Everyone owns employee experience.

Creating a thriving and engaged workplace is a collective effort. HR can't do it alone!

When everyone owns employee experience, you can create a culture that empowers, motivates, and maximizes the potential of every employee in your organization—and propel your organization toward success.

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Building an engaging employee experience

Employee engagement is more than a survey. It's your organization's holistic approach to understanding, validating, and improving upon the employee experience. Sometimes we think we know what concerns and motivates our workforce. But what we think doesn't always align with reality.

An intentional employee listening strategy helps you uncover the meaning behind your employee voice. It helps you confirm or dispel what you thought you knew—and leverage actionable data to drive improvements. 

The need for effective employee listening is greater than ever. It's imperative in helping you navigate the challenges, changes, and uncertainty that have become a constant in today's business environment.

Gathering employee feedback can help you discover truth, avoid speculation, uncover gaps, and eliminate poor investments. It provides the data you need to make informed, targeted decisions about your workforce and your business. 

Learn more about building a framework to help drive your feedback strategy forward with our eBook: The Employee Listening Flywheel

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The Employee Listening Flywheel

A fine-tuned employee listening strategy will help you drive your business forward, becoming faster and stronger with each rotation of the wheel. As you continue to invest time and energy into your approach, you'll build mounting momentum. A continuous cycle of feedback, insight, and action will take you farther than you thought you could go. 

Ask > Aha > Act > Repeat!

 

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Ask

The first step in the flywheel is capturing ongoing feedback from your employees. Don't limit feedback to your annual engagement survey. Too much happens within a year—you want to keep a constant pulse on engagement as your business and people change. A comprehensive listening strategy pairs an annual engagement survey with pulse surveys, lifecycle surveys, and regular 1-on-1 conversations.

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Aha!

Analyze your feedback data to determine priority "aha!" areas of improvement. Don't limit your analysis to organization-wide results. Be sure to zoom in on specific groups and business segments to get a more detailed picture of engagement within pockets of your organization. You'll be able to take a more targeted approach—and see better results!

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Act

Take what you learn from your employee feedback to drive meaningful change. Never ask for feedback that you're not willing or able to act upon. If you ask for feedback, and then do nothing, employees will lose trust in you and in the process. Make sure to connect any action you take back to key focus areas—and measure your progress along the way. 

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Repeat

And the cycle continues! Your job isn't done after action planning. Keep the conversation going all year long by revisiting focus areas, measuring the success of actions taken, and keeping a pulse on progress around engagement. Then, ask for more feedback.

employee experience is a collective effort

Getting employee engagement done TOGETHER

Employee engagement cannot and should not be owned solely by HR. But who is responsible for what when it comes to employee engagement? Let's break it down.

Leaders

HR

Managers

Employees

What is the role of leadership in employee engagement?

Organizational leaders are employee engagement advocates. They are the most powerful influencers of your organization's culture. If leaders prioritize employee engagement, the rest of the organization will follow. Senior leaders should:

  • Model desired behaviors
  • Set vision & strategy around engagement
  • Support & invest in engagement initiatives
  • Communicate thoughtfully

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What is the role of HR in employee engagement?

HR plays an important role in aligning leaders, managers, and employees around employee engagement. They put strategy into action, owning the "how" of employee engagement. HR should:

  • Drive alignment and accountability
  • Choose processes and tools that help measure and drive employee engagement
  • Coach leaders and teams 

 

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What is the role of managers in employee engagement?

Managers are on the front lines with employees and play a key role in employee engagement. Managers should help champion the initiatives of the organization at large, while also serving as a sounding board for employee feedback in key focus areas. They should take ownership of the team's engagement results and guide them toward a better future. Managers should:

  • Create a safe space for feedback
  • Review, discuss, and act on team results
  • Be accountable for progress
  • Champion organizational priorities
  • Practice engagement-driving behaviors
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What is the role of employees in employee engagement?

