Ask Your Employees for Feedback, Show You Care

By Stefania Viscusi
Assignment Desk, Content Management

“Winners are not people who never fail. But people who never quit.” We hear this phrase over and over when success is the goal. And rightfully so. It’s a great way of looking at the ‘bigger’ picture of how to win. If you’re a business managing employees it’s also an important lesson. After all if you want to win, you need people who will never quit on you.

Millennials, who are most likely taking over your workplace, are today’s greatest flight risk. How do you keep them happy and loyal to your business? By showing them that you care and meeting their needs. To find out exactly what they want, you have to ask them.

Times have changed. The workplace isn’t the same as it was before and the people who work for your company expect different things. Today it’s all about delivering on demands. Millennials want to be heard and feel appreciated, or they will easily walk away. And the cost of losing these valuable employees can be detrimental.

A recent survey shows that businesses and their employees are not on the same page on many important topics – and that’s creating a gap that’s become too wide.

According to the independent survey by Saba (News - Alert), feedback and training perceptions are lacking between management and employees.  While most employees say things aren’t getting better because no one is asking for their feedback, HR managers instead think there is ample training and advancement at their companies.

Millennials even said they’d be more inclined to stay with a company and be loyal to the employer if they offered training and advancement.

Without feedback from those on the frontlines, there really is no accurate way to guess what’s needed. The survey even found that women and older employees (baby boomers) were less likely to be asked for their feedback versus men. Perhaps that’s also leading to the fact that women are less comfortable sharing feedback than men when they are asked.

 But getting continuous feedback is so critical for companies to gain early warnings about gaps between the perception and reality so they can stand a chance to fix it before it’s too late.

After all, if your company has no idea what programs and benefits your employees want, how can you deliver on them?

Theresa Damato, VP of Global Marketing at Saba explained, “Organizations need to focus on the critical role continuous development plays in employee engagement and retention. They also need to find new ways to improve effectiveness of talent programs through more frequent and consistent feedback channels. This will not only improve engagement, it will also create a clear and direct line of sight between talent management programs and individual and organizational performance.”