Dr. Sandeep Bhardwaj
“Employees First. Customers Second”. So says Vineet Nayar, Vice Chairman and CEO of HCL Technologies. He implemented a radical management theory where employees come first and a structure where “management is accountable to employees as well as the other way around”. The results at HCL are for everyone to see. Richard Branson of Virgin fame revolutionized this philosophy. He believes that “People out on the frontline, they know when things are not going right and they know when things need to be improved. And if you can listen to them you can soon improve all those niggly things which turns an average company into an exceptional company”. The moral of the story is, listen to your employees. They may give you the best piece of advice for your business growth.
The basis of success for all human endeavors is communication, be it interpersonal relations, social and political movements or organizational development. Communication involves sending of messages from the sender to the receiver. Good communication is not just what is ‘said’ by the sender of the message but what is actually understood by the receiver. For any meaningful communication, it is essential that the receiver of the message acknowledges the receipt for further advancement of the communication. This acknowledgement is known as ‘Feedback’ in communication. No communication is complete without the feedback. According to Amy Jen Su, co-owner of Paravis Partners, an executive training and coaching firm, “As a Leader, you need to have a strong voice and you need to know when it’s time to listen”.
Organizations are collections of people (called employees) who are directed towards the goal of stakeholder’s satisfaction. This collection of employees need constant and dynamic communication for the organization to succeed in achieving its goals. Since organizations are generally divided along hierarchical lines, the top down communication from superior to subordinate happens in the form of rules, policies, procedures and instructions. The system assumes that those on the top are more aware of the business imperatives and those below are meant to carry out their responsibilities as directed. Feedback from bottom-up is practically non-existent.
Organizational feedback is a process of receiving an upward communication from the subordinates on the direction that the organization is moving towards and the hurdles that they see in achieving them. It is a simple and constructive way to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats to the organization. The feedback could be written or verbal but it has to be captured by the higher management so that action can be taken on it. The feedback from the employees gives the employers an ear on the ground where they are face to face with the reality of their plans on the drawing board. It also gives the employees a motivation to keep looking for improvement as they are sure that their voices are heard. According to Steve Jobs, “If you want to hire great people and have them stay, you have to be run by ideas, not hierarchy. The best ideas have to win”. The lower the employee in the hierarchy, the more he or she understands the impact of the company policies. But, in reality, lower the employee in the hierarchy, the less is his or her opinion heard.
Most organizations collect feedback from the employees only at the time of performance appraisal. Here, the superior and the subordinate discuss the performance of the past and plans for the next period. The purpose of this appraisal is review of individual performance and the feedback sought is on the employees’ role in matching the expectations to his or her accomplishments. The output of performance appraisal is employee rating or training need analysis. Nowhere does it cover the larger organizational objectives or micro policies that the employee has a stake in. Moreover, these discussions are one-on-one where the power equilibrium lies with the superior. The employee is in no position to give an honest critique about the overall course that the organization is taking. The communication process is hardly two way and that too limited to performance alone.
The most important factor in garnering employee feedback is to build a culture of trust. The reason that employees are wary of giving a genuine feedback is that the superiors look at any criticism with a whole lot of suspicion. A relationship made out of trust in the entire hierarchy ensures that valuable information lying with the lower down employees reaches the top for an efficient and effective decision making. For this to happen, the top-down pecking order must be relaxed. The organization should create a culture of openness where employees see each other as colleagues contributing to the greater good and not as superior-subordinate. This culture has to flow from the highest level of the management to the lowest.
The management has to devise means to take genuine feedback from employees all across the organization. One of the ways is to carry out confidential surveys about the path that it is taking to achieve its vision and mission. A qualitative survey will result in knowing the views of the employees about the organization and its course. It will also help re-model the existing administrative structure. The exercise must be carried out continuously after a specified period of time like on an annual basis. Care must be taken that such exercise is undertaken by a neutral third party and not immediate company bosses. Techniques like subjective questionnaire, in-depth interviews or focus group interviews must be used.
Numerous Japanese companies owe their success to a system of Quality Circles and Kaizen where inputs from every employee is taken in a structured manner and good suggestions are implemented for the betterment of the organization. These quality improvement methods involve small groups of employees giving their feedback about the process that they are working on and how to make it better. The management listens to these suggestions and immediately makes the desired changes for everyone to see the impact. These small changes go down a big way to bring about positive changes in the organization. These readily available models can be easily borrowed for any organization.
In ensuring that the feedback system is adding value to the organization, precautions must be taken to ensure appropriate and accurate data collection. The data collected from the employees must be in accordance with the precise parameters that are expected. Data, once collected, should be immediately followed with action. It should not be left hanging in bureaucratic red-tape. Such delay leaves the employees disheartened and reluctant to give any feedback next time. Any action taken by the management on feedback must be communicated back to the employees. This gives them a sense of contribution and achievement. Not only must the implementation of the feedback ideas but its impact should also be shared with them. This will build a long term relationship within the organization leading to its improvement and growth.
