Welcome to our regular HR advice column, Ask a Resourceful Human. Here to answer all of your burning questions is Erin Grau, the co-founder and COO of Charter, a media and services company that aims to transform the workplace. Erin has over 15 years of experience at the intersection of talent and operations in global organizations and startups, including the New York Times and Away. You can sign up for the free Charter newsletter about the future of work here.
No matter how open your open-door policy, here’s the reality: There’s no better way to find out what’s really on workers’ minds than through an anonymous employee engagement survey. But what if your company is too small to reasonably guarantee employees’ identities won’t be revealed?
Creating an employee feedback strategy is critical to your organization’s success and will include a mix of surveys, candid conversations, and structured one-on-ones.
Let’s start with surveys. Collecting feedback at scale will enable you to learn quickly and take action. And they’re worth doing, even if your company is small!
If your company has just a few employees, limit the demographic data you collect. Kenneth Matos, director of people science at Culture Amp, assured me via email that doing so “can still give you a lot of information about the collective opinion without revealing identities. The key here is to accept the limitation of looking at your data solely on the company level rather than at all the smaller subgroups that would be much more identifiable.”
Matos also suggested that HR remind employees in writing that any anecdotes shared, particularly in response to open-ended questions, might inadvertently make them identifiable, and to adjust their responses accordingly. This, he said, is a risk that comes with all anonymous surveys, regardless of company size.
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Surveys are a commonly used tool because they can be completed by employees at any time and without the awkwardness that can come from a conversation, especially when power dynamics are at play, and the results can be easily compiled and reviewed. But if you’re still not convinced that engagement surveys are doable, consider internal focus groups.
Schedule a meeting with a small group of employees just to ask questions. Before the meeting, determine how you’ll take notes so you can capture themes without disrupting the conversation, and practice a non-defensive, listening posture to encourage employees to share.
Ask questions like:
- What should we think about changing?
- What concerns you most?
- What advice can you give us on [topic]?
Share questions ahead of time so employees can come up with their own ideas. Research has shown that this sort of hybrid approach to idea generation can lead to more and better ideas than group brainstorms alone.
In addition to surveys and focus groups, managers should have regular conversations with employees and consider using tools like 15Five, which enables employees to submit feedback to managers on a daily basis, or AllVoices, which allows workers to raise issues anonymously.
No matter what you decide, consistent, non-judgmental listening will be key.
What else are you seeing and trying that works? Or do you have a different question about HR? Let us know at [email protected]. Anonymity is assured.