Enhancing Workplace Dynamics through the Employee Feedback Loop

Your employees are the greatest resource available to you. By improving your internal communications, you’ll empower your employees to use their full potential.

Employee feedback loops make sure that everyone in your organization gets a voice. They can also boost engagement, raise productivity, and improve your employee retention rate.

Let’s take a look…

What is an employee feedback loop?

An employee feedback loop is a reciprocal communication system. Rather than communications going from the top down and stopping, an employee feedback loop makes for a multi-directional communications system in which employees can send messaging up the chain of command as well as receiving messages from management. 

In short, an employee feedback loop allows employees to voice their opinions, concerns, and general feedback to bosses and managers. This brings a huge amount of benefits.

Benefits of an effective employee feedback loop

Let’s take a look at some of the main ways in which an employee feedback loops benefits business:

Enhances employee engagement and productivity

Employee feedback loops make employees feel important and included. This is crucial for high employee morale, which is itself a vital factor on engagement and productivity. 

Furthermore, these feedback loops encourage critical thinking among employees, as they are challenged to provide solutions and improvements, not just criticisms, enhancing their problem-solving skills and overall productivity.

It’s also worth noting that employee feedback can give useful insights into your market as well as into your internal structures and policies.

Let’s say that you run a B2B telecoms company. It’s not always easy for B2B companies to gain traction with SEO and social media advertising. But by garnering feedback from employees, B2B companies can gain important insights from people well-placed to understand both the industry and the market. 

For example, employee feedback can help to build SEO for telecoms companies by providing actionable insights into the kinds of things that B2B consumers are likely to be searching for.

Builds stronger employee-manager relationships

A rigidly hierarchical structure in which communication is all one way isn’t great for building relationships. In order to develop strong, trusting, and productive relationships throughout your organization, people at all levels need to be able to get to know one another.

Flexible communication and employee feedback loops are vital for this. Alongside regular team building activities and a culture of collaboration and camaraderie, good feedback loops will help people to get to know one another and build strong working relationships.

When working remotely, it can be challenging to build relationships – sometimes, it might feel like you’re just talking to a sea of anonymous avatars. Using professional business headshots can be a valuable tool, helping to reinforce professional identities and assist in fostering personal connections within the company.

Cultivates a culture of ongoing improvement

Feedback is crucial for improvement. Employee feedback loops help employees to raise issues or potential problems that they see approaching, and to feel safe and confident doing so.

This means that you’re armed with more information on everything from team performance to R&D. And you can use that information to improve on an ongoing basis.

Encourages mutual understanding and trust

Multi-directional communication is the best way to build mutual understanding and trust between all employees, managers, and stakeholders. 

If you’ve worked with a top-down communication system for a while, feedback loops might feel strange at first, and it may take time for them to start working properly. But when they do, better relationships built on mutual understanding and trust will quickly follow.

Boosts employee retention and satisfaction

Employees that feel heard will have greater job satisfaction. Feedback loops let employees know that they have voices, that their voices are important, and that they are valued by the company. 

This brings a major boost to job satisfaction, which in turn raises your employee retention rates.

Implementing the employee feedback loop

So, how can you create and implement employee feedback loops? Let’s take a look:

Implement a structured process with specific guidelines

Don’t be vague with this project. Create specific guidelines that will help you to build feedback systems in a clear and structured way. It’s important that everyone knows exactly what’s happening, exactly how it’s going to happen, and exactly what their role is.

Foster an open and secure space for feedback sharing

Feedback loops are useless if people don’t feel safe using them. So, work hard on cultivating a culture of trust and openness. Assure everyone that they have the option to give feedback securely, so it doesn’t get spread around the office, and encourage openness at every level.

Choose the right feedback mechanisms and channels 

The mechanisms and channels you use will depend a lot on the nature of your business and the communications systems you already have in place. For example, you might find a team communications app like Slack useful, or a suggestions box system, or even open office hours during which anyone can turn up and offer feedback to managers and team leaders.

Incorporating workflow software into your feedback systems can significantly streamline these processes, ensuring that feedback is promptly collected, organized, and acted upon, enhancing the efficiency of communication across all levels of the organization.

Provide feedback training for employees and managers

Feedback protocols are important. Everyone should know how to use the feedback loop appropriately. Managers should have protocols to follow in case of disputes, harassment, bullying, or sensitive issues raised over the feedback loop.

So, put proper protocols in place and make sure that everyone is well trained in how to use them.

Establish regular intervals for feedback sessions

Dedicated feedback sessions are a good opportunity to take the temperature of your team and gain important feedback that might not otherwise get back to you.

You could even take your feedback loop into the wider industry through events, webinars, and even conferences. For example, SaaS conference meetings are regularly held to help the SaaS industry share knowledge and feedback on an industry-wide scale.

Analyze the feedback and identify areas for improvement

Don’t ignore feedback. Analyze it and use it to improve the way you do things. 

It’s not always easy to hear feedback, especially if it’s harsh. But the best way to prevent future harsh feedback is listening to present feedback, and acting on it to make improvements.

Utilize anonymous feedback mechanisms for sensitive issues

Everyone should have the option to give feedback anonymously for sensitive issues. Remind people that anonymity protocols shouldn’t be abused for petty issues, but reassure them that if they do need to give sensitive feedback, they can do so anonymously and in utmost confidence.

Ensure follow-up actions are taken based on feedback received

Your feedback loops only work if you’re taking follow-up actions based on feedback received. Use feedback to make tangible improvements wherever needed, and make sure that your teams know that you’re taking actions based on feedback.

For instance, your employees might say they felt unsure about applying for their roles due to unclear job descriptions. You could ask them to check your recruitment marketing copy to make sure it takes their feedback into account. That way, you make improvement – and they get to see them happen.

Use employee feedback loops to boost your business

Effective employee feedback loops can bring huge benefits to your business. From boosting morale to helping you make valuable improvements, feedback loops are useful and empowering.

Use the tips in this article to build your own feedback loop systems, and boost your business.

Author Bio

Nick Brown – Founder and CEO
Nick Brown is the founder & CEO of accelerate agency, the SaaS SEO agency. Nick has launched several successful online businesses, writes for Forbes, published a book and has grown accelerate from a UK-based agency to a company that now operates across US, APAC and EMEA. Here is his LinkedIn.