Research from Questback has found that collecting employee feedback and understanding the employee experience is growing in importance for UK companies. When asked, over three-quarters (78 per cent) of UK HR professionals said they expect this to become even more important to their organisation within the next three years. However, progress is being held back by competing priorities and a lack of readiness to change how HR teams collect and act on employee insights.
While half of the research respondents currently rely on a traditional annual or biannual employee survey for collecting experience feedback, they are increasingly open to adopting new ways of listening. 79 per cent expect to have implemented next-generation tools, such as always-on and continuous listening, within three years. 26 per cent already use whistleblowing channels and 19 per cent have introduced always-on feedback.
The survey of 150 UK HR professionals demonstrates that HR teams see a direct correlation between the use of feedback tools and improved understanding of the level of employee experience and engagement in their business. They gave both traditional and next-generation experience tools a score of 91 per cent for their usefulness in measuring employee engagement.
HR Professionals view newer experience tools as having even more significant potential to support the business, scoring higher than or equal to traditional approaches in five out of seven key business priorities. These include measuring the impact of business change (scoring 81 per cent effectiveness), encouraging employee participation (85 per cent) and improving individual and team performance (69 per cent).
Despite recognising their value, HR professionals see the challenge of securing budget as the top barrier to adopting newer experience tools, considered a significant issue by 50 per cent of respondents. This was followed by new tools not being seen as part of HR’s remit (40 per cent) and a lack of readiness to roll them out (33 per cent).
“Trying to get budget for next-generation experience technology remains a problem even though these new tools are not more expensive or resource intensive than existing solutions,” says John Wilkinson, UK general manager at Questback, “they can actually bring down costs over time, as well as deliver greater business insight. To overcome this, the HR department has to focus on demonstrating the positive commercial impact of these new tools to its internal stakeholders, if it is to develop its strategic role.”
