What is employee voice and why should you be thinking about it?
Today’s top-performing businesses all have the same thing in common, their employees feel able to talk about anything – from the big things to the little things.
Talking is hard. And great conversations – the ones that really make a difference, get into the details, and get everything out in the open – are elusive. Especially in our busy work life. We shouldn’t have any workplace in the world where we feel that we can’t put our hands up and talk about exactly what we need to.
Talking about anything and everything is a positive thing, particularly in the workplace. Change comes when we speak up and encourage colleagues to do the same which is why employee voice is so important!
A must have for HR leaders. The Little Book of Big Conversations is one of Stribe’s most downloaded resources. It’ll help you strengthen your employees’ voices and create a culture of talking in your team. 👇
Employee voice is all about giving employees a chance to be heard and share their thoughts, worries, and suggestions. There are all sorts of ways employees can get their voice heard, from casual channels such as internal communications tools, email, employee surveys and casual conversations to more formal ways such as employee meetings, union negotiations, and performance reviews. The most important thing is that employees have opportunities to express their views without fear of consequence, and for employers to actively listen and consider what their employees are saying.
Employee voice is key to building trust, fostering collaboration, and creating happy and productive teams. Organisations that listen and act upon the suggestions of their employees often see improvements in productivity and overall business performance. How? When employees feel heard they have a stronger sense of commitment and are more likely to stay with their company because they feel that their opinions and ideas are valued. Employees also provide a diverse range of perspectives, when companies harness the power of employee voice this can lead to better decision-making and more innovative solutions – helping them to outperform their competitors.
When employees feel heard and valued, and are given the opportunity to talk about their opinions, feelings, and concerns they have less stress and an improved sense of belonging and overall wellbeing.
For example, when employees feel that their ideas, worries and concerns are being heard and acted upon they are less likely to feel overwhelmed and stressed at work. The CIPD notes that employee voice also creates a positive, supportive, and inclusive workplace culture, which reduces the likelihood of workplace stress and improves mental health and wellbeing for employees.
Just because some people in your team find it easy to open up and talk about anything and everything, doesn’t mean everyone will. Employees who find it more difficult to speak up need different paths created for them so they feel comfortable talking about what’s on their mind. If left unsaid, these concerns can grow into bigger issues that can impact the wider team and its overall happiness and productivity.
Our top tips to improve employee voice are:
In this section, we’re going to dive into some of the most effective examples of employee voice tools that you can use in your workplace. From surveys and questionnaires to employee groups, we’ll cover all the ways you can help empower the employee voice at work:
There you have it! These are just a few examples of employee voice tools that can help your employees make their voice heard in the workplace.
Pulse surveys are also a quick and effective way to measure employee voice in your team. They will give you a temperature check to help you understand whether the changes you are making are helping to create and/or maintain a talking culture in your organisation. They will also give you feedback and ideas for other ways you can improve!
Running pulse surveys regularly will give you extra touchpoints and a chance to benchmark your results so you can see how they improve over time! To keep survey engagement high, read our recent blog that covers how to avoid employee survey fatigue.
To get pulse surveys right for your team follow these steps:
We can help! Book a call with the team today
Pulse surveys are perfect for supporting your employee voice strategy. They will help you to really understand how your employees feel about using their voice within your team and which areas of your organisation need your focus.
However, without the right software to support you with this, reaching everyone on a regular basis and accessing the data becomes a mammoth task (no one wants to be stuck in spreadsheets for hours!).
At Stribe, we do the heavy lifting for you by making your data easy to digest so that you can focus on action planning and creating real change instead (yay!).
We also have an anonymous employee voice feature that organisation’s love. It gives your employees the freedom to talk about whatever they need to, wherever they are.
Contact us today and book a chat to hear more about how we can help your employee voice strategy and take the legwork out of surveying your employees.
We realised that it’s easy to say ‘everyone can speak to their line manager’ or ‘send an email if you want to talk’ but for us Stribe is, for the first time, something that is truly accessible to everyone.
It allows for that open communication which we’ve never had before.
The responses back have been great. We’ve had lots of staff giving suggestions that have really helped us improve things for them, we’ve also heard about important worries we wouldn’t have otherwise heard about.
Many of our staff are very geographically distant and dispersed, so it is difficult for us to understand what they’re thinking and feeling without something like Stribe.
