The Best Way to Get Effective Employee Feedback

“It is important to get effective employee feedback to improve and help grow your business. We have put together a list of subjects that you should focus on to ensure that you get effective employee feedback. Focusing on a set of subjects will help you get actionable feedback from your staff.
Understand Their Problems
Suggestion Box
Ask About Yourself
Watch Their Body Language
Don’t Be Defensive

Understand Their Problems
If you are looking to get effective feedback from your employees, then you need to make sure that you understand their problems. Making sure that you show a genuine interest in their day to day struggles and want to help them improve is essential to getting effective feedback. This is a fundamental element to improving your business as once you know the problems your employees face, you can try to come up with solutions. Of course, it is likely that you will get a lot of feedback about circumstantial issues that you might not be able to change. But, if you have several people mentioning similar points, you can then put an action plan together for how this can be fixed.
Suggestion Box
By using a suggestion box, it makes it easier for people to address their concerns about the business and provide useful feedback. Conducting feedback sessions face to face can sometimes cause friction between staff members and they might not feel comfortable voicing their opinions. Providing a suggestion box allows people to write down their concerns anonymously and avoids confrontation. This doesn’t mean that you don’t have to conduct personal feedback sessions, but providing a mix of ways for people to communicate their concerns can really help to find effective feedback.
Ask About Yourself
A lot of people are concerned about asking for feedback about themselves, but this is an important part of the process. Asking for honest opinions from your employees about how you can improve and help to offer them support is valuable feedback. We are often scared to ask for feedback about ourselves in case we don’t like or agree with what we hear. But getting peoples’ opinions on the subject can help to get a better understanding of how you come across to your employees. Even if you disagree with the feedback someone gives you, it’s worth considering why they have that opinion about you.
Watch Their Body Language
Although you might not gain actionable and effective feedback simply from watching body language you can learn a lot about your employees. Pay attention to their body language when you are conducting meetings or talking to your employees on a personal level. If you notice that many of your colleagues are avoiding eye contact or not paying attention to what you’re saying then you have room for concern. Although on certain occasions it is ok, such as when announcing bad news, if it’s happening regularly it might suggest that there’s a problem.
Don’t Be Defensive
It is also important to make sure that you are not too defensive and don’t try to provide answers straight away. Take all feedback constructively and consider all the points that your employees bring up. Although you might not agree with every single point and idea that is raised, not being aggressive and addressing this later can massively help to make use of all the feedback. Collating all the feedback and addressing the point in a meeting with all the staff can take the pressure off individuals and help to make sure you gain effective feedback going forward.
By working on these subjects, you should be able to make sure that you start to get effective feedback from your employees, which can help to improve your business and processes. Although this might not come straight away, after your employees have seen that you are listening and acting on feedback, they are much more likely to come forward. Make sure you don’t reserve this process for the end of the year either and make feedback sessions much more regular. “