The 3 Worst Things You Could Ever Do With Employee Feedback

Asking for employee feedback is the golden rule to keeping your employees happy. And sometimes you get good responses, while other times you get … not-so-positive ones. Regardless of what kind of feedback you receive, it all comes down to how you react to it. Here are the three worst things you could ever do with feedback:

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind

You’re asking for employee feedback because you want to improve your organization’s culture and work environment, right? If you’re just doing it to check off your to-do list or to satisfy your curiosity, you’re wasting everyone’s time.

Blessing White, an employee engagement consulting firm, found that a third of employees become disengaged when employers ask for feedback but do nothing about it. Fielding a survey without the commitment to act on its results is a recipe for disengaged employees.

Asking for employee feedback is only valuable if you’re willing to act on the findings to implement positive change.

He Said, She Said

When we receive negative feedback, we immediately want to know who said it. But how are you going to improve your culture or gain trust from your employees by calling them out for voicing their opinion?

This is why it’s important to focus on the what instead of the who. Separating these two factors allows you to analyze the situations and concentrate on figuring out ways to solve the issue. Stressing about who said what will only cloud your judgement and potentially breed bias against certain employees.

All Mine

Managers tend to hoard information because it gives them a sense of power. In actuality, you’re telling your employees that you don’t care about them. And according to our 2013 Employee Engagement Survey, transparency is the number one factor that contributes to happiness in the workplace.

When you ask for feedback, you’re going to hear all the good news. And of course, you’ll also hear the bad news. You must be ready to share all of that news with your team to show that you’re receptive to hearing everything they have to say.

Employee feedback is meant to improve your culture. But if you’re not committed to making these changes and not taking feedback seriously, then you’re just nudging your employees out the door.

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