How To Gather Employee Feedback You Can Actually Use

You’ve just finished a round of team meetings, and you’re feeling good. You’ve collected a mountain of feedback from your employees, but as you sift through the comments, you realize something’s off. The feedback is vague, unfocused, and doesn’t provide any actionable insights. You’re left wondering, "What do I do with all this?"

This scenario is all too common. Managers often collect feedback without a clear plan, leading to a pile of information that doesn’t actually help address performance issues or improve team dynamics.

Collecting quality feedback is essential for understanding employee satisfaction and driving positive change. When employees feel heard and valued, morale improves, and your organization thrives. However, gathering feedback that you can actually use is easier said than done. We’ve shared our best tips for collecting better employee feedback. Below, we’ll explore the importance of gathering the right kind of employee feedback, the best times to ask for it, and four practical tips to ensure you get the insights you need to make a real difference.

What Is Employee Feedback?

It’s an easy question to answer on the surface, but understanding employee feedback goes a bit deeper than you might think. Giving employees timely, focused, and effective feedback is known to improve employee engagement, but collecting feedback from them is just as important.

At its heart, employee feedback is team members’ thoughts and feelings about their work environment, company culture, and more. It can also encompass management, processes, work-life balance, or other aspects you hadn’t considered.

In many businesses, feedback goes down but not up. But when you encourage employees to speak up—and listen to what they have to say—you can strengthen bonds between management and the wider workforce. Giving employees opportunities to voice their thoughts can boost morale, triage workflow issues, and address sticking points before they become problems.

Why Is It Important To Collect Employee Feedback?

There’s no shortage of reasons to collect employee feedback. Whether it’s a general check-in or something more targeted, you can gain a lot of insight by simply asking employees what they think.

Some of the main benefits include:

• It makes team members feel heard and valued, as though their voice counts for something—which it should!
• It strengthens your relationships with your employees, especially when they see notable change or support on your part.
• It promotes team synergy, meaning you get more done together.

And while we don’t always want to admit we need it, employee feedback also brings awareness to your performance as a manager and helps you get ahead of issues or make necessary changes. It can also an opportunity to get a pat on the back, which helps you understand what your team thinks is going well. Creating a culture of feedback means your team can all get better together.

When Should You Ask for Employee Feedback?

In general, you should request employee feedback frequently—but the exact timing will depend on the type of employee feedback you're seeking. Just as giving frequent employee feedback helps your team members thrive, soliciting feedback from them regularly gives you the chance to be proactive, rather than react to feedback gathered a few times a year.

Employee feedback falls into three main categories:

• Interpersonal feedback
• Team feedback
• Organizational feedback

These levels are interconnected. For example, the trust and relationships you build at the individual or team level can give people the confidence to voice themselves at the organizational level.

However, it’s not always easy for people to put themselves forward. Sometimes, team members may want to remain anonymous or the time might not feel right. With that in mind, we’ve outlined a few general suggestions for when to ask for each kind of feedback.

Collecting Interpersonal Feedback

Weekly one-on-one meetings are a fantastic opportunity to create feedback loops between employee and supervisor. This can be a great chance to build team trust on the ground level and bolster relationships.

Knowing how to get employee feedback at the interpersonal level might feel tricky, but there are a lot of opportunities for it. Asking after you give an employee feedback can be a great equalizer and build on your relationship. If they’re the quiet type, times like this give you the opportunity to ask specific questions and source any feedback.

Collecting Team Feedback

While there are plenty of ways to collect team feedback, such as during any team meetings, or by email, it may be best to do so at specific milestones: after big announcements, at specific times (during an end-of-quarter review, for example), or following team events.

This team-level lens is best for gathering feedback from the team you’re overseeing, or those you’re working closely with. But it can be from teams adjacent to yours that you work with, to smooth out best practices. Team feedback can give you insight into your team’s dynamic and their day-to-day, and helps you build camaraderie.

Collecting Organization-Wide Feedback

Usually, organizational feedback will be collected by leadership or HR, often on an annual or biannual schedule.

This type of feedback looks at the wider business. It can be hard to feel the impact of this, but without employees' honest feedback, it's difficult to drive change and help your organization evolve.

As a manager, you can encourage your employees to voice themselves and share the results of any potential change. It’s an essential form of feedback, which can have a significant impact on how an employee feels.

4 Tips for Collecting Employee Feedback

It’s in your best interest to collect unfiltered and honest employee feedback, but you can’t always gauge whether an employee is being open. The only way to do it is to foster a communicative environment, where they feel supported and respected.

Here are a few tips to get you started.

1. Build Trust First

Probably the most important keystone to cultivate is trust. If employees have confidence in you, honesty comes a lot easier—but building trust isn’t easy or quick. There’s not some magical way to foster it either. If you’re honest with your team from the outset, always act on your word, and encourage your team members to do the same, you’ll be setting yourself up for success.

2. Ask the Right Questions

Collecting relevant and useful employee feedback is about asking the right questions; if you don’t, you may not get an answer at all! Usually, relevant questions or detailed surveys are better than catchall questions. Some form of guidance on what sort of feedback you’re looking for can prompt employees to give detailed responses. Asking for feedback without direction or purpose leaves them to consider feedback at the moment, and is usually not productive—assuming you don’t just end up with a quiet room.

3. Ensure Anonymity When Appropriate

Providing an anonymous method of feedback can offer a sense of security to an employee, especially for those who are shy or worried. There are plenty of people concerned about rocking the boat, who otherwise may stay quiet—even those that trust you. Giving employees the option for anonymous feedback ensures everyone gets the chance to share how they’re feeling.

Anonymous feedback isn’t always appropriate. If you’re wondering whether your survey should be anonymous, consider whether you’ll need to follow up with respondents or whether anonymity is even necessary. If you’re interested in your team’s honest impression of a guest speaker, anonymity is useful; if you’ve asked your team whether anyone has food allergies ahead of an off-campus team lunch, anonymity will cause more harm than good.

4. Implement Employee Feedback

There’s no point doing all this groundwork if you don’t use the data you’ve been given. In fact, failing to act can damage the trust you’ve spent time building.

Imagine a circumstance where several employees are having difficulties understanding the briefs they’re given. That may suggest that the team needs more guidance during brief creation. Stating clearly what the feedback is and what your plans are to address, then following through, doesn’t just solve the issue—it makes your team feel valued. Once they see their time isn’t being wasted and their words have an impact, you’re paving the way for trust.