What Would Happen If Asking for Employee Feedback Stopped Being an Annual Exercise in False Hope?

It's Monday morning, and somewhere in any given organization an employee, who we’ll call Jane, opens her inbox to find yet another invitation to complete the annual employee engagement survey. Jane lets out a familiar sigh. If you’re thinking she just dislikes surveys, you’re incorrect. The truth is that, while Jane appreciates being asked to share her opinions on a number of topics—such as work life, company morale, job satisfaction, and leadership—what frustrates her is something else entirely.

You see, Jane has completed surveys before—annually for each of the seven years she’s been with the company. She’s also volunteered to be on steering committees, attended listening sessions, and shared ideas during focus groups. Yet, from experience, Jane has now come to believe (rightfully so) that very little will change.

Over time, Jane has quietly concluded that providing honest feedback requires time and vulnerability, while remaining silent costs absolutely nothing. And that’s exactly what she intends to give the company this year—her silence. She confidently clicks to close the email, promptly deletes it from her inbox, and takes another sip of coffee.

Meanwhile, at almost the same moment, leaders in another organization are gathered around a conference table reviewing the results of their recent employee survey. The numbers matter, but they’re not the focus of the conversation. Instead, the VP of Operations, who we’ll call Pat, asks questions that require curiosity rather than defensiveness:

• “What are our people experiencing that we are not seeing?”

• “What obstacles prevent them from doing their best work?”

• “Which concerns demand immediate attention and represent longer-term opportunities to strengthen the organization?”

Both organizations asked for employee feedback. However, only one treated that feedback as valuable organizational intelligence. That difference has consequences that extend far beyond employee engagement scores. It influences trust, innovation, adaptability, decision-making, and ultimately an organization's ability to execute its strategy. This raises an important question.

What changes when leaders act on employee feedback instead of simply collecting it?

Every year, organizations invest significant time and money in measuring employee engagement. Annual surveys, pulse surveys, suggestion platforms, town halls, and listening sessions have become common features of organizational life. Yet despite these investments, employees frequently express skepticism about whether their feedback leads to meaningful action. That skepticism should concern leaders because the true employee voice will never create real value if feedback is gathered and remains trapped in the collection of information and data points—never to be analyzed or acted upon. The real value is actualized only when organizations choose to do something about what they learn.

This distinction is becoming increasingly important as organizations navigate rapid technological change, shifting workforce expectations, economic uncertainty, and growing complexity. Leaders cannot possibly observe everything happening across an organization from the executive suite. The people closest to customers, processes, systems, and daily operations often possess insights that senior leaders simply do not have. Employee feedback therefore represents far more than an engagement initiative. It provides leaders with access to information that otherwise remains hidden.

Research—particularly that of Kluger and Itzchakov, whose work synthesizes decades of listening research—reinforces this perspective. Rather than viewing listening as a soft interpersonal skill, scholars increasingly describe it as a leadership capability with measurable organizational consequences.

High-quality listening brings a cornucopia of positive outcomes for speakers, listeners, teams, and organizations. These benefits include superior job performance, better leadership, trust, intimacy, well-being, and reduced burnout. Surprisingly, though, listening and its potential outcomes have received relatively little attention within organizational psychology and organizational behavior. Moreover, while employers and recruiters prize workers and candidates with good listening skills, listening is mostly missing in management education (Kluger and Itzchakov, 2022).

This distinction matters because listening is not synonymous with hearing. Hearing occurs whenever information reaches the individual for whom it was intended. Listening requires attention, curiosity, interpretation, and a willingness to let new information influence one’s thinking. In organizational settings, listening also demands something more difficult: leaders must remain open to discovering realities that challenge their existing assumptions. That’s not always comfortable.

The Fastest Way to Silence Employee Voice Is to Ignore It.

Employee feedback frequently exposes inconsistencies between leadership intentions and employee experiences. Leaders may believe communication is clear while employees experience confusion. Managers may believe workloads are manageable while teams quietly absorb increasing levels of exhaustion. Executives may view organizational change as progressing smoothly while frontline employees encounter barriers that never appear in project dashboards.

None of these realities become visible simply because a survey was launched. They become visible when leaders choose to explore what employees are actually communicating to them. This idea aligns closely with the research of Elizabeth Morrison, whose work on employee voice emphasizes that organizations benefit when employees willingly share concerns, suggestions, observations, and ideas.

Studies in Germany have found that employee perceptions of how well their supervisors listen to them positively correlate with their organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Poor listening is associated with various indicators of undesirable organizational outcomes.

The association of listening with job performance has two implications. First, listening leads to positive performance outcomes. Good listeners also improve the performance of the speakers interacting with them. For example, subordinates whose managers listen well demonstrate higher OCB, higher creativity, and lower turnover intention (preceding perhaps actual voluntary turnover, detrimental to the organization).

The second implication is that listening is arguably a facet of job performance, even if it is not perceived or measured as such by organizations. According to one definition, job performance includes the “things that people actually do, actions they take, that contribute to the organization’s goals” (Campbell & Wiernik 2015, p. 48). Among the things employees do on the job is communicate. Regretfully, the prevailing view of communication as job performance (Campbell & Wiernik 2015) seems to focus only on sending messages (i.e., talking), ignoring the fact that communication is a two-way process (Morrison, 2022).

Employee voice helps organizations identify problems early, improve decision-making, stimulate innovation, and adapt more effectively to changing conditions. Yet Morrison also reminds us that speaking up is not automatic. Employees continually assess whether sharing their perspectives is likely to make a difference. When previous feedback has been ignored, minimized, or met with defensiveness, silence often becomes the safer and more rational choice. That silence can be surprisingly expensive.

