As the workforce continues to develop through new initiatives and different learning delivery methods while continuously trying to keep up with evolving trends, employees may be getting lost in the process.
Lincoln Financial has decided to combat this through implementing “employee listening.” In their recent 2022 Employee Engagement Survey, 76 percent of their surveyed employees felt they could grow professionally within the organization, surpassing other finance and insurance benchmarks by eight points. Kate Feather, senior vice president and head of employee experience and talent development at Lincoln Financial, says they are focused on using employee listening with employee feedback to strengthen their work culture and sense of belonging.
“At Lincoln Financial Group, we believe talent is our differentiator and our success is fueled by our people and culture,” says Feather. “And to harness the power of our people, we start with listening. We are committed to using the voice of our employees to determine focus areas and opportunities to support and enhance the employee experience.”
What is employee listening?
Employee listening is a structured approach for organizations to gain insights and feedback from employees. The main goal of this strategy is to understand how employees feel about work opportunities and culture, to open a floor for discussion between employees and leadership and use employee feedback to improve the employee experience at a company, ultimately increasing employee retention rates.
This strategy can involve many components such as surveys, focus groups, one-on-one meetings, exit interviews, action planning and more. Michael Moon, Ph.D., director of people intelligence at Viasat and people analytics expert, says employee listening is more than just surveys and getting the data — it’s also about implementing the information.
“The last piece of that is the action planning that strategy needs to include,” Moon says. “Now that we’ve listened to our employees, it’s not just about asking them, we need to demonstrably show them that we hear them — that we’re not just listening, but that we hear them.”
Moon says common challenges are leadership not understanding what employee listening is and employees not trusting employers to take action on their concerns or to use their data in meaningful ways. However, employers can combat this by communicating with their employees that they were heard and showing on top of telling them what is being changed or improved.
Lincoln Financial’s employee listening strategy is multidimensional and begins from the moment an employee is hired until they leave the company. One of their main avenues is conducting regular companywide engagement surveys about many aspects of the employee experience such as leadership, benefits, resources, career growth, well-being and diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Other factors include pulse check surveys at least once a month, input sessions with employees and informal and formal forums between employees and senior leadership.
“Employee listening will always be an ongoing process as Lincoln strives to continuously improve employee engagement in an ever-changing environment,” Feather says. “Keeping a pulse on employees as companies witness generational shifts, the demand for certain skill sets and evolving future of work will more accurately inform important decision making. Prioritize listening and feedback loops through a mix of informal and formal touch points and provide your employees with regular progress updates on how you’re responding to their feedback.”
Listening through programs and initiatives
There are several key factors and approaches to employee listening. Feather says they “leverage open-ended opportunities for comments, so employees have the space to share what’s on their mind, in their own words.” After collecting feedback and insights, their team examines the responses by text analytics to pull out key themes and sentiments. Every quarter, employees receive this analysis with the action plan to address their concerns.
“Additionally, while our listening and actions start with the enterprise level, we’re able to bring them to business/divisional areas, and lastly, managers and individual teams,” Feather says. “Our listening strategy is about driving awareness, insights and actions throughout Lincoln’s organization.
Looking to address employees’ desires for more career support following their 2020 Employee Engagement Survey, Lincoln Financial created “Get CAREER FIT,” a five-module bootcamp that has “development workouts” which includes career resources, tools and development advice from both internal and external viewpoints.
“The program features employees from across the enterprise sharing career and development advice relevant to the workout of the week,” Feather says. “It guides employees through creating a vision, planning an actionable individual development plan and finishes by prompting participants to schedule a dedicated development conversation with their manager to ensure accountability and support with execution.”
To supplement that, they also launched “myCareer” earlier this year, which helps them find formal, experiential and social learning opportunities to supplement their action plans from the Get CAREER FIT bootcamp.
Employees’ time constraints and ensuring they are reached while they have other priorities were the main challenges in Lincoln Financial’s employee listening approach. Their data showed that employees sometimes feel constrained by time limitations, so Lincoln Financial introduced “Meetings by Lincoln,” which consists of five meeting norms to support employees’ schedules and capacities.
Employees desire growth and development
Lincoln Financial’s employee feedback consistently showcases that employees have a strong desire for career growth and development, which is also reflected in current workforce trends. Career growth is also “more than upward and lateral movement,” Feather says, as employees want to upskill and reskill in their current positions.
“Our results support a direct connection between career growth and engagement — employees who perceive they are getting the experiences to grow their careers are more highly engaged, and higher levels of engagement lead to increased productivity, better customer experiences, improved sales and employee retention,” says Feather.
Their companywide engagement and recent surveys results continue to show that they are above the benchmark with participation as compared to their experience management platform and work across its client portfolio, and that they are making meaningful improvements in providing tools, resources and guidance to build careers. According to their 2022 “Feedback Friday” survey, the Get CAREER FIT program is also currently on track to closing a 30 percent gap of employees who do not have their own individual development plan.
Feather recommends organizations continue to develop their environment to match the needs of their employees and the changing workforce.
“Employee listening is an art as much as it is a science, and should focus on testing, learning, adapting and iterating,” Feather says. “It’s important for companies to prioritize listening and keeping a finger on the pulse of their organization continuously. The data and the stories they can collect have the power to shift opinion, priorities, influence leaders and contribute to the culture and success of the organization.”
