Did you know that only 10% of employees in the United Kingdom feel engaged at work? And yet, employee engagement plays a critical role in business success, becoming a real performance driver for companies that know how to foster it. This is where Feedback Intelligence stands out: one of the most effective HR tools to help close the gap and boost organisational performance.
The main driver of data-led collective intelligence is its ability to enhance decision-making, by providing reliable insights into what’s really happening on the ground. But for internal feedback to have a real impact, it requires a climate of trust and a culture that enables active listening. Here’s how tapping into regular feedback and insights from the field can help you adapt your management approach and development plans, with precision and impact.
Why is employee feedback a key source of collective intelligence?
The feedback process is an engaging action that shows employees their views are listened to and respected. It strengthens trust between operational teams, managers, and leadership, with the potential to improve your company culture.
A widely underused tool within organisations
Inspired by Business Intelligence, Feedback Intelligence builds on the approach by incorporating data gathered directly from the field. However, it remains largely underused, leaving decision-makers exposed to a range of cognitive biases that undermine effective decision-making:
- Giving undue weight to the views of the most vocal employees, at the expense of the silent majority;
- Managing blindly without truly understanding the reality on the ground;
- Responding too late to weak signals that indicate emerging critical issues;
- Basing decisions on outdated information, leading to choices that are no longer relevant.
By analysing employee feedback data, decision-makers can act on objective, up-to-date internal insights. You’ll gain a real-time, 360° view that enables more informed and coordinated management of your operations.
What regular feedback reveals about on-the-ground reality
The principle of collective intelligence in the workplace is to translate informal responses into actionable insights for HR and managers. Regular employee feedback helps you better understand what’s happening internally — mirroring the approach used to understand customer perceptions externally.
According to People Insight, only 65% of employees believe their company takes sufficient action to support their wellbeing at work. Regular feedback helps you measure team satisfaction on this front — and actively involve them in addressing the issues that arise.
You can also ask all employees for their views on the levers that could accelerate your organisation’s digital transformation. Managers, meanwhile, can gather feedback from their teams on satisfaction with ongoing training or work tools.
Continuous feedback vs one-off surveys
As part of a collective data intelligence approach, regular feedback takes the form of micro-surveys conducted with employees. With just 3 to 20 questions, these short surveys make the process more agile and increase team engagement. By contrast, traditional HR surveys — often made up of over a hundred questions — are still cumbersome to roll out and time-consuming for both employees and HR teams.
Using employee feedback to adjust management practices
Artificial Intelligence and automation are transforming feedback management through the rise of predictive analysis in HR data. You can now anticipate feedback needs, tailor responses to individual profiles, and generate recommendations by analysing large volumes of data. This shift is helping to meet the challenge of real-time feedback — especially for remote teams.
Feedback Intelligence: identifying weak signals to manage more effectively
After collecting collective intelligence data within your organisation, the feedback software anonymises all responses. This step ensures confidentiality and encourages every employee to be honest in this collaborative process.
As employees are able to express their views honestly in a climate of trust, the data processing yields reliable insights. You can then use AI-powered analysis tools and visualisation systems to identify weak signals.
For example, a skills tracking tool makes it possible to identify each employee’s level of expertise and training needs in real time.
Adjust practices in real time using qualitative data
Feedback Intelligence tools provide precise, real-time data on your organisation’s internal situation, enhancing your overall agility.
Decision-making is based on contextual, real-time data. This enables you to respond more quickly — whether to solve a problem or achieve a shared goal.
Empowering managers to listen to and analyse feedback
Developing and managing a team’s collective intelligence requires managers to draw on their full range of soft skills: active listening, empathy, transparency, and care. They must also nurture each individual’s emotional intelligence, creating the conditions for collective intelligence to thrive.
Discussions take place as a group, but the final decision rests with the manager. We encourage you to empower your middle managers to take ownership of listening, collecting, analysing, sharing, and communicating survey results with their teams. This enables them to foster a group dynamic that actively involves every employee in the process of collective decision-making.
Turning feedback into a driver for skills development
Collective data intelligence reveals valuable insights for making structural adjustments within your organisation. Processing this information helps optimise decision-making, encourage innovation, and improve overall performance. Constructive feedback is also a powerful tool for developing your employees’ skills.
Incorporating employee feedback into skills development plans
This approach ensures effective management of employees’ professional development. Your teams’ feedback and suggestions should inform how you adapt training and coaching strategies to meet individual needs.
Once feedback has been gathered, use the right tools to analyse it and identify the most common needs and expectations. Take into account the specific context of each department or team in order to:
- Prioritise training actions
- Communicate skills development plans
- Personalise career pathways
- Vary learning methods to meet individual expectations
Don’t forget to include progress tracking for each employee in your predictive analysis system. This allows you, for example, to evaluate the effectiveness of a training programme and refine your Learning & Development strategy based on any challenges identified.
Co-construct learning pathways with your teams
92% of respondents to an Axonify survey link the relevance of workplace training to employee engagement. So why not actively involve your teams in designing and implementing their own professional development?
Use seminars, brainstorming workshops, and other team gatherings as opportunities to better understand employees’ challenges, expectations, and aspirations around professional development. Then set clear objectives and select the most suitable training methods based on their feedback — whether that’s e-learning, workshops, coaching, or mentoring.
Outline the key stages of the learning journey, record the training, and determine the evaluation methods and tracking tools. All that remains is to implement and adjust the pathways — continuously guided by the collective intelligence of your data.
Valuing employee voice to strengthen engagement
Feedback Intelligence enables employees to take part in decision-making and in identifying solutions to your organisation’s challenges. Implementing it across the business sends a clear message: every team member’s voice matters.
Remember, companies that work with engaged employees are 57% more effective than others (Deloitte).
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