Newmeasures: Insights for an exceptional workforce
CATEGORIES: EMPLOYEE LISTENING
Employee Listening in 2025: Insights from Our Client Interviews
- Wendy Mack, Vice President
Our mission at Newmeasures is to help people within organizations listen to one another so they can thrive – both as individuals and collectively. We know that by prioritizing employee feedback and driving meaningful change over time, organizations can create better employee experiences and drive positive business outcomes. We also know that the job of the employee listening leader (or program owner) isn’t easy and were curious to learn what truly motivates our clients to do this work.
Over the past several months, I interviewed 20 of our clients to learn about the state of employee listening in their organizations. These interviews revealed valuable insights into why our clients prioritize listening to their employees and the benefits they’ve experienced. Let’s dive into what we learned.
Why Our Clients Listen
A key theme I heard in the interviews was that as companies grow, the HR team doesn’t want to lose the sense of feeling personally connected to their employees. When walking around and checking in with everyone on a 1:1 basis is not realistic, employee listening helps the HR team stay close to what employees are thinking and feeling.
Our clients also emphasized the importance of creating a positive work environment and delivering exceptional employee experiences. Here are some key reasons they prioritize employee listening:
To enhance the overall employee experience
To gather feedback on strengths and areas for improvement
To ensure alignment with cultural pillars
To strengthen their Employee Value Proposition (EVP)
To understand and respond to employee needs
As one client put it, “Employees are our lifeblood. We want to create an environment where people want to stay.”
Wins from Employee Listening
Clients reported several significant wins resulting from their employee listening initiatives:
Increased psychological safety, with employees feeling comfortable providing feedback
Improved trust, as employees see action taken based on their input
Leadership engagement, with executives relying on survey results for decision-making
Demonstrated value to the business
For one client, the success of the employee listening program led to their promotion as the first Employee Experience Leader in the organization’s history, demonstrating the value placed on this work.
The Power of Data in Decision-Making
One of the most impactful outcomes of employee listening programs has been the shift towards data-driven decision-making. Clients highlighted how real-time insights have enabled them to identify needs and make informed decisions quickly. Many others stressed that listening data has helped them prioritize limited resources and focus on what matters most. The image to the right depicts a few of the most memorable quotes.
Progress Over Time
Another interesting trend emerged from our interviews regarding the evolution of employee listening programs over time. Clients repeatedly used words like “it’s been a journey” as they reflected on their experiences. While the specifics varied, we started to see a pattern in their stories and timelines. In general, we learned that it takes most organizations several years to grow their employee listening program from running an annual engagement survey to ultimately driving priorities and demonstrating impact. The pattern tended to look like this:
At Newmeasures, we often refer to this evolution as moving from “projects to programs.” We’ve seen that client teams who have the patience, skills, and support to overcome early stage challenges eventually experience positive outcomes such as enhanced leadership support. Our most successful clients shared sentiments such as:
“Leaders now understand the importance of employee experience and its impact on engagement.”
“Management is more willing to listen and value employee input.”
“Employee listening has become institutionalized, with discussions at the board level.”
A huge win for me personally was hearing one interviewee, who happens to be the CEO of their organization, say: “3 to 4 years ago I would have said, I don’t have time for surveys. Now I believe that listening is part of the work of leading.”
Challenges in Employee Listening
While employee listening initiatives have yielded numerous benefits, they also come with their own set of challenges. The interviews revealed that difficulties tend to differ depending on where an organization is in terms of their employee listening maturity.
For companies who are newer to employee listening, the challenges most often cited are building trust, increasing participation rates, overcoming analysis paralysis, and bridging the gap between survey teams, HR Business Partners, and leaders to take action on employee feedback.
In contrast, many of the clients I interviewed have been gathering and acting on employee feedback for several years. At this later stage of maturity, the challenges tended to cluster around dealing with large volumes of data, managing stakeholders (i.e., senior leaders), and action planning follow-through and follow-up.
"We are Drowning in Data"
One of the challenges raised is managing the overwhelming volume of feedback. For instance, some organizations receive up to 20,000 comments, making it difficult to read and analyze all the data. Other companies conduct multiple types of surveys plus stay or exit interviews which both yield more qualitative feedback than can be absorbed.
This challenge wasn’t a surprise. Paradoxically, the increase in employee listening technology threatens its practical value. Although technology has simplified the collection of data, the real challenge lies in making sense of it and integrating it into a coherent strategy.
Integrating AI into survey tools can help save time and extract meaningful insights, but several clients are struggling to balance organizational hesitance about AI with the need for efficiency. In particular, many interviewees mentioned having difficulty persuading executives to employ new techniques. Which brings us to theme number two…
"My Leaders Are Making Me Crazy"
For more than a third of interviewees, managing politics without formal authority is an ongoing struggle. Interpreting and acting on survey results can be complex, especially when navigating egos and helping leaders see results as information rather than judgment. Leaders often experience analysis paralysis, causing delays in decision-making. We also heard about executives who resist transparency and are reluctant to share results widely within the organization. Balancing employee wants with other business needs and dealing with constant business pivots affecting survey relevance are additional obstacles.
"We Are Great at Planning Action but Not Great at Follow-Through"
One particularly bright spot for me in these interviews was learning that the clients we have worked with year over year are not reporting challenges with initiating action planning. For the most part, they don’t experience the analysis paralysis or role confusion that plagues clients who are new to employee surveying. Nearly all the organizations represented utilize a combination of organization-wide central action teams coupled with local action planning at the business unit, site, function, or even team level. Many have trained their people leaders and managers to use their survey platform for creating action plans.
While it’s great news that companies are initiating and orchestrating action planning, several reported that follow-through on those plans is a challenge for a variety of reasons. Managers’ skills and comfort levels in sharing and discussing results can vary. Integrating engagement into managers’ regular responsibilities and holding them accountable without over-relying on human capital teams is another hurdle.
Lastly, a third group of interviewees told me that they do successfully take action but that their biggest hurdle comes after changes are implemented. I repeatedly heard that closing the communication loop and keeping employees informed of actions taken is essential but often difficult.
“Employees don’t understand some changes take time. We need to close the loop with employees and let them know who is owning what.”
“One of our big challenges is helping employees know what we are working on and keeping it top of mind. I want people to realize listening is about a constant, continuous, ongoing loop of feedback at various moments in time.”
Overcoming Obstacles & Addressing the Challenges
My interviews took place from September through November 2024. Serendipitously, the Nov-Dec issue of Harvard Business Review included an article by Ethan Burris, Benjamin Thomas, Ketaki Sodhi, and Dawn Klinghoffer titled Turn Employee Feedback into Action. Making sense of overwhelming amounts of data, having to deliver tough feedback to resistant leaders, and closing the loop on actions taken were three of the seven challenges described. Fortunately, the authors share solutions and success stories that echo what we have seen in our own work. Ultimately, my message to employee listening program owners is: You are not alone. Each of these challenges, while difficult, are surmountable.
We are confident in this statement because of the success stories we heard from clients who recognized that building a true listening program takes time. We helped one client formulate a listening strategy in 2022. In 2024 she reported:
Our team is happy to share resources, advice, and techniques. In addition, the interview results are helping us develop new solutions such as our Post-Action Change Communication offering. Best of all, I believe, is the fact that there are leaders like you who are overcoming these challenges and achieving phenomenal success.
Wendy Mack has been helping business and HR leaders transform their organizations for more than two decades. She is the author of numerous books and articles on the topics of leadership, learning, change, and communication. Connect with Wendy on LinkedIn.