How to Turn Feedback Into Action: Enhancing Employee Engagement Through Listening

The most successful, profitable businesses don’t just dish out orders from the top—they listen to their people and build company cultures filled with trust and dialog. Companies recognized for their culture strategy outperform market competitors by four times, according to Great Place to Work. Alternatively, companies that fail to address key drivers of disengagement could forfeit up to $56 million annually. 

The connection is clear. Organizations that cultivate great workplace cultures achieve stronger business outcomes. And employee listening sits at the heart of any great culture. When organizations actively seek out and act on employee feedback, they create environments where people feel valued. This blog explores how businesses can use employee listening as a strategic advantage to drive culture and performance.

What is employee listening?

Employee listening is the practice of collecting and responding to feedback from employees. This process plays a critical role in driving engagement, retention, and overall business success. While employee listening is valuable in any type or size of organization, it’s especially important in growing businesses that can use the feedback to proactively address workforce concerns as the business scales. 

Employee listening falls into two main buckets: passive and active listening. 

Passive listening 

Passive listening occurs when managers and leaders absorb information from their employees; for example, they might pick up on collective sentiment during team meetings and choose to act on it or report this feedback higher up the chain of command. With passive listening, there is no formal feedback collection mechanism in place to extract these insights—it’s casual and off the cuff. But some workers can fall into passive listening traps that negatively impact employee engagement:

• Pretend listening, where we want others to think we’re listening, but in reality, our minds are elsewhere.
• Selective listening, where we focus on specific parts of a conversation, waiting to hear what we want instead of absorbing the full message.
• Competitive listening, where we listen primarily to respond rather than to understand. Instead of digesting what the speaker is saying, we focus on how we can counter or assert our own perspective.

Active listening 

Active listening is more strategic in its approach. Companies committed to listening to their people use a formal process for collecting valuable input, then analyze any trends and take action on the insights. This isn’t a one-and-done event or an annual check-in; effective listening happens continuously throughout the year, gaining feedback on general cultural topics or specific initiatives. Some common feedback topics include: 

• Employee engagement
• Workplace Culture
• Future vision
• Customer, ethics, and values orientation
• Growth and development
• Change and innovation

Why employee listening is essential for retention

Retention is one of the biggest challenges employers face today. Employees want to work in an environment where they feel heard, valued, and empowered to contribute. When this is lacking, they are far more likely to seek opportunities elsewhere. 

Research shows that 53% of employees would be open to quitting, with 3.3 million employees leaving their jobs in October 2024 alone. It's clear that organizations need to act fast to bolster their retention strategies and understand what is driving these voluntary departures. 

The good news is that when companies excel in employee experience and give their people a voice, 89% of employees would recommend their employer to others, reinforcing the link between workplace culture and long-term commitment.

Workplace flexibility also plays a significant role in retention. When employees have a say in where they work, they are more likely to stay. Only 43% of employees restricted to employer-assigned locations express a willingness to remain long-term, whereas this number rises to 60% when employees have workplace flexibility.

Overall, employees want their feedback to shape where and how they work. By collecting and analyzing it, companies can reduce turnover and boost their chances of business success. 

3 real-life examples of employee listening in action 

The following companies use structured feedback to understand more about employee sentiment:

Boba Tea Company 

Boba Tea Company needed a way to boost employee communication with its frontline workers. After adopting UKG technology, the organization has enhanced employee engagement across a workforce of 175 employees in 14 different locations. The move led to a 23% increase in sales and a more transparent workplace culture. 

Heartland Motor Company 

Heartland Motor Company, a parent company for auto dealerships and car washes, wanted to give its frontline employees a voice, enabling them to collaborate better with each other and leadership. Heartland adopted UKG to collect regular survey data using modern AI and natural language processing (NLP) technology. 

Tina Barte, vice president of HR for Heartland Motor Company, says, 

"UKG has generated amazing outcomes for our people with technology that allows us to meet them where they are by soliciting feedback — and then taking action on that feedback — to elevate our culture and build trust as well as a deepened sense of belonging."

First Horizon Bank 

First Horizon Bank faced challenges with its annual Climate Survey — a process that took 6-7 months and required extensive manual effort as it was distributed to 5,000 employees across 250 branch locations. 

To streamline this process, the bank adopted UKG to enable real-time feedback, automated reporting, and easy data access for managers. The transition was completed in two weeks, significantly improving efficiency and employee engagement. Employees appreciated the survey’s ease of use, while HR gained better control over data analysis and insights, fostering a more responsive and transparent workplace culture. 

4 steps to turn feedback into action

Turn employee feedback into meaningful action using the following steps: 

Step 1: Collect meaningful feedback

Employee input keeps organizations attuned to workplace concerns and engagement trends. There are multiple ways to extract these valuable insights from your workforce, including: 

• Using regular employee surveys, pulse surveys, or topic-specific questionnaires to capture structured feedback.
• Encouraging employees to share real-time insights through digital platforms, chat tools, or suggestion boxes.
• Committing to regular one-on-one meetings and team discussions where employees feel comfortable sharing honest feedback with their managers.
• Hosting exit and stay interviews to refine retention strategies. 

