Quick recap: employee experience is everything people perceive, think, feel, do or encounter at work. If this experience is negative it can lead to poor performance, low engagement and unfavorable business results. So you really want EX to be positive, and to make sure, you need to ask employees for their feedback.

Getting started with EX feedback

Talking to people is one of the best ways to understand what’s going on in your teams. So, don’t worry about investing in tech when you’re first starting your EX journey; just get talking! You can build from there.

Talk it out

Collecting feedback can be as simple as asking employees what they think. This is best done at team level because it’s a lot easier for managers to talk to their teams than it is for business leaders to talk to entire companies. The easiest way to get started is to come up with a set of questions – or use a set that someone else has put together. Here are some options:

• Survey Monkey Job Satisfaction Survey Template
• SoGoSurvey Job Satisfaction Survey
• TypeForm Employee Satisfaction Survey
• Flex Surveys Employee Engagement Surveys
• Zarca Employee Satisfaction Survey
• Hloom Employee Surveys
• POLYAS Model Questions for Employee Engagement Surveys
• Grapevine Surveys Template Library
• The Employee Experience Guide

Pass your question set on to your managers, who can use it as a framework for their one-on-one meetings. You’ll just need some place to record responses; a shared folder or spreadsheet is ideal if you don’t have an HRIS.

Send an email

If your team has email access, you can send your questions out and follow up in person after they reply. You’ll still need somewhere to record the responses, but people can give feedback in their own time and don’t have to wait for their manager to set up a meeting. This might be tricky in companies with a lot of deskless workers, as many of them won’t have email addresses. If you’re concerned you can’t reach everyone you need to via email, then try one of the other options…

Use survey software

Online tools like SurveyMonkey, Google Forms and Typeform let you use your questions to create a survey. You can then send the survey link out via whatever channel works best for your team (email, mobile, chat, web, social media) and wait for the responses. Using a survey tool means your responses are collated automatically and you won’t need to generate reports manually. It also means people don’t necessarily need an email address (or a computer!) to participate, which makes online survey tools a good fit for a diverse workforce.

Try employee experience software

Some tools are specifically designed for collecting employee experience feedback – a quick Google search will give you a lot of options. Look for something that lets you build surveys and reporting, and that gives you the ability to customize questions as your needs change. If you can use one tool for both ongoing feedback and engagement surveys, great! If you have a large remote or deskless workforce, remember to find a tool that also works for people who don’t have an email address or computer access.

Using employee feedback to improve experience

How far you drill into the data is up to you: is it more useful to report at a team, division or business level? You want information you can use, so think about what you want to achieve and then start looking at the data.

Consider:

• The average score for each question. Is it high? Low? Look at the reasons people give for their scores. Is there an obvious or common cause?
• The difference between the current score and the score last time you asked the question. Is it significantly higher or lower? Ask questions to identify why that is.
• Scores across departments or locations. Is one area doing much better or worse than the others? Ask questions to find out why, and use that information to improve the experience or model behaviors to the rest of the company.

Remember the score is only one part of the picture. It’s important to follow up by asking questions to find out why people feel the way they do.

Talking to people about their achievements and concerns is also a great way to help them feel like they’re a meaningful, valuable part of the company. So don’t neglect those conversations!