June is professional wellness month. People teams are on the go looking for ways to strengthen workforce morale and satisfaction. It can often be difficult for companies to determine how their employees are feeling and what they are thinking.

Take the guessing game out of the equation. A true and telling way to understand employee experience is to promote open dialogue in a robust feedback loop. Employee feedback is an excellent gateway to helping you grow a stronger workforce together. Read on to discover how soliciting and embracing employee feedback impacts your bottom line, strengthens your organization, and promotes professional wellness and employee wellbeing.

Creates Psychological Safety

Encouraging an environment where employees can provide feedback anonymously creates psychological safety in the workplace. Without the option for anonymity, employees may remain silent rather than share important information with your organization. It may even prevent them from reporting safety concerns or situations that may be making them uncomfortable. Therefore, inform your employees of the options they have to report back what may be needed to be known through a whistleblower hotline.

This not only helps your organization remain compliant but can help to empower employees to securely report vital and sensitive situations at work. This helps to relieve work-related stress and anxiety when it comes to reporting and providing feedback, as employees will not have to worry about feeling judged for their feelings and sensitive concerns. This can help to build trust and employee confidence as well as give an equal opportunity to everyone at your workplace. Creating psychological safety can help your workplace truly thrive by preventing accepting and avoiding issues that could be detrimental to workplace culture and safety if unknown.

Fosters Mental Wellness 

Mental wellbeing is a high priority for today's workforce. The last thing employees want is work-related anxiety and tension on top of balancing everyday stressors. A way to foster mental well-being in the workplace is to do a wellness checkup survey from time to time. This will help you to determine why employees may need some extra support. Work burn-out can be hard to see. Employees may be overextending themselves and may not feel comfortable voicing their feelings unless it is anonymous.

Help to prevent burnout and diagnose these issues upfront by taking a look at resource allocation, dividing workloads, and connecting your workforce with valuable resources.

Providing services such as stress or time management tools, as well as, connecting employees to mental health resources like different types of therapy or self-help strategies, can help promote mental wellbeing at work. In addition, showing your support and being an ally for those who may have mental health concerns can help to improve the overall company culture and employee resource programs. By making mental wellness less taboo,  employees can be free to express their concerns and feel welcomed to utilize resources in the community and take a mental health day if needed

Breaks Down Silos

Communication silos at your workplace could be preventing your company from reaching goals. Cross-discipline teams need to have confidence in each other to collaborate and communicate effectively. This can become even more challenging if you have a hybrid workforce. Engagement and communication with remote vs. in-person teams need to strike a fine balance to keep things operative at their optimal best. Engage your team members and improve team morale by utilizing pulse surveys for feedback.

Pulse surveys can discover what may be holding your employees and team back or what is working well and can be expanded. With the right combination of questions regarding workflow, communication, and morale, you will be able to improve efficiency and start conversations. Employees want to be heard, and not stay trapped by the same inefficient processes.

It’s time to strengthen team confidence and communication by engaging your employees with regular surveys and feedback opportunities. Doing so will demonstrate to your employees that you care about their day-to-day satisfaction and wellness at work. This can help to build partnerships and boost collaboration amongst individuals, teams, and departments alike.

Promotes Retention

Retaining your employees is at the forefront of HR departments and in the mind of leadership. With continued concerns, trends, and lasting impacts from the great resignation, evaluating your company's ability to innovate is key. With many professionals going elsewhere looking for a fun and flexible company culture, standing out, attracting, and retaining employees can be challenging.

According to a Pew Research workers survey, 57% of workers quit their job in 2021 due to feeling disrespected.

This further emphasizes the importance of giving your employees a voice and paying special attention to the employee experience. Avoid compensating for challenging times by making drastic internal adjustments, or a large restructuring that can cause poor impacts on employee experience and morale. Instead, continue to invest in your employees, provide them with opportunities, and be supportive. Respect and recognize employees for their dedication to your company and hard work.

Having a tenured workforce allows your employees to bond and grow together. When top talent leaves, it can knock down confidence and productivity. Instead of employees building working relationships together, resignation can cause once productive teams to suffer. New relationships must be built, or else there will no longer be excellent tenured mentors to welcome new employees and help them get up to speed and grow their careers. Therefore, to keep employees from leaving, it is essential to keep up on their satisfaction and needs through surveys and crucial conversations.

Don’t wait to recognize the signs of burn-out with your workforce. Take a deep dive and look at employee wellness at your organization now to keep morale high. Open dialogue and candid employee feedback can help allow everyone at the organization to reach their full potential and live their best life personally and professionally. All the voices at your organization can come together to make an overall positive organizational and workplace culture that can evolve to meet employee needs.