President and CEO of Clearfield, providing optical-fiber management and connectivity solutions across North America.
People have changed. Two years after the Covid-19 pandemic disrupted lives and supply chains, employers are now dealing with a new and continuously changing landscape. People felt empowered to explore more meaningful work options: switch careers, start their own businesses or prioritize their personal lives.
In 2021, a record 47.4 million employees voluntarily quit their jobs. Employers scrambled to offer the right benefits to fill vacancies with top talent, but their efforts are not translating to employee well-being. In 2022, MetLife survey data reported the lowest job satisfaction rate in two decades. While that number jumped 3% in 2023, holistic health saw a significant decline. At the start of the year, Gallup found self-assessed mental health ratings to be their poorest in 20 years, and the 2023 SHRM State of Mental Health found that one in three workers felt their jobs had a negative impact on mental wellness.
While job vacancies have dropped, quit rates remain high, with high inflation and a looming recession adding to the uncertainty. To offer the right range of holistic benefits needed to meet the demands to draw, keep and motivate top talent effectively, companies need feedback.
A Changing World
Employees today are looking for more than just better pay—they want jobs that provide a wider range of support: increased flexibility or time off, wellness programs, caregiver benefits, transportation subsidies and social activities. Even emerging family needs like pet insurance, parental leave or fertility treatments are on the table.
But among a workforce that now accounts for five generations, those needs and expectations are more diverse. Within them, different groups have different struggles. What people want can depend on evolving factors in each individual’s life: their economic situation, social and emotional wellness and physical health.
As a result, many employers investing in recruitment and retention strategies find a major disconnect between their approach and how employees want it done. A 2023 MetLife report found employers estimated their employees to be about 20% healthier financially, mentally, physically and socially than their employees reported feeling. According to a 2023 Morgan Stanley study, 88% of employees wanted their companies to provide additional benefits, but one in four HR leaders predicted benefits cutbacks to prepare for an oncoming recession. Unless we know our people well enough, those cuts may be exactly what drives them from our teams.
Feedback Facilitates Agility
Without feedback, we can waste money on ineffective policies—spreading ourselves too thin trying to meet too many new and unique demands or putting too much effort into the wrong places. Regular feedback empowers leaders to stay agile and provide what their people want from their company, even as their wants and needs change. Feedback facilitates:
1. Room for improvement: When leaders engage their employees to discuss areas to improve, they discover how to provide them with the right resources or training to do their job better.
2. Room for growth: Through feedback, leaders glean more information about each employee’s strengths to draw upon and stimulate. Leaders can learn which team members want to grow with the company and provide them with those opportunities.
3. Better decision making: We can make more informed decisions with more insights and perspectives into aspects of our organization. We can also elicit feedback on how to take feedback, give recognition or communicate better with each individual to help them achieve their most powerful self.
How A Culture Of Feedback Builds Strong Teams
For feedback to be most effective, team members must feel comfortable and safe offering their perspectives in contribution to the team effort and recognize taking feedback as an opportunity for growth and improvement. This requires leaders to model a culture of feedback from the top down. They need to:
• Talk about it: Make sure everyone on the team knows your company embraces feedback to stay agile and receptive to team member needs. Be clear that every role has a valuable perspective, and no idea is “too silly.” Ensure all levels of management understand and value its importance. Establish regular feedback mechanisms at all levels of leadership to facilitate greater up-and-down transparency of everyone’s needs.
• Make spaces: Create opportunities for everyone to share. Since the pandemic, I’ve been holding weekly snapshot meetings over Zoom with my 150-person team for a half-hour of dedicated face-to-face time. When I extended those meetings to include time for anyone to come to me individually, over 20 of my team members met with me before lunch. Some weeks, our snapshots are no more than a five-minute group check-in because that’s all we need, but always keeping that space open for them builds trust.
• Stay open: More than just talking about it, leaders need to keep their doors open to hearing feedback. In addition to our weekly snapshots, our leadership teams encourage people to schedule “skip meetings” that go around direct management so they can meet with anyone in the company and bring their problems unfiltered. Instead of voicing their issues through several different people, skipping meetings to allow everyone to speak directly to the person who most needs to hear their feedback.
• Really listen: To trust us enough to offer honest feedback, people must know we really listen. When people come with feedback, leaders at all levels must let them do most of the talking. Meanwhile, we try to understand what they have to say and show genuine interest. During skip meetings, I aim to absorb as much information my team members bring to me as possible. When people know we value what they have to say, they are more likely to speak up when they have feedback.
Taking in feedback is a good start—acting on it builds trust. Responding to feedback with more personalized benefits reduces employee stress; improves financial wellness; and results in more loyal, engaged and productive team members. When leaders use feedback to address shortcomings or empower individuals to excel, they demonstrate understanding and respect for their employees, resulting in more loyal teams.
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