You’ve just lost a key employee. Everything seemed to be OK with him, yet he is quitting. Why? You recently added a new employee benefit at great expense to the company, but employees are complaining. Why? For the third straight month productivity has declined even though better systems and processes were just implemented. Why?

It seems that the more you try to improve things for your company and employees, the more problems are created. What are your employees thinking?

How can you find out what your employees are thinking, and frankly, why should you care? Well, when turnover increases, productivity decreases, and employees generally seem unhappy, you need to find out why...and fast! And your employees probably have the answers. So how do you find out what they are thinking? Frankly, the easiest way is simply to ask them.

Employees are a great source of information. They are often the closest to your production, services, and customers. They often see problems before you do, hear about issues earlier, and have ideas that can improve overall company performance. Yet in to many situations, employees will never bring the information to you unless you ask for it. So how do you ask for it?

There are a number of effective ways. Tom Peters made famous the acronym MBWA (Management By Walking Around). By being visible and LISTENING to what your employees are saying, you will learn so much. But you must do it consistently, care about what they are saying, be open to them, avoid being defensive, follow-up where appropriate, and do what you promise. The key to getting people to talk to you is trust...and trust doesn’t just happen, it is earned.

Other methods to open up communications include attitude surveys, where employees respond anonymously to a questionnaire. Attitude surveys, in fact, are probably one of the best tools managers have for taking a barometer reading of what is happening in the workplace at any given point. Listening sessions are round table discussions between a group of employees and a key manager. In these sessions employees are free to discuss any item they choose and the manager’s role is to listen and respond...not to defend. Finally a fourth tool is a focus group, where a manager will assemble a group a employees to discuss a particular issue.

There are many other tools to open up communications and to find out what your employees are thinking. The key is to find a method that you and your employees are comfortable with using and then to integrate this methodology into your normal everyday business process. If it is regular and genuine, and if employees trust you, then communication will flow.

When managers truly know what their employees are thinking, then dramatic things occur. Besides improved understanding, companies often experience greater employee retention, productivity, morale and communications. That’s why you should care!

Rick Dacri is an organizational development consultant, coach and featured speaker at regional and national conferences. Since 1995 his firm, Dacri & Associates (http://www.dacri.com) has focused on improving the performance of individuals and organizations. Rick publishes a monthly newsletter, the Dacri Report (http://www.dacri.com/enewsletter.htm) with the intent to provide clients and friends critical information on issues that impact them, their organization and their employees. Rick can be reached at 1-800-892-9828, or [email protected].

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