Step 2: Analyze data and identify key trends 

Sitting on a pile of feedback data isn’t enough. To extract value from the feedback you’ve collected, it’s essential to analyze responses and uncover patterns. Leveraging technology can streamline this process, making it easier to connect feedback to real business outcomes. Do this by:

• Using analytics tools: Features such as sentiment analysis and trend tracking can pinpoint any recurring themes.
• Comparing results across departments, teams, and demographics: Zoom into the data and understand if certain groups experience particular concerns; for example, this could reveal a problem with a specific manager or uncover a serious culture issue.
• Correlating feedback with business outcomes: You might cross-check your feedback data with other important metrics like turnover rates, absenteeism, or productivity for deeper insights. 

Step 3: Take timely, visible action 

One of the biggest reasons employees disengage from giving feedback is the perception that "nothing changes." Taking swift, visible action demonstrates commitment and builds a culture of trust where employees believe in the process and can see tangible results from the insights they provide. Achieve this by: 

• Delivering quick wins: Address small, easy-to-implement changes first to show how you’ve responded to the feedback. For example, you might update your meeting policies or improve your communication tools.
• Identifying the most pressing concerns: You won’t be able to tackle everything at once, so prioritize a shortlist of three to five issues and then take action on them.
• Developing longer-term initiatives: Implement structural changes, such as career development programs, leadership training, or flexible work policies based on employee concerns.
• Involving employees in the process: Don’t be scared to ask for follow-up guidance. Create focus groups or employee committees to shape and implement changes. 

Step 4: Communicate back and reinforce trust 

A transparent feedback loop encourages employees to continue participating in surveys and discussions. Communicating results and actions builds this culture of trust and reassures them that their voices matter. Achieve this by: 

• Sharing insights openly: You might publish survey summaries and key takeaways in town halls, company newsletters, or updates on Slack or Teams.
• Recognizing your employees: Remember to highlight how employee feedback directly led to positive changes.
• Maintaining an ongoing feedback cycle: Encourage continuous check-ins alongside your surveys by making sure your employees know they can provide feedback at any time. 

Enhance your employee listening practices with these tools

An effective employee listening strategy needs the right technology to collect, analyze, and act on feedback efficiently. The following solutions can help organizations gain meaningful insights while reducing administrative workload.

UKG Ready People Insights

UKG Ready People Insights uses predictive AI to help HR leaders proactively understand and improve employee engagement. This tool provides:

• Quick flight risk detection to identify employees at risk of leaving. The feature analyzes the causes and provides recommendations for re-engagement.
• Versatile sentiment analysis to monitor employee sentiment throughout the employee lifecycle, from recruitment to performance reviews, ensuring decisions are data-driven.
• Actionable benchmarks comparing internal trends against industry norms. This highlights outliers and offers insights for making impactful changes.

By integrating AI-driven analytics, UKG Ready People Insights enables organizations to take proactive steps in improving employee experience.

UKG Ready Surveys

Employee feedback is only as valuable as the information you collect and your ability to understand the details. UKG Ready Surveys streamlines the feedback process with:

• Automated, intuitive survey building, enabling you to easily create and distribute surveys with pre-built templates.
• Seamless accessibility so employees can participate on any device, ensuring convenience and higher response rates.
• Advanced analytics and sentiment tracking that identifies trends, measures engagement levels, and assesses workforce morale in real time.

Great Place To Work Hub 

The Great Place To Work Hub within UKG Ready helps organizations measure, analyze and improve their workplace cultures. It integrates insights from the Trust Index Survey and other sources to provide a comprehensive view of the employee experience. The platform allows companies to:

• Compare your workplace culture against leading organizations using decades of Great Place To Work benchmarks and Trust Index survey results.
• Strengthen hiring, development, and retention strategies by building a culture of trust and belonging.
• Gain real-time insights by identifying opportunities for improvement with advanced monitoring and reporting capabilities that track engagement over time.

Effective employee listening is people-focused

Organizations can further enhance the success of their employee listening initiatives by focusing on some of the following best practices:

• Provide anonymous feedback mechanisms: Employees don’t always feel comfortable sharing feedback with their managers or leaders for fear of repercussions. Giving them the option to provide anonymous insights, and explaining how this anonymity works in practice, will encourage higher feedback participation and more detailed information.
• Ensure your listening approach is inclusive: To obtain all the benefits of employee listening, organizations must design a strategy that captures a wide range of perspectives across all roles, departments, and demographics. This means ensuring that remote, frontline, and office-based employees have equal opportunities to share feedback, proactively engaging underrepresented groups, and using multiple feedback formats to accommodate different communication styles.
• Follow through on feedback: Collecting feedback is just the beginning. Communicating “You Said, We Did” updates reinforces trust and encourages ongoing participation in listening initiatives.

Are you ready to evaluate or develop your employee listening strategy? Try a suite of tools that will extract meaningful feedback from your workforce by taking a free UKG Ready product tour today.