How to Encourage Your Employees to Be More Outspoken

Often we're so focused on not hurting our friends' or coworker's feelings that we chose to flatter them instead of telling them the truth. Why not tell them the truth? Because they will most likely hold a grudge against you.

But for everyone who finds it tough to give constructive criticism, we're paralysed when the time comes for a talk. In this case, however, anonymity is the prescription.

It's not easy to tell another person how we feel, primarily straight to their face. It is an issue for both the recipient and us, since we need to get feelings off our chest, and they need to hear it to improve themselves.

The best way to actually know what your employees really feel is through anonymous survey.

It's not just an issue for personal relationships, but businesses as well. A significant problem for companies is receiving honest feedback from their employees. Companies want to know the brutal truth:

How employees feel about their superiors,
How the business could be more efficient, and so forth.

The truth is that organisations will not get real answers from handwritten notes, emails, or even face-to-face discussions. Why? Because employees do not want to be fired or becoming the target of future abuse. But fear isn't the sole reason why employees don't want to speak up.

According to a survey, futility is thought to be 1.8 times more common a reason than fear for not sharing ideas and feelings to direct supervisors in large corporate settings. It makes sense, there's no point putting effort in speaking up only for your words to fall on deaf ears.

Is there a solution?

Online voting tools that utilise anonymous polls, surveys, and forms is a good start. Anonymity provides employees with the freedom to dig deep and discuss feelings that are true to their core.

At the same time, the survey template allows companies to ask about any topic they want, in addition to having a central repository of feedback that can be analysed for common issues and subsequent action.

Without anonymity or an organised system to aggregate data, a mirage may exist around the office that everything is fine and that employees are happy.

If something ends up being shared by employees, it also runs the risk of not being followed through, which only increases the futility aspect. Anonymous surveys can bring positive things to the office.

It's not easy for your employees to tell what they really feel unless they trust you.

Honesty makes employees feel better.

Just as venting to a friend can help ease our emotions, writing our feelings in a survey gets it off our chest. We feel hopeful that our words can bring change around the office, amongst our leaders, or for the organisation as a whole. In short, employee morale improves through honest answering of a few questions.

Surveys are more accurate.

When an employee says they aren't satisfied, it's tough to gauge that in our minds. But, if we ask them how unhappy they are on a scale of 1 to 10, it will change everything. For instance, a 4, while still surprising, isn't as bad as an 8 or 9. Through anonymous voting and survey tools, we can see more detailed answers with a mix of binary, scale, and open-ended questions.

One of the main problems with online surveys is that following up with employees is almost impossible. But this is just an assumption. Supervisors should be reviewing the survey results, though they don't need to be the only ones.

After survey results are collected, it's crucial to discuss the results with the team. A meeting to discuss responses amongst those in the office is a chance for managers and employees to dig deeper into specific answers without directly singling anyone out.

But it all comes back to anonymity, the main ingredient to honest answers. If you want to know what your employees think, look into utilising an anonymous feedback system for your company.

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Source: Workawesome