5 tips to collect employee feedback on your benefits

Do you know which benefits your employees find valuable? Which benefits they like the most? The least? Do you have the mechanisms in place needed to help collect this constructive feedback? Use the following five steps as a guideline to earn employee feedback to improve your company benefits package.

In addition to having a positive industry reputation and solid compensation, if you want your company to become or remain an employer of choice, studies prove that an excellent benefits package is a key component to that mission. Furthermore, encouraging employee feedback plays an important role in creating a benefits package that your employees will not only appreciate and enjoy, but will rave about to their family and friends.

Here are five simple steps you can implement within your organization on your mission to creating the best benefits package for your employees:

• 1) Listen. From the beginning, the priority is to listen to your employees. Your first reaction to employee criticism might be to respond defensively — and that’s normal. However, in order to reach your end goal, it’s important to solicit all types of feedback so you can start to identify themes and trends in order to work toward improvement. Recognize that feedback a process, then keep the conversation going.
• 2) Know when to refocus. Once you create a forum for your employees to share their ideas and opinions, you can gain valuable insight and start to prioritize which benefit offerings to examine and re-evaluate first. After you’ve determined the major areas where your package needs to improve, shift the discussion away from what’s failed in the past to establishing a plan for implementing new offerings for the future.
• 3) Celebrate success. Take moments to think about what you are doing well, to celebrate your successes. Many human resources professionals spend a lot of time putting out fires and fixing things, without reflecting much upon successes along the way. Rather than only talking about what needs to improve in your benefit offerings, take time to discuss what your plan does well. Use positive feedback as the foundation to build your new and improved benefits package.
• 4) Empower employees. Once you have those insights, it’s not enough to then go back to your leadership team with a list of what needs to be fixed. After listening and understanding to what employees have expressed in terms of improvement areas, ask for ideas on how to solve those issues. The leadership team should then be equipped to provide the support necessary to implement those solutions.
• 5) Involve others. When you’ve created trust by showing your department is open to hearing feedback, that’s a solid start, but it’s only the beginning. You now need to follow through in order to maintain that trust and truly experience a culture shift in your company. Ask your culture committee and leadership team for feedback in order to help you reach your goals for improving your company’s benefits package.

Ultimately, continue to stay motivated and focused with your goal of using employee feedback to generate the best benefits package you can offer. Not only will your employees be happy, but you will have also created a more positive company culture — and that is truly something to be proud of.

Are you looking for ways to collect feedback from your employees on their overall experience working for you? Have you tried retention interviews? Learn more in this episode of Benefits!

The information in this blog post is for educational purposes only. It is not legal or tax advice. For legal or tax advice, you should consult your own counsel.