Front Line Feedback

Domain: Managing Others - Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Where do you source your ideas for process improvement and innovation?

Hopefully it's from the front-line employees who are actually doing the work in question.

Too often, leadership teams sit in closed-door meetings discussing ideas and proposed changes for work they don't perform or directly experience each and every day.

Don't get me wrong, managers and leaders absolutely should have a say into these decisions, often the final say. Our recommendations is simply to ensure that you are getting insights from those closest to the work before decisions are made. Today, we'll provide some tips on how to go about doing just that…

Communicate prior

The first step is to let the team know you'll be meeting with each of them in an effort to evaluate your processes. Let them know that you'll have a ton of questions as you are making a point to avoid assumptions. Questioning everything is your best chance to ask the "dumb questions" that often leads to great insight.

All and individually

We've already alluded to this, but you want to try to meet with every employee that does the work in question. This is going to make it easier to get the full picture and identify trends.

If you have hundreds of employees performing the same exact function, this might be a little more challenging, but it's not impossible. For instance, you could have front-line managers conduct interviews in these situations.

We don't recommend group interviews. What often happens in group interviews is that more reserved employees will simply go-along with what others are saying and you'll miss the opportunity for their honest insight.

Why?

Once you starting conducting these interviews and asking all of your questions, be sure to ask for the reasoning behind their answers. Why do they do it this way? Why do they recommend doing it another way? This will help you better understand context.

Be on the lookout for red flags like "This is how we've always done it". Don't penalize or shame the employee for this answer. Instead, use it as a signal that there may be a significant opportunity here for more intentioned process design.

Identify

Once you've met with everyone, identify trends and differences in their feedback. How do these trends and differences stack-up to documented procedures? We're not assuming the procedures are optimal here, we're simply noticing whether there is alignment between what is documented and what actually happens.

Circle back

Once you've had the time to review all feedback (and trends), meet with the team to discuss observations and solutions. This is the opportunity to have them engaged in problem solving based on their own recommendations.

Even if some recommendations are not feasible, it's valuable to acknowledge and explain why. That way, employees know they were still heard and that their feedback was fairly considered.

Thank you for reading. My hope is always that you've found something helpful and easy to implement.

This week’s action items:

1. Give your team a heads-up that you'll be conducting these process-based feedback sessions.

2. Make every effort to meet with each employee individually.

3. Understand the why behind their behaviors, observations and suggestions. Be on the lookout for "we've always done it that way".

4. Review the feedback to identify trends and discrepancies.

5. Circle back with your team to start a collaborative solutioning process.