With a background in business psychology, I have to admit that one of my guilty pleasures when out and about in the community is to observe and study organizational culture. Are the employees chatting and helping each other? Do they seem happy? Are the manager's actions supportive and upbeat, or terse and punitive?
Between client meetings I often can be found working at area coffee shops, restaurants and even the occasional wine bar. While sipping green tea and working on my laptop at a Springfield café recently, I overheard an employee chatting with two customers. The customers (who also happened to be entrepreneurs) were regulars, and asked about the coffee shop's menu and décor: "Have the owners considered adding XYZ to the new menu items? Have they thought about featuring local art to draw more business? Have they considered a better coffee brand?"
The employee's response made me cringe: "Well, employees have made those suggestions, but the owners aren't interested. I don't know why our owners don't listen to the employees; we know the customers best and we see what's going on with the business. The owners never ask for our input, and when we do make suggestions, we are ignored. One time, I was even told to 'stay in my lane.'"
Yikes. The customers and employee were spot-on with their suggestions, but weren't being heard.
Business owners, listen up. It's hard to build a great place to work when your employees don't speak up. In fact, the term speak-up culture started appearing regularly in business journals such as Forbes, HR Advisor and Culture Amp in early 2020 because of the importance of employee feedback for problem-solving.
According to LeaderFactor, an emotional intelligence consulting firm and book publisher, a speak-up culture can be defined as "an environment where employees feel empowered and encouraged to voice their thoughts, ideas, concerns and feedback without fear of negative consequences." A speak-up culture is, essentially, a feedback culture.
Organizations that listen to and actively seek employee feedback enjoy faster problem-solving, three-and-a-half times more innovation, 92% higher employee retention and a 10-28% increase in financial performance, according to sources like Culture Shift, a workplace-culture consulting organization in the UK, and Harvard Business Review.
It's not surprising that better business outcomes are achieved when organizations act on employee suggestions, so why don't more organizations do it? In my experience, well-intentioned but overloaded, short-sighted managers often find the word "no" to be an efficiently short and sweet complete sentence. Discussing a new idea takes time and resources interrupting the here and now. It's faster in the short term to stick with the status quo. Manager ego likely also plays a factor (I'm looking at you, coffee-shop owner.).
If you want your business to enjoy the benefits of a speak-up culture, here are a few ways to get started:
Ask for input: Make time to ask questions and listen to your staff or team members. This can be in a staff meeting, a formal or informal gathering or one-on-one conversations, whatever works best for you and your group. Start with a simple question such as, "If you could improve one thing here, what would it be?"
Listen, don't react: Respond with a simple thank you, regardless of whether you think the ideas you hear are actionable or not. Asking clarifying questions such as, "How would we go about that? Can you tell me more?" will challenge the employee to add detail to their ideas without being dismissive.
Allow anonymity: A suggestion-box approach works well for many organizations, provided that leaders pay attention to the feedback and are transparent in summarizing suggestions received with employees. Nothing shuts down feedback faster than being ignored.
Act: Work with employees to fine-tune and implement their ideas. Challenge employees to build-out detail and work out the bugs in their ideas. You'll get more suggestions if employees see that their input is taken seriously and acted upon.
Measure: Pay attention to the results. If employee suggestions result in faster response time, less waste or happier customers, be sure to reward the employee(s) for their efforts.
When employees speak up, share knowledge and generate useful ideas, employees will find greater confidence and organizations will benefit from better outcomes.
