Everyone wants to feel like they’re a part of something meaningful, and the employees at your company are no different. Getting your employees actively involved in business decisions and priorities makes them feel empowered and keeps them motivated.

Supporting employee voice means team members can deliver their ideas and feedback to leaders without fear of judgment or other ramifications. Any organization that wants a winning culture has to enable employee voice while avoiding potential pitfalls. Let’s explore how you can leverage the power of employee voice at your company.

The advantages of employee voice

Employee voice keeps your organization fresh and vital. When your finger is on the pulse of employee engagement and workers know their opinions actually matter, business success is sure to follow. Here are some of the biggest ways employee voice can impact your company for the better.

More engaged employees

Employee engagement means that team members are genuinely excited about working for your organization. Giving employees a voice with tools like pulse surveys and always-on, AI-powered feedback channels is an excellent way to boost employee engagement and motivation. Employee engagement is one of the keys to business success, so empowering employees to share their insights should be one of your top priorities.

Honest, actionable feedback

Feedback is an invaluable tool for identifying and resolving issues before they impact your company’s bottom line. Anonymous feedback is the best way to get your employees’ honest thoughts on problems at your organization that may be flying under the radar. You can then put together an action plan in response to this feedback and fix problems that might otherwise drive your best talent elsewhere.

Empowered employees

When employees see that giving voice to their concerns actually has an impact on your organization, their feeling of empowerment will affect all areas of your business. Team members will be more likely to ask for help, resources, and flexibility when they need it. And they’ll have the confidence to try to learn new skills, take on additional responsibilities, and pursue other opportunities for professional development.

A happier, healthier workforce

Stress has a serious impact on both employee morale and employee wellness. Unfortunately, without anonymous feedback channels, your organization won’t know what’s causing employees stress and how to address it. Unaddressed sources of stress can result in burnout throughout your organization. But when employees can express how they truly feel, and your organization acts on that feedback quickly — like by implementing additional PTO or scheduling flexibility to address work-life balance issues — morale and wellness will rise.

The challenges of employee voice

Enabling employee voice isn’t like flipping a switch. From failing to act on feedback to failing to properly train managers, there are more than a few icebergs that your efforts to support employee voice can run aground on.

Failing to act on feedback

If you give your employees the opportunity to share feedback, it’s important that you take that feedback into account and make an action plan to address the things brought up. You need to take your employee engagement survey results into account, or your employees will feel neglected and not listened to. Soliciting the feedback and not acting on it can be worse than not requesting the feedback in the first place, so make sure you develop an action plan when you get your survey results in.

Managers struggling to adjust

Employee feedback is important so that managers can grow and develop as well, but if managers can’t adjust to receiving feedback, this can have a detrimental effect on employee happiness and morale. Managers should be able to transition from a controlling, micromanaging approach to serving as more of a supportive coach, which will allow employees to feel empowered and express themselves more freely.

Ensuring employees can express themselves confidentially

When you’re gathering employee feedback, it’s important that you use anonymous channels so that employees can express themselves freely. If they’re unsure about the anonymity, they might not feel safe to give honest feedback, which in turn can lead to unresolved issues at your company.

How can your organization support employee voice?

Now that we’ve covered the benefits and challenges of implementing employee voice, let’s take a look at how you can take action to embrace employee voice as your company. There are several best practices, including onboarding an employee engagement solution and prioritizing transparency.

Adopt an employee engagement solution

One of the best ways to ensure anonymity in employee feedback is by adopting an employee engagement solution. Platforms that allow employees to respond to surveys confidently and anonymously are key to amassing the most productive feedback from your teams.

Build collaborative action plans with employees

Once you’ve gathered feedback through an employee engagement solution, make sure you work with managers on how best to address the feedback. Developing cohesive action plans is key to making sure you can implement any important feedback from employees, which in turn makes employees feel seen and heard.

Recognize employees for expressing themselves

Employees are more likely to repeat behaviors they’re recognized for, so showing appreciation for employees who share their thoughts and provide constructive ideas should be a priority. Look for a recognition platform that includes support for both social recognition and monetary rewards, the latter in the form of points that employees can redeem for rewards of their choice.

Prioritize transparency

If you want to get actionable feedback out of your employees, you need to build trust by prioritizing transparency at your organization. Team members can’t address key issues if they’re not aware of them, or if they don’t believe your organization wants them involved in critical decisions that affect their daily work lives. When employees are fully informed and know your organization trusts them to provide input on the most important business issues, you’ll have the feedback you need to course correct and jump on new opportunities.

Get your workforce more involved by enabling employee voice

Getting your employees engaged and using their voice is simple with the right employee engagement solution. Achievers Listen allows you to measure employee engagement with a super sleek, easy-to-use platform that gives you end-to-end data on your workforce. Get a free demo of Achievers Listen today so you can start collecting feedback and taking action as soon as possible.