A large gap has been reported between the employee experience that UK staff are looking for and what’s currently provided by HR.
This has sparked discontent and resignations, according to unsettling new research findings from Tivian.
Failing to act is leading to resignations, with 67 percent of employees said they would be more likely to stay if employers listened and made changes based on their feedback.
Also, 85 percent of HR staff think they are using employee feedback to improve the experience they offer. Yet, only half (50%) of staff agree.
Just 14 percent think their employer uses feedback very effectively to drive change.
With staff leaving at an increasing rate, it seems organisations have lost track of how to retain talent, implementing ineffective listening strategies that employees feel minimise their roles.
Employees feel powerless
HR has upped the cadence of listening programmes, with 80 percent asking for employee feedback on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis.
However, only 36 percent of HR teams collect feedback during recruitment, 50 percent during onboarding and 19 percent on work anniversaries.
Listening at these critical moments is vital to staff feeling a “personal touch” to their work life, and to provide crucial feedback that drives improvements.
Employees also reported feeling powerless and that their bosses are out of touch with their needs. A large 70 percent of staff said they had little or no influence over how things were done at their company and 38 percent felt the company was rarely or never open to their ideas.
While 97 percent wanted to work for open and transparent organisations only around half (55%) actually did.
The Great Resignation
“Employee feedback programmes should be helping companies battle the Great Resignation – but the data shows that they are fundamentally broken,” said Peter Wilde, Head of Employee Experience, Tivian. “Even more worrying is that unlike staff, most HR professionals believe they are still effective. It is time to stop treating feedback as a tick box exercise and deliver a personalised, two-way approach that uses communication to motivate, keep, and get the best out of staff.”
Amelia Brand is the Editor for HRreview, and host of the HR in Review podcast series. With a Master’s degree in Legal and Political Theory, her particular interests within HR include employment law, DE&I, and wellbeing within the workplace. Prior to working with HRreview, Amelia was Sub-Editor of a magazine, and Editor of the Environmental Justice Project at University College London, writing and overseeing articles into UCL’s weekly newsletter. Her previous academic work has focused on philosophy, politics and law, with a special focus on how artificial intelligence will feature in the future.
