Skip to main content

Give them a voice--a way to provide feedback.

Giving employees a way to voice their thoughts, opinions and suggestions about the business has multiple impacts. Offering opportunities for employees to give feedback to the organization allow them to:
Become more engaged as they feel someone is listening.
Come up with creative solutions to operational problems.
Share intelligence to which leaders are not exposed.
Inform leaders of what employees are thinking and what their needs are.

Ignoring employee input makes as much sense as ignoring customer input. If you’ve ever watched the CBS reality show UNDERCOVER BOSS, you’d know that until executives get their hands dirty, it’s difficult for them to run their business well. The show follows high-level corporate executives as they slip anonymously into the lowest level jobs within their companies to find out what their employees really think about their boss and the business.

It’s tough for leaders to conduct an undercover boss operation in their own organizations. Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask employees what they think, what ideas they have and what problems they need solved? In fact, asking them is the easy part; following up with them year after year and taking visible action in the right direction is the hard part.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"We can't tell them that."

The scenario: A project is delayed. Employees haven't heard any updates in about a month and the manager realizes he's 'got to get something out soon' because his boss has been asking what's going on. Manager:  I need a draft message for the project update. How soon can you get it to me? Communications Officer:  How about tomorrow? Manager:  I kind of need it today some time. Communications Officer:  How about today? Manager:  Okay good.  Communications Officer:  So the reason for the delay is other projects took priority but now it's time to return to this one, right? Manager:  "We can't tell them that."  Communications Officer:  Why not? Manager:  Well because it looks bad. I hear those words from a senior manager or executive and sigh. There are precious few things we truly "CAN'T" tell employees: private information about other employees financially-sensitive information the CEO's kid's cellpho...

Dear Executive: Say What You Mean

If you read Clare Lynch's article called: " 10 Ways to Protect Your Copy from A Verbose Exec ", you'll see the following sentence: "There's nothing worse than some verbose exec "improving" your finely crafted copy by inserting references to "delivering key learnings," "driving employee integration strategies," and "interfacing holistically with clients." If you're anything like me, you actually want to tackle rewriting those mucky terms she's highlighted. Let's start with the first one: delivering key learnings. The word 'learning' is a noun; that's not the problem. When you put an 's' on it, you are attempting to count an abstract concept like learning, and that causes confusion. Allow me to give you an example:  Merriam-Wester defines learning as: "knowledge or skill acquired by instruction or study." You do not typically count the number of knowledges you've acq...

If You Clarify, There's No Need to Explain

Clarifying is not the same as explaining. Let me explain. No, wait: let me clarify that...which is it? When I hear the word 'explain', I envision multiple paragraphs of additional text that may not be necessary. Whereas the word 'clarify' evokes a beautiful landscape of writing where every word means something and no word can be left out. In the meantime, yes, 'clarify' and 'explain' are synonyms, which means they are similar, not exactly alike. In the context of writing well and writing to engage, I recommend clarity over too much explanation; perhaps that's a better way to put it. If anyone needs me to clarify that, let me know.