Design Your Employee-Listening Roadmap
3 Steps to Improve Feedback Culture For Small Teams
Most managers of small teams agree: Feedback matters. But understanding how to change company culture around listening efforts can feel challenging. Where do you start and how do you make it stick?
Most small organizations don’t have formal feedback systems in place, let alone internal communication or human resource leaders to keep employee listening top of mind. How you apply these systems depends on company size, organizational level, culture, and resources.
But this roadmap is designed to guide small companies through the process of implementing effective feedback systems that improve the way employees see their leaders. Afterall, valued employees are happy employees, and happy employees advocate for their organization.
If you’re ready to improve the listening culture in your company, follow these 3 steps:
1. Set the Scene for Feedback Culture
Introduce and acknowledge an upcoming shift in company culture. Whether an organization is looking to start from scratch or improve current feedback loops, it’s important to ensure that all teammates are aware that communication culture is shifting—and that employees are at the center of it. Try leading a management information exchange event or send a company-wide email, followed by an “Ask Us Anything” session.
Define your employee-listening values. In the same way businesses operate according to company values, managers should define communication values that support a culture of feedback—and lead by example. These values might include (but are not limited to) understanding, transparency, innovation, and accountability (Qualtrics Experience Management, 2024). And they can provide a united approach to communication across channels that lead to stronger relationships between team members. With employee performance top of mind, it’s important to lead with positivity, always positioning feedback as an opportunity to support progress and growth opportunities (Forbes, 2022).
Support your employees and management teams with resources and trainings to prepare them for challenging conversations. Managing a diverse team means collaborating with diverse perspectives—and effective communication is a result of establishing a common language that supports authentic voices. For small teams with small budgets, this can be accomplished by reading relevant articles, followed by intentional discussion. LinkedIn offers a variety of courses led by subject matter experts, like The Art and Science of Feedback and Communicating with Emotional Intelligence. Feedback is not formulaic, but leadership resources can help teams develop a toolkit for identifying a concern, communicating its context, and offering the appropriate type of feedback approach or combination of approaches with tact—positive, negative, and/or constructive.
2. Design Your Route: Timeline, Channels, and Themes
Choose your feedback frequency based on intention and sustainability, especially when it comes to employee pulse surveys. There should be a clear purpose behind your feedback event—and clear, connective tissue between subsequent events (Macey & Fink, 2020). Allow for time between feedback opportunities so employees can see their value and the change they enact. For some organizations, this may look like one survey every year, followed by one-on-one meetings for employees to elaborate on survey themes. Before choosing a timeline, ask: “How often are we able to implement sustainable change and to what degree?”
Determine the communication channels that work best for your team by considering their work environment and your current communication culture. Remote employees might respond best to an online survey, followed by a one-on-one call with a member of the leadership team, whereas non-desk workers might prefer a combination of “Walk the Floor” days and an in-person focus group. Selecting the appropriate feedback channels means understanding the needs of the people on your team—and if there’s any uncertainty, managers should be prepared to ask.
Consider what you want to learn and how you can align feedback with business outcomes. Great Place To Worksuggests asking the following questions: 1. What’s the goal of your feedback event and 2. Will leadership be able to act on the event results? To increase employee participation, feedback programs should be purposeful and relevant to organizational goals, driving decisions that lead to action and change (Macey & Fink, 2020).
3. Determine Accountability Standards
Track employee listening to observe your progress. Having a thorough record of feedback events and their outcomes allows leadership teams to celebrate evolution and recall opportunity. Plus, formal tracking systems add credibility to leadership efforts. Free survey tools, like SurveyMonkey, Delighted, and Google Forms, can help managers collect anonymous data they can revisit overtime—and with employee permission, virtual calls and meetings can be recorded. Looking to try something more innovative? Some organizations have turned to employee portals that collect ongoing feedback, allowing team members to keep listening top of mind (Qualtrics Experience Management, 2024).
Practice equity in two-way communication where both managers and employees give and receive feedback: positive, constructive, and peer-to-peer. Giving feedback might look like formal performance reviews, regular one-on-one meetings, or giving praise in group settings; whereas receiving feedback could include sending employee surveys, using survey data to ask shorter and more frequent questions, or asking managers open-ended questions to encourage conversation (Delighted, 2024). For two-way communication to thrive, Managers must take the lead by practicing authentic listening and communicating the value of feedback to earn the trust of employees and fellow leaders. An “open-door culture” prioritizes accessibility to leaders, encouraging on-going, cross-functional communication. Listening isn’t easy, but the rewards are worth it: Teams who prioritize humility, vulnerability, and empathy during dialogue have more productive conversations that lead to strong internal relationships and better business outcomes.
Ask for feedback on how well your feedback systems are being implemented and managed. At the end of the day, it’s important to gauge how employee-listening efforts are perceived—and to what degree they’re valued by employees. Electing a few trusted team members to act as “feedback liaisons” could be the key to refining communication timelines, channels, and themes, ensuring listening strategies reflect the needs of employees.
Ready To Get Started? Use My Survey Template.
This quantitative approach offers results that can be measured over time or used to develop a subsequent feedback strategy. A Likert scale ensures anonymity and encourages honest responses from employees on small teams—and demonstrates how a single perspective has a large impact.
Language is important, and this survey measures one item at a time: “I feel valued in my role” asks the employee to rate their organization’s success in ensuring they feel valued. A statement like, “I feel proud of my work and valued by my team” elicits a confused response because it’s possible for an employee to “feel proud of their work” and “undervalued by their manager.”
Want to ensure employees can speak their mind? Offer a single, qualitative question to conclude the survey, acknowledging vocal team members who feel comfortable being direct and specific.
About the Author
Sarah Gonsiorowski is a writer and small business consultant with over 5+ years of experience collaborating with diverse B2C and B2B clients to create purpose-driven content for diverse audiences. She believes compelling messages and effective communication are the result of collaborative teams that embrace new ideas, trends, and tools. Her writing experience includes copywriting and thought leadership for health and wellness organizations, content writing for employee experience, and ghostwriting for life sciences technology and strategic finance.