Every Ignored Employee Survey Teaches People One Thing; and the Cost Is Higher Than You Think.

Organizations frequently mistakenly interpret the absence of complaints as evidence that everything is functioning well. In reality, employees may have simply concluded that raising concerns is unlikely to produce meaningful change. As a result, when problems persist but remain invisible to leadership, this creates an unintended cycle.

Employees notice issues affecting performance, customer service, collaboration, or quality. Leaders ask for feedback, employees respond honestly, and little visible action follows. The next time feedback is requested, participation declines, comments become less candid, or employees simply provide socially acceptable answers. Each cycle leaves leaders with less accurate information than the one before, making sound decisions increasingly difficult.

Eventually, the organization begins solving the problems it can see while remaining unaware of the ones that matter most. This is one reason employee engagement surveys sometimes disappoint leaders. Surveys themselves are not ineffective. The problem often emerges after the data has been collected.

Why Employees Stop Telling Leaders the Truth and What You Can Do About It

Huebner and Zacher (2021) examined what happens following employee surveys and found that follow-up activities play a decisive role in whether surveys contribute to meaningful organizational improvement. Discussing results with employees, interpreting findings collaboratively, developing action plans, communicating progress, and demonstrating visible leadership commitment all influence whether survey processes ultimately strengthen engagement.

Despite what we have discussed so far, surveys are only the beginning of the conversation. Employees naturally evaluate whether leaders take their responses seriously by observing what happens afterward. They notice whether managers acknowledge difficult findings instead of avoiding them. They notice whether priorities actually change. They notice whether leaders communicate progress, explain decisions, and remain transparent when improvements require time.

These observations shape something much larger than satisfaction with the survey itself. They shape organizational trust, which grows when employees a) see evidence that their perspectives matter and b) witness thoughtful decisions grounded in the realities they experience daily. Conversely, trust erodes when employees repeatedly invest their time providing thoughtful feedback only to encounter silence once the survey closes. Eventually, employees stop believing that their voices influence anything of significance. At that point, organizations lose access to one of their most valuable sources of insight.

Further, to be most effective, great care needs to be taken to ensure surveys are designed to do what they’re intended to do. It’s suggested that “...it might be more beneficial to use items developed for the specific context of an organization, rather than general organizational climate measures…[and] that items tailored to the specific context might be more beneficial than general items” (Huebner and Zacher, 2021).

Studies have shown a disconnect between…survey items and their significance as antecedents to the action planning process. It is reasonable to assume though that the questionnaires help participants structure their subjective feelings and guide subsequent action planning by providing relevant concepts for discussion. Also, the way the data is prepared by or for managers most likely also affects the subsequent action planning process (Huebner and Zacher, 2021).

For examples of how survey results can significantly impact action planning, consider that “teams led by managers with poor leadership skills benefit most from survey feedback interventions, but managers with low leadership ratings might be less likely to use the feedback, though they have the most need to do so” (Huebner and Zacher, 2021). Asking thoughtful relevant questions is part of the process.

Additionally , it’s clear that having processes in place to discuss feedback on work related matters presents an advantage not only to the organization but also to managers and supervisors. As it pertains to the effects [of interventions] on supervisor ratings, Huebner and Zacher (2021) found that “supervisor ratings also improved after the intervention…in comparison to all other measures (e.g., climate or resources).” 

From a change management perspective, this matters enormously.

It’s widely understood throughout the change management community that leaders and managers play a critical role as change agents when organizations are undergoing transformation. Change adoption and success depend on continuous feedback to understand how change is unfolding across different parts of the business. Formal project updates rarely capture the complete picture.

Employee feedback provides leaders with invaluable performance data. It helps identify environmental barriers, implementation challenges, unclear expectations, conflicting priorities and incentives, inefficient processes, inadequate resources, and behaviors that influence organizational performance.

Leaders who actively seek out, interpret, and respond to employee feedback gain opportunities to adjust their approach, recognize emerging resistance, and avoid unintended consequences while change is still underway. Small course corrections made early often prevent much larger problems from developing later. Organizations that fail to maintain these feedback loops frequently discover obstacles too late—after chaos sets in, budgets are blown, or adoption stalls.

Want Honest Feedback? Start Acting Like It Matters.

Employees rarely expect leaders to implement every suggestion exactly as proposed. They do, however, expect honesty, explanation, and evidence that their perspectives were considered. Even when leaders ultimately choose a different course of action, respectful dialogue reinforces psychological safety far more effectively than silence ever could.

Ultimately, organizations reveal their commitment to listening not through the number of surveys they conduct but through the consistency with which they transform information into action. Employees notice. They notice when leaders return to discuss results instead of quietly filing reports away. They notice when difficult conversations occur openly rather than being avoided. And they notice when action plans are shared, progress is communicated, and improvements become visible over time. These moments accumulate.

Prepare to play the long game. Over months and years, leaders have the ability to shape whether employees believe their organization values learning, accountability, and continuous improvement—or whether employee feedback is simply another administrative exercise completed once a year.

Perhaps the most important question leaders can ask after every survey isn’t, "What was our engagement score?" What if it’s "What did our people just teach us about our organization?" The answer to that question will reveal far more than any dashboard ever could.

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References

Huebner, L. A., & Zacher, H. (2021). Following up on employee surveys: A conceptual framework and systematic review. Frontiers in Psychology, 12, Article 689629. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.689629

Kluger, A. N., & Itzchakov, G. (2022). The power of listening at work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 9, 121–146. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-012420-091013

Morrison, E. W. (2023). Employee voice and silence: Taking stock a decade later. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 79–107. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-054654