It's impossible to know if your employee engagement strategy is working without honest feedback from your employees. Employees should work to understand why initiatives are put in place and how they'll impact the employee experience. They should carefully consider (and share) what would improve their experience. Employees should:

  • Share feedback openly
  • Brainstorm solutions
  • Support team commitments

 

HR-tab

What is the role of leadership in employee engagement?

Organizational leaders are employee engagement advocates. They are the most powerful influencers of your organization's culture. If leaders prioritize employee engagement, the rest of the organization will follow. Senior leaders should:

  • Model desired behaviors
  • Set vision & strategy around engagement
  • Support & invest in engagement initiatives
  • Communicate thoughtfully

HR-tab

What is the role of HR in employee engagement?

HR plays an important role in aligning leaders, managers, and employees around employee engagement. They put strategy into action, owning the "how" of employee engagement. HR should:

  • Drive alignment and accountability
  • Choose processes and tools that help measure and drive employee engagement
  • Coach leaders and teams 

 

HR-tab

What is the role of managers in employee engagement?

Managers are on the front lines with employees and play a key role in employee engagement. Managers should help champion the initiatives of the organization at large, while also serving as a sounding board for employee feedback in key focus areas. They should take ownership of the team's engagement results and guide them toward a better future. Managers should:

  • Create a safe space for feedback
  • Review, discuss, and act on team results
  • Be accountable for progress
  • Champion organizational priorities
  • Practice engagement-driving behaviors
HR-tab

What is the role of employees in employee engagement?

It's impossible to know if your employee engagement strategy is working without honest feedback from your employees. Employees should work to understand why initiatives are put in place and how they'll impact the employee experience. They should carefully consider (and share) what would improve their experience. Employees should:

  • Share feedback openly
  • Brainstorm solutions
  • Support team commitments

 

HR-tab

"Engagement at Seacoast Bank started as an HR-led activity. We've put a lot of work in place to have it slowly progress over the years to not just a manager or a leader priority, but a priority that every associate feels ownership of across the entire bank."

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Olivia Kirchman
AVP, HR Business Partner
Seacoast Bank

Getting employee engagement done EASY.

If you want your leaders, managers, and teams to buy in on employee engagement, you need to make it easy for them to contribute. Clunky processes and the wrong tools will cause people to give up before they get started.

You need to make it easy!

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Make it easy to capture meaningful feedback from your teams.

You invest too many resources in your employee surveys to risk asking questions that don't resonate or drive action. The right questions will help you get to the bottom of engagement in your organization. They'll empower you to capture actionable insights that help you get everyone on board with change.

 

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Make it easy for employees to participate—no matter where they are.

Your employee engagement data is only as good as the quality of your feedback. It's important that you make it easy for all employees to participate (and feel comfortable) in sharing their honest feedback. 

 

 

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Make it easy for everyone to understand what matters most.

You need the ability to easily identify employee engagement strengths and opportunities based on your survey data. This requires reports made for your leaders and managers. They are not data scientists!

When it's easy for everyone to see the data and draw out insights, you'll be able to have more productive conversations that lead to faster action and improvement.

 

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Make it easy for teams to identify and act on insights.

Everyone in the organization plays a role in employee engagement. You need tools that make it easy for leaders, HR, managers, and employees to move from insight to action.

 

 

“Our culture has benefited immensely from mobilizing our teams around engagement. Our entire organization rallies around understanding the story behind the data—and that enables them to focus on action and commitments that will continue to make our organization a great place to work."

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Angel Birch
SVP, Director Learning & Leadership Development
at Seacoast Bank

About This Series

Keep following the conversation!

Mobilizing your leaders and teams around employee success is so important. Take a deep dive in to each component of employee success! Keep reading to learn how you can make it easy for your teams to help carry the load and build a thriving culture.

Intro

Employee success is not only HR’s job. Learn more about what employee success is and the roles everyone plays.

Experience

Creating an engaging experience means helping everyone in your organization understand, validate, and improve on what matters most.

Impact

Inspiring employee impact requires empowering managers with the right tools to align, develop, and coach their teams.

Magnetism

Building a magnetic culture means getting everyone involved in creating the kind of workplace that attracts and retains top talent.

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