There’s a Hitch in the Process: How a Feedback Program Can Help

When you’re operating a warehouse or running any other business reliant on timely adherence to a process, any small glitch can cost you time and money. No one is better equipped to identify those problems than the employees with their hands on the work.

But sometimes employees are hesitant to speak up. They may have been burned by a past employer, making it difficult for them to trust that you’re actually interested in hearing from them.

Or it may be more of a logistical problem. It’s one thing to speak about an “open door policy,” and an entirely different thing to actually make one work. If the physical door to a manager’s office is never open or the manager is rarely in the office during an employee’s working hours, walking through that open door is basically impossible.

And your culture can also be a factor. You might think that your workplace culture encourages your team to speak up when they see a process that could be improved or a safety hazard. But does it really?

A continuous employee feedback program can provide a solution that benefits both employees and businesses. Offering a feedback program gives employees a way to anonymously share comments and critiques about processes, potentially identifying gaps and efficiencies.

What Makes a Feedback Tool Different

If your HR team has seemingly tried every possible method of hearing from employees without success, establishing a feedback program just makes sense.

Where other methods of gathering feedback falter, a continuous feedback tool, like WorkHound, excels. 

Say you’ve been asking employees to fill out a quarterly survey, sharing their thoughts with your leadership team. OK, that’s good. But problems don’t occur on a quarterly basis — they pop up every day, both big and small. If you’re only giving employees a way to share their concerns, critiques, and issues every few months, you’re missing the in between. 

An employee feedback tool, on the other hand, gives employees a way to speak up about a problem in real time. That means your company can also take action in real time.

Getting Employees to Speak Up

Even with a feedback program in place, it’s important that you also cultivate a workplace culture that encourages employees to raise their voices when something goes wrong. 

They need to know that you actually want to hear from them about everything — the good, the bad, and the ugly. And they also need to know that their concerns will be taken seriously and not held against them in any way.

Building this culture of encouragement and trust requires establishing the feedback program as a key part of your process. Once you have WorkHound in place, it’s important to educate your employees about how it works, how easy it is to ask questions and raise concerns, and what happens after they do so.

Share this info in your onboarding sessions for new employees so that they know how it works from the get-go. Be sure that the information you’re providing about the tool emphasizes that their feedback is entirely anonymous. Both new and veteran employees are more likely to speak up when they’re behind a shield of anonymity.

Gathering the Info You Need

Once your employees have a good understanding of how to provide their feedback, how do you encourage them more specifically to speak up when something isn’t quite right? In other words, to shout out when there’s a glitch in a process that’s causing chaos — or even when they see the potential for one.

In that same initial training where you’re talking about how the feedback program works, it’s a good idea to also talk about how they can help the company and their fellow employees. Consider it a take on the “see something, say something” campaign that encourages bystanders to speak up when they see something concerning. You want your employees to do the same.

When you hold company meetings to talk through new processes or even governmental regulations that affect warehouse operations, you have another opportunity. Encourage your team to share any concerns, questions, issues, or needs they have as they begin implementing the new process.

And finally, use your weekly broadcasts to your advantage. Every so often, share a story of how a piece of employee feedback impacted change at your business. Use that story as encouragement for the rest of your employees to make a similar impact, speaking up and speaking out if they spot a problem.  

Arm your employees with a way of speaking up, anonymously and in real time. Sign up for a free demo to learn how WorkHound can help!