What do Mariah Carey, Steven Tyler, Axl Rose, and Prince have in common? They all boast an incredibly diverse four-octave vocal range. But the man who blows them all out of the water is a relative stranger: Tim Storms. He may not be a household name, but Storms broke the record books with a ten-octave range! Similar to these iconic (and not-so-iconic) singers, modern-day office workers also have a diverse range of voices waiting to be tapped into.

To connect with a uniquely talented and diverse set of workers, and to be able to identify and harness hidden talent, employers have to experiment with different forms of engagement. Just as the days of listening to eight tracks and cassette tapes have fallen out of fashion, bland annual surveys and passive exit interviews are a less valuable strategy for employee listening. Rather than taking a passive approach, organizations need to practice active listening. In fact, organizations that actively listen to their employees are 12 times more likely to engage and retain their talent.

Rob Catalano, WorkTango’s co-founder and chief strategy officer, led a From Day One webinar on “The Evolution of Employee Listening” earlier this month. Catalano, who devised the aforementioned rock and roll analogy, offered insight into the history of employee listening and shared strategies to capitalize on the power of employee voice and “the wisdom of crowds” in today’s evolving office culture.

Why Employee Engagement Matters

As workers reconsider their personal and professional priorities, organizations have to focus on offering the right combination of total rewards and career advancement opportunities. Companies must find authentic ways to engage with their employees to measure their satisfaction, provide recognition, and increase retention. This can be accomplished using the right balance emerging technology to systematically pulse check while also organically building trust through active listening and demonstrating actionable solutions based on the data gathered.

WorkTango revolutionizes how the world’s most forward-thinking companies engage and inspire their people. They offer the only employee experience platform that enables meaningful recognition or rewards, offers actionable insights through employee surveys, and supports alignment to goal setting and feedback.

Trends in Employee Listening and Engagement

For years, companies relied on occasional surveys of employees, perhaps once a year, followed by an exit interview when the worker moved on – and had already checked out. Catalano noted that these strategies are no longer the norm, and workplaces have moved from annual surveys to more frequent pulse checks to more active listening. “The reality is there's no such thing as survey fatigue,” Catalano said. “There’s a lack of action fatigue.”

With active listening, companies can immediately utilize diagnostic feedback to respond and evolve with employee voice, rather than just filing away the annual survey responses and moving on. Employers should be ready to follow up to get clarity on feedback and ask specifics about what changes employees would like to see in the workplace, be it in onboarding, DEI initiatives, recognition, or elsewhere. It’s also crucial to gauge employees’ sentiment on change. When possible, Catalano says, organizations should try to get feedback in advance so that they can build out their future strategies with the wants and needs of their workers.

Catalano encourages HR to “not be a filter.” In other words, they should share the good, the bad, and the ugly with company leadership and not let survey data get stalled in HR. “I see companies that will not share feedback from employees or through surveys to their leaders,” Catalano said. Or they will show the leaders some of the data, but not the problems. The new trend, Catalano says, is for leaders to own the data and own the responsibility of building engagement and satisfaction among their teams.

New Ways of Measurement

Using new technologies and platforms can lead to faster turnaround and increased return on investment for employee surveys. Catalano noted one organization that found the responses came back six times faster through high-tech listening approaches than through written questionnaires.

Employers can also consider using artificial intelligence to quickly tabulate responses and even measure sentiment, rather than having to go through thousands of responses by hand. “Technology today makes it really easy. You can get automatic themes or sentiment of what people are thinking,” Catalano said. And, with AI reading responses rather than an HR manager, employees might feel they are able to share their thoughts and feelings more freely without risk of repercussions. The very human element of trust that is integral to this process can actually be improved, rather than impeded, by the use of a non-human reviewer.

Employers must avoid what Catalano calls “insights in isolation.” Instead, results of employee listening must be correlated with other data the company already has. For example, one must not only study the DEI demographics (such as race, gender, or sexual orientation) of the workforce in one vacuum, and employee engagement in another. They must integrate the statistics and ask questions to gauge how certain demographics of the population engage with the company.

“We have to look at all methods to hear the employee’s voice,” Catalano said. Beyond surveys, companies are using in-person or online focus groups, and even experimenting with unsolicited feedback monitoring through emerging technologies, such as location tracking to optimize routes for truckers or computer monitoring to assess software application usage.

Actionable Results: Ensuring Employees Have a Voice

Scott Halstead, assistant vice president of talent and organizational development at American Eagle Financial Credit Union, shared how his organization revamped its employee listening strategy. “We had been doing a one-time-a-year survey and, to be honest, not really taking any action. And if we did, it was very delayed and hard to see how it connected back to the employee voice,” Halstead said.

In late 2021, AEFCU launched the Eagle Pulse Survey through WorkTango. These pulse checks were shorter, more frequent, more confidential, and no longer considered simply an HR task but an integral element of the organization’s strategy. Using data from the surveys, which was then shared with employees, AEFCU managers nominated team members to participate in more intimate and locally facilitated conversations to develop actionable results. The entire strategy was effective, from surveys to transparency to action planning. “We’ve gotten tremendous energy from shifting it to that process,” Halstead said. In just 12 months, favorability grew from 62% to 78%.

Building Employee Listening Strategies Today

In order to build an effective employee listening strategy in an evolving workplace, it’s crucial to get organizational leadership fully on board with the methods and engaged with the results. In turn, one must build employee trust through a combination of confidentiality and transparency. Through the use of emerging technology and companies like WorkTango, employers can gain fresh insight to engage, inspire, and retain their workers while meeting all the challenges of today’s working environment.

Editor’s note: From Day One thanks our partner, WorkTango, for sponsoring this webinar.

Katie Chambers is a freelance writer and award-winning communications executive with a lifelong commitment to supporting artists and advocating for inclusion. Her work has been seen in HuffPost, Honeysuckle Magazine, and several printed essay collections, among others, and she has appeared on Cheddar News, iWomanTV, and CBS New York.