David Cummings on Startups

4 Ideas for Employee Feedback

Written by

David Cummings

in

,

Recently I was listening to a CEO give a talk and he mentioned how listening to employee feedback was one the most important things he does every other week. Naturally, this got me thinking about the many different ways leaders solicit feedback and ideas.

Here are seven ideas for employee feedback:

  1. Facilitate bottom-up daily check-ins across the company
  2. Use a UserVoice idea exchange and let employees submit ideas and vote up their favorites
  3. Hold a weekly town hall where any employee can ask questions or provide feedback
  4. Run an anonymous quarterly employee survey using Survey Monkey asking for feedback and capturing an employee net promoter score (NPS) (note: some people think anonymous surveys are bad because it is a crutch for cultures that aren’t healthy enough to share things out in the open while others find it to be very valuable)

Employee feedback is a critical part of healthy organizations. Try these four ideas and find out what does, and doesn’t, work for your organization.

What else? What are some more ideas for employee feedback?

 

Comments

5 responses to “4 Ideas for Employee Feedback”

  1. treytay Avatar
    treytay

    David, SurveyMinkey employee feedback is dated and obsolete with tools like TinyPulse on the market. For very little money, we anonymously survey our company every two weeks about a host of engagement metrics, solicit positive reinforcement of or cultural message and offer an anonymous suggestion box. Very cost-effective and a SaaS deserving of a look.

    Reply
  2. Doug Calahan Avatar
    Doug Calahan

    I would also add the Gallop 12 question employee engagement survey. We’ve found it incredibly beneficial in identifying deficiencies in out organization

    Reply
  3. outlastllc Avatar
    outlastllc

    Thank you for sharing this list, David. I was not familiar with UserVoice. Another technique that could be useful for encouraging employee feedback is a reverse-mentoring program. Having senior executives set up time to ask questions and get advice from working team members can set a powerful example for the rest of the organization.

    Reply
  4. Ryan Compaan Avatar
    Ryan Compaan

    Also, to optimize employee engagement, consider both feedback FROM employees (on the company), as well frequent feedback TO employees on their own individual contributions.

    Reply
  5. Dawn Crawford -- IO Education Avatar
    Dawn Crawford — IO Education

    In reference to your employee feedback article
    I prefer to do employee “stay” interviews. Rather than the typical exit interview which has it’s benefits, I love to talk with those that have been with the organization for a while.
    I ask them one questions that starts the conversation — “What brings you into work everyday?”

    Reply

Leave a reply to Ryan Compaan Cancel reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

More posts