To truly understand the challenges and opportunities within your organisation, you need to ask questions that provoke thought, elicit strong responses, and uncover the core issues impacting your business and its people.
After all, a strong employee listening strategy brings together employee-led feedback with company-led feedback, so employees feel heard and valued and leadership hears more of what matters.
The Wall is Harkn’s open dialogue tool, which shows comments left by employees during the Daily Check-In as well as anything else they might like to share.
Nominated admins can also start specific threads of conversation using the ‘Questions’ feature.
Unlike surveys, which are restricted to a 1-1 question-and-answer format, asking questions on The Wall is a great way to encourage people to engage in multidirectional dialogue and collective sensemaking.
If you need some help starting meaningful conversations on Harkn, here’s a set of questions to inspire you. They are intended to gather insightful feedback, stimulate honest dialogue, and provide actionable insights that will help to drive meaningful change within your organisation.
12 questions to unlock employee voice
1. What are the five dumbest things we do as a business?
This question will help you identify practices, processes, or behaviours that employees view as counterproductive or nonsensical. It encourages critical reflection on operational efficiency and can reveal areas where resources are wasted.
2. Which company process frustrates you the most, and how would you fix it?
By pinpointing the most frustrating processes and understanding opportunities for improvement, this question helps you optimise operational workflows and enhance productivity and satisfaction.
3. If you were CEO for a day, what’s the first thing you would change and why?
This question offers a window into the priorities and perspectives of employees. It can reveal critical issues that might be overlooked by leadership and suggest impactful changes that could improve overall operations or culture.
4. What’s one thing we’re not currently doing that would have a positive impact on our culture?
By identifying potential new initiatives or practices, this question helps you understand what employees believe would strengthen company culture and foster a more positive, engaging work environment.
5. Which company policy do you think is most outdated or ineffective?
This question will help you assess the relevance and effectiveness of current company policies. It will highlight areas where change is needed to better align with modern workplace practices and employee needs.
6. Can you describe a time when you felt your voice wasn’t heard at work?
Understanding when and why employees feel unheard can highlight gaps in communication and inclusivity. This insight is crucial for fostering a more open and responsive work environment where everyone feels valued.
7. What’s one thing you think we should stop doing immediately?
This question seeks to identify practices that are negatively impacting your workplace. It helps you to swiftly address and tackle elements that are detrimental to employee morale and productivity.
8. What project or initiative do you feel was a waste of resources?
By understanding which projects employees feel were wasteful, this question aids better resource management going forward. It helps you learn from past mistakes to ensure future investments are more strategically sound.
9. What’s the most significant barrier to your productivity and job satisfaction?
This question will help you to uncover specific obstacles that hinder employee productivity and satisfaction. Dismantling these barriers will help cultivate a more efficient, content workforce.
10. What’s the most demotivating thing about your working environment?
Understanding what makes your employees feel unmotivated at work gives you actionable insights into key areas for improvement. Higher levels of employee motivation will translate into business results.
11. How well do you think we handle feedback and suggestions from employees?
This question assesses the effectiveness of your organisation's feedback mechanisms. It will reveal strengths and weaknesses in how employee input is managed and acted upon, helping to shape your listening strategy going forward.
12. If you could eliminate one thing from your daily work routine, what would it be and why?
This question helps streamline daily routines, reduce unnecessary workload, and improve overall job satisfaction by identifying tasks or activities that are holding employees back.
Of course, these are just our ideas. You'll have your own.
Asking open questions where your people can respond honestly (and safely) and giving them the chance to explore subjects collectively will show employees they matter and help you identify opportunities for positive change.
Discover more effective techniques in our comprehensive guide to developing a winning employee listening strategy.
