As our head of HR ran through the results of the annual employee survey, one metric stood out: Participation rate in the survey had dropped from the high 70s to just 69%. That meant one in three people’s voice wasn’t included.
She encouraged everyone to share their opinion, even if they feel they don’t have much to say or that the survey isn’t relevant to them. And on the next slide, she perfectly underscored why. The slide showed a graphic of milestone markers, the kind you might see on a map, along with some of the improvements HR had made in the last year. She ran through some of them, and then she said: “Without your feedback, we would not have a roadmap.” That really hit me.
No matter what you’re working on, you should always talk to your customers. But even if you don’t, in marketing, product development, and strategy, you can always make up a plan out of thin air. It might not be a good one, but you can manufacture a roadmap nonetheless. In HR, an almost entirely internal function, you can’t do that—and if you try, everyone will immediately know you have no clue what you’re doing. Of course, plenty an HR department attempts so regardless. Thankfully, ours is not one of them.
There’s nothing wrong with getting new ideas from books, Youtube, or experts in your industry. But an HR department which starts with books instead of people will always miss the mark. Fill in your surveys, and keep asking that one, ever pertinent question: What—or who—is it for?
