It's no secret that the employee relations landscape has undergone a significant transformation in the past few years. Employees expect more from their employers, with work-life balance and company culture becoming as valued as salary and job description. This trend in employee and employer relations has highlighted the importance and difficulty of recruiting and retaining happy and high-performing employees.
Staying on top of what employees think and feel about their company, role, and responsibilities has become a critical business operation. The easiest way to accomplish this is by going directly to the source and collecting honest and timely employee input and feedback. Yet, this is easier said than done, with 72% of HR professionals believing that the feedback they’re receiving from their employees isn’t honest. Only 38% of HR leaders are “highly confident” they’re hearing about workplace issues at all.
This leads us to the big question - what is the most efficient, cost-effective, and trusted way to source honest employee feedback to stay on top of employee morale and learn about workplace issues? Employers opt for one of two solutions, internal feedback collection or an external feedback collection platform. One of these methods is the clear winner.
We’ll say it right up front, internal tools for sourcing issues, feedback, and whistleblower reports don’t work as effectively. Why?
They are not trusted. Internal surveys or google forms don’t prioritize privacy and security, so they are not trusted by employees or viewed as truly anonymous. Employees are less likely to provide information if they feel it could be traced back to them. This is especially true with sensitive information, such as details about a workplace incident witnessed or experienced. If an employee feels that providing information could be traced back to them or lead to negative or retaliatory repercussions, they won’t share that information.
A lack of trust in the feedback collection method is detrimental - 74% of employees would be more inclined to share feedback if they knew it would be truly anonymous.
Internal tools don’t allow for easy data tracking or organization. Without a single feedback collection and storage method, it can be difficult for folks on the backend, in human resources or people teams, to piece together and organize information from different sources such as emails, surveys, or in-person meetings.
Internal tools require employers to create their own systems and processes for sourcing and organizing feedback, attaching issues to employee files, tracking conversations, and compiling any information collected during an investigation.
Additionally, a lack of organized feedback means that analyzing the big picture or identifying ties between feedback is difficult, making it nearly impossible for employers to proactively spot trends or identify issues that can scale into company-wide problems. With internal feedback collection methods, employers are forced to tackle issues individually and address feedback in silos, leading to more reactive problem-solving and potential litigation.
Internal tools do not allow for follow-up. Internal tools for feedback collection are often one-sided, allowing for only data collection. Employers who can’t reach back out to an employee who submitted a report or shared feedback cannot source more information on a situation or get in touch with an employee who provided the feedback.
This lack of two-way communication can lead to unfinished reports that can’t be followed up on due to a lack of information. Incomplete reports and no responding communication can lead to anxious and unhappy employees who aren’t aware that their report isn’t complete and cannot get additional details, timelines, or expectations on the next steps their company will take to address the feedback they shared.
Third-party employee feedback and reporting platforms, such as AllVoices, fill in the gaps and inefficiencies of internal collection methods.
Third-party tools take data security and encryption very seriously, using enterprise-grade protection mechanisms to keep all data and information safe, limiting and tracking access to company dashboards. With tools like these, feedback or reports submitted are never linked to identifying information, making reporting more accessible, secure, and trusted for employees.
Third-party feedback and reporting platforms also make employers' jobs more manageable, decreasing administrative workload and increasing efficiency. With an internal tool, collecting, collating, and reviewing a typical report can take up to 8 hours. Third-party platforms, on the other hand, make it simple to collect all employee submissions, case notes, and attachments into a single case manager.
With third-party platforms, employers can better understand, serve and respond to employees’ needs by making proactive and fully informed decisions with an encrypted, easy-to-read dashboard of patterns, trends, and actionable data insights of all employee feedback across all time.
Third-party platforms also collect anonymized contact details from reporters so that employers can follow up with employees while maintaining confidentiality. This allows employers to maintain a dialogue with employees, gather more information if needed, and most effectively address concerns all the way to resolution. With third-party tools, like AllVoices, maintaining anonymity while following up is possible.
Third-party platforms also often offer support beyond feedback collection, with built-in processes and tools that support the feedback and resolution process from beginning to end. Tools like AllVoices allow administrators to create rule-based report routing and automated workflows to ensure that reports get routed to the correct administrators.
External feedback platforms also build trust with employees, setting clear expectations and reminding administrators of these expectations via built-in Service Level Agreements (SLAs) or agreed-upon measures for tool administrators to respond and take action on reports. Using SLAs helps deliver measured and predictable service to ensure employees feel heard and informed.
It all comes down to trust and efficiency. Anonymous, third-party tools that allow employers to; offer an always available method of anonymous feedback collection, set clear and transparent expectations on what happens after a report is issued, keep employees in the loop on next steps and timelines, and identify larger trends and issues; builds trust with employees, in a way that is sustainable and efficient for employers.
Every company should strive for a workforce that feels heard, engaged, and comfortable sharing feedback and reporting workplace issues sustainably and effectively.
AllVoices is one of the most trusted platforms for employees to communicate with their employers.
AllVoices uses multiple security measures to ensure the safety of employee data. Any data entered into AllVoices, and our two-way communication portal is fully secured using Advanced Encryption Standard (AES-256).
And once the feedback is in? We make it easy to centralize and standardize your employee feedback management– whether that feedback comes in via AllVoices, during an annual review, or just a casual conversation. With AllVoices, employers can store and easily organize, manage, assign and investigate issues under a single dashboard that integrates with Slack and the top HRIS platforms.
Our platform provides real-time insights that help you build healthy cultures. With AllVoices, companies like Duolingo, Patagonia, Zillow Group, and Scopely are working to build employee trust, increase retention, mitigate risk, and improve employee well-being, all while maintaining SOC2 and SOX compliance.
Learn more about how we can help you onboard a third-party feedback platform that makes collecting and managing feedback easy and your job even easier.
Learn more at allvoices.co/demo.
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AllVoices helps People Teams surface, investigate and respond to workplace incidents more consistently and efficiently. AllVoices offers audit-ready documentation, early trend detection, and AI-powered features to save People Teams time on manual tasks.
