Let’s talk about feedback and what it does. We might as well call it “experience management” or something like that, but feedback is the best.

It describes what a person thinks of an experience, product, or service and how they convey that opinion to others. The context of “Employee Experience” means how employees feel about their work and employer.

5 steps to efficiently use the power of feedback

In this sense, feedback has the power to bring about positive transformation within a company. In this article, we will introduce you to 5 steps to efficiently use the power of feedback.

1. Create a feedback-based corporate culture 

The first step to unlocking the full potential of people and your organization through feedback is to create a feedback-based corporate culture. Culture does not only refer to “happy hours,” holiday regulations or ping-pong tables.

It is about the way employees go about their daily tasks. Ideally, this should create a sense of personal responsibility within the larger framework of corporate goals.

For organizations big and small, culture has a tangible bottom-line impact. A study by Partners in Leadership shows that 96% of respondents believe culture is more important than strategy in influencing company results.

82% of employees appreciate positive and constructive feedback.

The data shows:

  • 82% of employees appreciate positive and constructive feedback.
  • 40% are actively disconnected when receiving little or no feedback.
  • 43% of the highly engaged employees receive at least weekly feedback compared to 18% of the less engaged employees.

As the statistics show, leaders and companies should not be afraid to provide constructive feedback and engage in open and transparent communication. When you manage to establish a feedback-oriented culture in your company, it’s easier for your employees to thrive. As a result, you can count on higher engagement, which in turn has a positive effect on the profitability of the company.

2. Create clear structures and processes to collect feedback

The first step in creating a feedback culture relates to the why and the aspect of using feedback. In order to simplify how certain structures and processes must be established around the feedback.

There is nothing complicated in planning a clear feedback process. The first step here is a clear system for collecting feedback from employees and customers in the first place. Step Two is about analyzing the collected feedback to identify insights, trends, and recommendations.

The third step is taking action on the feedback – the most important of all steps. Only when the feedback is actively implemented can it have a real impact on people and the company.

In addition, it is important that when feedback is collected, there is an inherent understanding that it is being listened to and applied. The last step is the evaluation of the actions. This way, you can ensure positive changes are made that continually add value to your business.

3. Create a feedback journey

customers journey, also called customer journey, and employee journey, have been buzzwords for a long time. And with good reason: it is important to define feedback, collect it, and then apply it to create improvements. Once that’s done, your organization can consistently deliver positive experiences. The challenge here, however, is understanding how these journeys are connected and what your company can learn from them.

You can describe and plan customer and employee journeys in many different ways – completely adapted to your company. Until recently, it was common to see the two voyages as completely separate entities, seeing no points of contact between the departments.

In addition, both journeys are often not discussed in management discussions, which means that there is no top-down focus on unifying them. This is problematic in that you miss the opportunity to see how each trip can positively impact the other.

4. Consider the customer and employee journey in parallel

The correlation between employee and customer journey is therefore important to understand in order to unleash the power of feedback. Employees who don’t feel fully engaged or satisfied can also negatively impact the customer experience. On the other hand, it doesn’t help if your customers are unhappy either, as this can have a negative impact on your employees just as quickly.

Looking at the chart above, it quickly becomes clear that there is no separate measurement of customer experience and employee experience. Since the two are so intimately linked, a structure must be created for both good customer and employee experiences. In this sense, it is logical to think of the two journeys as parallel.

To make this easier, there are a few questions you can ask yourself when laying out your employee and customer journeys: How do you perceive the emotions and behaviors of your customers and employees? How can your organization work stimulate relevant engagement with these? Which channels can you use to communicate effectively with employees and customers?

Once you’ve asked yourself these questions and started collecting answers, you can measure results using the same KPIs for both.

5. Visualize the feedback data 

Your data is the foundation for analysis and for harnessing the power of feedback. To unlock the full potential in people and your organization, you need to visualize that your business is going in the right direction. Without data, one relies too easily on intuition and individual inclinations, leaving a lot of room to be wrong.

Let’s look at an example from one of our customers. In 2021, the company’s CEO started measuring the NPS and eNPS in parallel. He was sure the feedback collected from 2021 to date revolutionized the company.

Each quarter when the surveys were conducted, direct action was taken. In this way, the improvements could be tracked from quarter to quarter. Ultimately, the company was able to see the clear connection between NPS, eNPS, and revenue growth. This example illustrates the importance of connecting the data points to each other and looking at them in the context of the whole company.

6. Test your decisions with employees and customers

The final step in harnessing the power of feedback is to test the effectiveness of the changes for employees and customers.

As you set up your engagement programs and feedback-based actions, make sure you think about the people behind them to ensure their changes take effect. If you’re looking to launch a new experience or product, consider testing it in small groups and collecting feedback. This tests and ensures the value of the product so that you can confidently stand by the ongoing decisions.

The last thing you want is to create changes your customers don’t want. Therefore, it is wise to establish testing and evaluation as a key part of the feedback process.