Want the truth? Outsource.
Employee listening mechanisms, such as engagement surveys and focus groups, play a crucial role in understanding your employees and developing a strategy for company improvement. Unfortunately, too many employees are hesitating when it comes to being fully transparent with their feedback. Early career employees, who may be entering the workplace with higher levels of anxiety and mistrust than previous generations, especially need to feel a sense of safety before sharing. One effective solution is leveraging an external partner, not only to administer your listening mechanisms, but also to build trust with employees.
As I engage with companies to better understand their early career employees or their new manager population, there are a few components that are critically important to the process in order to obtain honest, actionable feedback.
1. Build trust early
Trust between the external party and employees is essential, and it can’t be built through emails alone.
Employees need a human connection to feel comfortable sharing openly. Hosting a kick-off meeting allows me to introduce the process, explain how feedback will be handled, and—most importantly—answer employees’ questions directly.
This transparent approach sets the foundation for psychological safety, ensuring employees know their voice matters and their opinion respected.
2. Clearly communicate anonymity
When it comes to anonymity, employees like details. They want to feel a sense of control over how their responses will be protected and used. Establishing confidentiality from the outset is non-negotiable.
Explicitly outline the terms of confidentiality in the contract between the external coach and the employer. You can even share a copy of that section of your contract.
Share insights into the process for sharing information with the company. For example, I may tell employees that a feedback theme is not shared with the company unless it has been stated by at least five individuals—eliminating the risk of "one-person said" disclosures that are more easily identifiable.
3. Don’t Learn Too Much, Too Soon
Even with the best intentions, internal teams can introduce unintended bias into survey design or data interpretation. External parties can accidentally do this as well.
The more information I have upfront about a company’s employees, culture, previous survey results or workplace challenges, the higher the risk of unconsciously framing questions or analysis in ways that align with existing narratives rather than revealing true employee sentiment.
Staying underinformed before launching listening mechanisms helps me remain less biased, allowing employees to define their experiences rather than validating preexisting assumptions.
4. Create a Feedback Loop That Drives Action
Surveys and focus groups should never be seen as one-time transactions—they must feed into real change.
Employees need to see action and how it connects to their feedback to believe the process is meaningful.
External parties can help translate insights into action by offering unbiased recommendations and even supporting the implementation of action items.
Final Thoughts
Listening to employees isn’t just about collecting data—it’s about creating a workplace where people feel safe, heard, and valued. By leveraging an external partner to prioritize anonymity, foster trust, reduce bias and ensuring actionable outcomes, companies can unlock powerful insights that drive real change.
If you are interested in finding external partner to help with employee listening, feel free to the leverage the Contact page to have a conversation on how Taber Coaching can support your needs.