Employee engagement and retention platform Peakon has released The Employee Voice, an in-depth report analysing more than 11 million anonymous employee comments, from workers in 160 countries. The study, which is the largest of its kind ever conducted, provides insight into exactly what employees say when prompted for workplace feedback, why they speak up, and if organisations actually listen.
Globally, Peakon found that employees are twice as likely to leave a comment when they’re upset, compared to when they’re happy. However, employees aren’t asking for magic when it comes to staying happy. In response to the open-ended question, ‘If you had a magic wand, what’s the one thing you would change about your organisation?’, the top three asks from employees globally are: pay, communication and management.
Employees in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand – 37 per cent employee comment rate) and Latin America and The Caribbean (36 per cent) appear to be the most vocal regions.
Whilst the commenting behaviour of the employees in Oceania is the highest, they may feel like their feedback is falling on deaf ears with only 11 per cent of comments receive an employer response in a form of acknowledgement, with a further drop to 7 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean. This could indicate a communication gap between workers and companies in these regions.
When analysing employee comments by industry sector, Peakon found that employees in the more traditional industries such as Government (37 per cent of employee response rate), Energy & Utilities (36 per cent) and Manufacturing (35 per cent) had the highest employee comment rates. This indicates a trend that employees typically without desks or work devices are jumping at the chance to have a conversation with their employers. However, when we look at the employer response rate, the pattern is reversed once again with the employer response rates as low as 5 per cent in Energy & Utilities and 7 per cent in Manufacturing.
