as changing a company policy that you recently found out isn’t working.

Small changes can make all the difference in your employee’s experience. If you’re not listening there is no way you will know what changes to make. When you make the right changes you will see a positive increase in your employee experience. Making your employees more productive and helping you do what you do better!