Effective leaders are great at providing feedback. Whether you manage five employees or five thousand, we know that you are constantly striving to help your team improve. But how often do you stop and listen to what your employees have to say?

Listening to feedback can be just as valuable as dishing it out — especially because so many leaders are too focused on big-picture management to notice all the small day-to-day issues that could easily be improved upon. Your employees possess a wealth of on-the-ground knowledge that could be leveraged to make your company more efficient, more innovative, and more customer-friendly.

Here are a few concrete examples of how an organized method of recording, evaluating, and implementing employee ideas could benefit your business:

  1. Stay Up-To-Date On Safety Requirements. Let’s put safety first and start this discussion on employee engagement with a sobering fact: the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that there are nearly 3 million workplace injuries and fatalities per year in the US alone. These accidents have grave financial, ethical, and reputational impact on the organizations in which they occur — and many are highly preventable. According to a recent report from the Harvard Business Review, organizations that scored high on employee engagement tests experience roughly half the number of safety incidents and product deficiencies as businesses that scored low!
  2. Motivate Your Team and Attract Better Talent. Employees who feel autonomous and respected in their workplace tend to be more motivated and productive. This can create a self-sustaining trend of positive workplace culture, enabling every worker to understand their importance while also encouraging would-be employees to give your organization special consideration.
  3. Improve Customer/User Experience. Customer feedback is clearly valuable, but it can be rather difficult to come by, especially for companies seeking a large and objective sample size. Because your employees tend to man the front lines of customer experience and support, they are sure to have valuable insights on how your company can better serve the existing client base.
  4. Nip HR Problems in the Bud. The earlier you recognize issues such as high turnover rates, inefficient on-boarding, or toxic workplace culture, the more effectively you can respond in order to solve problems and minimize negative impact. What better way to optimize human resource management than to stay in close contact with the teams and individuals that HR is intended to protect?
  5. Reduce Overhead Costs. Even successful organizations are often times wrought with small inefficiencies that go untreated for months or even years, draining resources and leaving the company vulnerable to external disruption. Long meetings, process drift, location dependency, and reliance upon outdated technologies are a few of the most commonly-cited inefficiencies in 2018. Which mistakes are your organization currently committing? The odds are good that certain employees may be able to answer that question in a more detailed fashion than you yourself.
  6. Embrace an Attitude of Disruption.

Innovation is the new norm in today’s market and striving for constant improvement is an absolute must. Visit Planbox online today to learn more on how our easy-to-use technology can make improving employee engagement a breeze!