There has been a lot written lately about how frequently organizations should ask employees for their input. An article in Harvard Business Review speaks to companies that “need daily or weekly data on employee motivation to identify and fix motivational issues at the individual, team, and unit level.” A piece in The Economic Times states, “The objective behind this shift is to capture real-time employee engagement experience and make improvements. On any given day, an employee may be happy about his or her salary, but may not be as content with the work environment. The engagement level may be high with respect to camaraderie, but the food in the cafeteria may not be up to the mark.”
This notion of continuous listening has become a bit of a buzzword in HR circles. While continuous listening is the topic of dozens of articles and presentations and whitepapers, there is no single, clear, and agreed-upon definition of “continuous listening.” Continuous listening might mean a high-frequency survey design, be it daily, weekly, or monthly. It could mean a combination of an annual employee engagement surveys and lifecycle surveys, which add the combination of onboarding and exit surveys into the mix. Special topic pulse surveys can be added in for good measure. Continuous listening really means continuous data, an ongoing flow of survey responses from employees. The data is from multiple points in time, and may or may not include multiple topic areas and employee subgroups.
Companies listen to their customers continuously, so why not listen to employees the same way? This assumption makes sense on a surface level, but it’s important to unpack it. Customers are asked for feedback after they have had a defined interaction with a company. It might be a sale, it might be a service call, or it might be any other experience with the organization. The survey is designed to understand the elements of that specific interaction and allow for problem-solving.
If the model of collecting continuous customer data is a valuable reference point, could we do the same for employees? Can we send relevant questions to specific employees to gain insights at the moments that matter in their relationship with the company, whether that is onboarding, a promotion into management, completion of a development program, or exiting the organization? Could we make the results available just to specific users that are empowered to act, or to all employees to increase transparency? Absolutely. Technology allows for all of that. But in a world where technology makes just about anything possible, what’s the right thing to do?
HR teams have longed aspired to be strategic partners to the senior leaders in their organization. Given that numbers and data are the language of executives, HR teams that are armed with facts and statistics that support their recommendations can play a truly strategic role in driving decisions about people. Continuous listening programs can be the source of the data needed to become that strategic partner.
Continuous listening can be a valuable tool for HR and senior leaders, but only if designed and implemented thoughtfully and strategically.
An issue often raised in the discussion of continuous listening programs is that of survey fatigue, the notion that if we aren’t careful with how frequently we send surveys to employees, they will grow weary of answering the questions and stop responding. But is the frequency of asking questions the culprit in survey fatigue, or is it something else? Employees grow weary of answering questions when nothing happens as a result of their — when it’s all listening and no acting. Listening isn’t enough. Continuous listening must evolve to become continuous conversations, with all parties involved in asking, answering, discussing, and acting. Employees will answer questions all day long if they see evidence that their input drives changes and improvements that are meaningful to them.
There is more than meets the eye when it comes to implementing a continuous listening program in any organization. A successful continuous listening strategy is more than just an ongoing stream of data. It provides the right data at the right time to the right users. Succeed at that, and HR truly becomes a strategic partner to senior leaders.