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With respect to communication between front-line workers and their headquarters and their managers, there seems to be a misunderstanding.
A recent survey of Workplace by Facebook found that while 90% of managers say their front-line employees feel empowered to share ideas with them, only 45% share that sentiment. And while 83% of executives are confident of giving voice to employees within their company, more than half of their reports (54%) say that they feel speechless.
Finding ways to link these goals and facilitate better communication has benefits for each segment, as well as for the business as a whole.
The cost of the disconnection
Frontline employees can often provide a wealth of information about operations, efficiency, customer feedback and other critical indicators, says Julien Codorniou, vice president of Workplace by Facebook, a collaborative tool created by social media giant Menlo Park, California. Failure to establish communication channels that provide such valuable data to management means that the company loses ideas, enhancements, and feedback that could streamline operations and possibly save money. money or direct investments.
Costs could also take the form of turnover – a major concern in today's tight labor market. According to Codorniou, front-line workers want to better understand society, its goals, values and priorities, while considering that its work is significant. The workplace survey revealed that 21% of them would consider quitting if no one listened to them.
Codorniou adds that the gap shown in the survey may be partly due to managers' excessive optimism about whether their teams communicate regularly. He sees more managers understanding that good ideas and talent can come from anywhere.
Open communication lines
DaVita, a Denver-based dialysis and kidney care company with approximately 57,000 employees in nearly 3,000 locations in 10 countries, has seen how critical the returns of its disparate employees were about 20 years ago. The company was struggling and, as part of its turnaround efforts, the then CEO, who had retired in April 2019, knew that he was going to have to harness the input of all employees which would be difficult to do with traditional management methods. says DaVita's staff manager, Eric Severson.
In fact, the solution to improve communication between companies is a mix of culture, commitment and technology. Karen Jaw-Madson, organizational expert and organizational consultant, author of "Culture, Your Culture: Innovative Experiences at Work," said employees needed to feel psychologically safe to share information – and feel empowered and engaged enough. "If they are in an environment that discourages sharing, there is a stopwatch," she says. Employees will leave a job if their contribution is not valued.
Amelia Dunlop, Head of Customer Strategy and US Design at Deloitte Digital in Boston, agrees. Employees can say when senior executives want their opinion or not. Inauthentic efforts and insipid speech to value employees do not go to work. Senior management must make front line commenting a priority, and then act on the information, as appropriate. "Employees can tell when their communications are authentic or not," she says.
Tech who can help
Fostering communication is also an IT challenge. Tools such as Workplace, Slack and Asana enable companies to create targeted or enterprise-wide communication channels, share information and feedback, conduct surveys and participate in business processes. Other communication formats. Codorniou says that one of his clients has seen a 6% increase in his retention after the deployment of Workplace, which has been attributed to better involvement.
For DaVita, the solution began by letting employees know that their feedback was important and then implementing a series of personal and technological tools. Some of the tools are common: every six to eight weeks, DaVita organizes a "The Village Voice" teleconference for teammates, in which leaders use a "town hall" format to share bets. up to date, answer questions and tell the stories of patients and teammates. . Each quarter, employees respond to an electronic survey that allows them to provide candid and anonymous feedback on everything from important benefits to them to general cultural issues. And every year, approximately 4,000 employees attend an annual meeting.
Other solutions are a little more experimental. Idea Hub is an online platform where employees can propose changes or improvements. Tools such as WorkJam allow frontline employees and managers to communicate directly. Anyone with the application on their phone receives notifications and information will display in a stream via the app. Talk to Spot is an artificial intelligence-based tool that allows employees to report violations of inappropriate behavior of the company's policy or other offenses.
The results of these tools have been remarkable, says Severson. Idea Hub's feedback has led to site design changes and improvements that have helped make workplaces more efficient and save energy at DaVita. The results of the survey resulted in changes in DaVita's benefits, such as the adequacy of 401 (k) and improvements in child care benefits. The company has seen the number of cases with which employees re-engage increase by 60% since the integration of Talk to Spot over its direct line. This increase in follow-up is leading more and more employees to feel heard and to think that their concerns have been addressed, adds Severson.
Severson admits that managing all this technology can take a long time. And Jaw-Madson says that implementing appropriate technology that addresses and does not exacerbate key concerns is also important. In addition, anonymous reporting platforms such as Whisper and Blind can create an environment that makes public what is wrong in the workplace, while their anonymity makes problems difficult to confirm and resolve. These factors can aggravate a bad situation, she adds.
However, when a company is serious about empowering its staff and helping employees connect with others in the workplace, the tools they need often become clear and play a supporting role, Dunlop says. "Finding useful and useful tools for your practice can be helpful, but the tool is not a solution," Jaw-Madson says. "It must be the commitment of the leaders and the willingness to use the results of the tools."
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