Workforce Management Featured Article
Workforce Management Success Depends on Listening
How well do you listen to your employees? As humans, we think we listen to a lot of things. If we break down the conversations we have on a daily basis, were we truly listening to each person, or merely taking what we wanted from the conversation? When it comes to listening to the employee base as a way to positively affect workforce management, understanding how well we listen is vital.
To help along the way, Listening Impact has introduced Listening Intelligence. This set of principles and practices is designed to leverage the collective brain power of each employee through improved listening skills. The idea is centered on the potential leading organizations have when listening is a strategic core value and the company culture is based on innovation and productivity.
"So many of the negative issues that arise within business, education and government stem from bad communications that starts with poor listening and results in a culture of distrust," said Marian Thier, founder and partner of Listening Impact, in a press release. "With Listening Intelligence, we help individuals and organizations understand the depth of listening, the positive impact it generates when embraced as a corporate value, and the steps needed to elevate listening into a strategic asset."
While true listening could easily be set aside as a needless activity among the executive team, the cost of poor communication was actually estimated by the Holmes Report to exceed $37 billion per year. If you’re still not convinced that listening has anything to do with the cost of operations, look at General Motors (News - Alert). An ignition switch problem was noticed long before it affected the lives of consumers.
In this case, voices may have been quieted or the information never got to the right people. The point is poor communication meant the company couldn’t prevent 21 deaths, more than 500 injuries and a payout of more than $400 million in victim compensation claims. The communication taking place in your environment may not have this kind of impact, but it can still affect the bottom line.
In the area of workforce management, these solutions are designed to streamline forecasting, scheduling and data capture of the employee base throughout the organization. But the solution can’t exist in a vacuum. If you simply plug in information based on the needs of the organization and ignore the needs of the workforce, the outcomes won’t improve. A dictatorship within the employee base won’t give you better performance or happier customers.
The point is, your employees have a lot to say that delivers value to your processes. It’s important to not only give them a voice, but also truly listen to what they have to say and incorporate it into the way you do business. When this happens, you demonstrate that you value their input and they are an important part of the team.
Edited by Stefania Viscusi