Back in the original days of Pardot, we worked hard to manually solicit feedback from employees. After years of experimenting, we settled into a routine that had a daily, monthly, and quarterly rhythm.
On a daily basis, during our morning standup, we’d ask if there were any heroes or hassles. Heroes were employees that went out out their way to help someone and made an important contribution. Hassles were challenges or impediments for employees to produce their best work.
With this daily feedback, we’d talk about it in-person, address it immediately if there was a certain severity of hassle, and have the person who brought it up add it to the respective idea exchange. An idea exchange is much like a message board where people can submit ideas, comment on them, and vote ideas up or down. Finally, we’d we acknowledge the hero of the month and hassle of the month, defined by votes in the idea exchange, at the first weekly all-hands meeting of the first of the month. The winner for each received a $100 bill and a nice lawn ornament from Delta SkyMall to display at their desk.
In addition to the daily heroes and hassles for employee feedback, we also ran a quarterly anonymous employee survey. The survey was short — 10 questions — that always started with the net promoter question: how likely are you to recommend Pardot as a place of employment to a friend? From there, we’d rotate a mix of questions related to core values, general satisfaction along the lines of compensation, career paths, etc. Results from the survey were taken seriously and we worked hard to make our organization a top place to work (we were rated the #1 best place to work in the city multiple times).
Today, there are a number of excellent tools that take care of employee feedback and engagement in an automated fashion. Programs like TINYpulse, Officevibe, and Culture Amp are lightweight and incredibly effective at gathering relevant information and presenting it in an actionable manner.
Entrepreneurs need to incorporate continuous employee feedback into their companies and cultivate an environment for team members to thrive. The stronger the culture, the stronger the company.
Entrepreneur
via https://www.aiupnow.com
David Cummings, Khareem Sudlow
