Quick tips for gathering employee feedback and putting it to work

Internal communicators are critical to building culture, and their strategies for gathering and distributing employee feedback can make or break sentiment, loyalty, retention and beyond.

At Ragan’s 2024 Employee Communications Conference in Chicago, Tyler Petteplace, marketing manager at ContactMonkey, spoke with Ragan’s Mike Prokopeak about this process.

Petteplace explains that proper handling of employee surveys is critical to building and maintaining trust — and that requires transparency and authenticity. He advised that if communicators fail to accurately represent the tone of employee feedback — “not just the good, but the bad and the ugly” — employees might believe their concerns are going unaddressed.

“If you’re going to be sending out surveys and asking for feedback from your internal employees on what’s going on, show them those results and let them know that the time you’re asking them to put into these efforts aren’t falling on deaf ears and we’re actually going to do something about that,” he said.

He also advised communicators to ensure that employee surveys and their results are easily available across all comms touchpoints, not just on an intranet or via email, but across all tools and spaces where employees spend their time.

Results can be categorized by sentiment, with “green” for positive feedback that can be shared and used to understand what’s going well; “red” for concerns that need to be addressed immediately; and “yellow” for non-urgent situations that will need longer-term solutions.

Watch the video below to learn more from Petteplace about proving the value of communications, tying feedback to retention, keeping up with technology and staying comfortable with change.