“We do a survey every year, that shows we listen”.

Well maybe not.

Maybe it just shows you simply rerun the potentially overwhelming processes of running a survey, rather than anything actually happens as a result of what you hear.

Together with two colleagues, Mike Pounsford and Kevin Ruck, I’ve been working on the topic of organisational listening for over six years. The culmination of this work was the publication of the book ‘Leading the Listening Organisation’ at the end of December.

It is important to appreciate what we mean by listening. I define listening as the ability to understand the perspective of others (the hearing bit) and then to respond appropriately. Those last two words are both important and both need to work. An organisation sharing the results of a survey over three months after the survey closed (not unusual) is not appropriate. Some fail to respond at all.

Listening to employees is far more than doing a survey, though our research showed that surveys remain the number one listening tool for organisations.

Surveys can come in all shapes and sizes. And don’t get me wrong. Good surveys, those that lead to defined actions are good! I love good surveys.  

My worry is that too many organisations sleepwalk into carrying out the same surveys they did last year, regardless that it contains too many questions, swallow up a ton of resource in running the process and ultimately don’t lead to any meaningful change.  And then before you know it, 12 months have passed and employees sigh as they don’t see any positive change that happened since they were last asked for their opinion.

This is survey fatigue – not that we do too many surveys, but we do too many surveys where nothing happens as a result.

Surveys are not the only ‘show in town’ when it comes to listening. There are plenty of other ways organisations can and do listen.  Digital platforms, focus groups, and organised leadership listening events are just three of over twenty different ways of listening that we describe in our book.

We are also seeing considerable investment in networks, bringing people from different parts of the organisation together around a common topic, for example ethics, mental wellbeing or safety. The growth in networks also includes employee resource groups that are increasingly coming to prominence as part of the diversity agenda.  The growth of sustainable networks can only happen if the employees asked to be part of the network feel that someone from the organisation values their input and is listening to them. 

The challenge now is to bring these diverse sources of employee voice together, be they from networks, surveys or other means. When you can do this effectively, the organisation will be able to get considerable value from knowing how employees think about the big issues.

You never know, they might even have some good ideas.

‘Leading the Listening Organisation’ is available from Routledge or Amazon and other good booksellers.