Anyone here remember the struggle of searching for a radio station and only hearing static? Talk about some frustrating feedback you never want to hear again. And that just pales in comparison to the feedback problem facing HR pros right now.
Some 39% of employees don’t feel comfortable giving honest feedback, and 44% don’t give honest feedback because they don’t think it’ll amount to anything, according to a September Survey Monkey report. And efforts to encourage employees’ honest feedback can be further thwarted when leaders remove venues for it.
After some JPMorgan employees expressed outrage via the comment section of an internal platform announcing the financial services firm’s full-time return-to-office, the feature was disabled, the Wall Street Journal reported. And earlier this month, Meta removed comments from employees critical of the social media giant’s changing content moderation guidelines and fact-checking system from its internal server, HR Brew reported.
“If you see comments and complaints as a form of feedback, they missed the opportunity to gather really helpful feedback and improve their implementation,” said Deborah Grayson Riegel, a leadership and communication expert who’s taught Wharton and Columbia business schools. “I think they really missed the mark on this, and it’s doubling back to hurt them more than help them.”
A JPMorgan spokesperson told HR Brew that the company turns off comments when there is a “significantly high volume,” and that this is not the first time it’s done so. They also said the comments left prior to the feature being shut down weren’t deleted. A Meta spokesperson previously told HR Brew that “there have also been internal posts/comments that offered criticism and support as well that have not been removed.”
What happens when employee feedback is restricted? Limiting feedback is “the opposite of psychological safety,” Grayson Riegel told HR Brew, and can make employees feel resentful, powerless, and less engaged.
“It can increase turnover. It can decrease productivity. It certainly impacts morale,” she added. “I can’t tell you how often something like this happens, and then I have a client call me and say, like, ‘Will you do a training session?’...I was like, ‘I’m not touching this with a training session. No, this is a morale problem.’”
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When employees don’t feel heard, it “reinforces the fact that leaders don’t care,” said John Frehse, senior managing director and global head of labor strategy at consulting firm Ankura.
“If I’m blocking comments, I’m telling you, I’m signaling, that we don’t want your opinion, and we don’t need to hear from you,” Frehse told HR Brew. “As an individual contributor, who is experiencing something negative, they have a lot that they need to share to feel better about their work environment, and if they can’t do it, most likely they’re going to leave, or just decrease their productivity.”
Employees may do one of three things when they feel silenced, Frehse said: Stay with their company and continue to feel resentment, take their frustrations to the press to generate awareness, or go to a union organizer.
“When you look at some of the big banks right now, there’s an unprecedented conversation about unionizing, not because they have unfair benefits and pay,” he said. “But because they don’t have a mouthpiece in the culture, and to get a voice, they need to find somebody who will listen.”
What’s HR to do? People pros should set up guidelines or standards for what’s acceptable in communication channels, said Chris Treadwell, senior partner and head of executive consulting at leadership consulting firm RHR International.
“There needs to be some intentionality…[and] guidelines on how people should use them, and then when people step out of those guidelines, you’re on solid footing to say, ‘Hey, that’s not what it’s intended for…If you want to share those comments, there’s places outside of this channel,’” Treadwell said.
Addressing the deeper issue—that employees feel leaving a comment is the only way to have their voices heard—will take more legwork. “That’s the job of HR,” Frehse said, to listen to “the good, the bad, the indifferent” from employees.
“Great HR leaders spend less than 50% of their time in the office, and they’re actively on the shop floor in the company locations, asking questions, and learning directly from the employees,” he said. “That kind of leadership is what stabilizes a culture, decreases turnover, and drives performance.”