4 Laws of Building Listening Organizations — Rule 2: Making it Attractive

This is the second article in the series on building a habit of listening at the workplace. We’ve seen that embedding a practice of covering every transaction with a feedback loop makes it obvious for the employees to give feedback. With more and more micro feedback loops, speaking, and listening becomes the second nature of people. This is a great starting point to build the habit. However, to sustain this, something more is required.

Acting on feedback drives the maximum impact on the feedback giver and receiver. However, we will look at that in the Rule 4 article. At this stage, we need a lubricant that helps us to sustain the feedback-driven culture. There are multiple ways to achieve this:

1. Discussing the feedback: Before taking any action on feedback, it is thoroughly discussed with representatives of impacted parties. The organization can make these discussions more engaging by inviting the impacted parties instead of representatives. Discussing the feedback openly throws light on uncommon yet prevalent perspectives. One organization does this wonderfully well. Every day, the CEO of this organization will pick one employee comment from the heap and put it on the intranet for discussions. This drives employees to express their perspectives on the feedback. Some could like/dislike the comment; others even tried to propose solutions to problems. The core of this exercise was to create a narrative that Employee Feedback matters and the top brass is all ears to them. The initiative was successful, and the organization managed to sustain an above-average response rate from employees
2. Gamification of the feedback: When the employees are emotionally committed to the organization’s mission and vision, they will also try to mend the culture. Employees who are giving structured actionable feedback, either constructive or appreciative, should feel a sense of pride in doing so. The feedback process can have a provision where such individuals feel rewarded. At Lissen.io, the individuals are given badges and points for giving structured feedback. These contributors can also see what their rank among their team is and, in the organization, and this brings a sense of accomplishment. This feature helps to sustain employees so that they continue doing their part i.e., giving quality feedback.
3. Making the feedback Accessible to all: In one small organization, the CEO made the dashboard accessible to all the employees. This enabled every employee, irrespective of their designation, to see what their peers and colleagues are feeling about the workplace. This brutal transparency helps to sensitize everyone of the issues prevalent at the organization level and each department level. Such small, knitted cultures cannot operate without feeling like a family. Such access drives a sense of deep camaraderie.

Apart from the above, you can be innovative and try uncommon things. The core point here is to communicate, directly or indirectly, to the employees that their feedback matters. And when we do that, employees feel the urge to give feedback.

And as long as feedback comes flowing in, the process runs and the organization advances into the direction of building a listening-first workplace culture.

Note: Views expressed are personal.

Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.