3 key strategies to effectively use employee feedback in the workplace

To use employee feedback effectively in the workplace, you need to turn it from a one-off activity into a continuous, trusted dialogue. That means giving people simple ways to share their thoughts, being transparent about what you’re hearing and most importantly, acting on it. When feedback leads to visible change, employees feel valued, engagement grows and decisions become more aligned with what people actually need. Effective use of feedback isn’t just about collecting comments, it’s about listening with intent, responding with clarity and creating a culture where every voice helps shape the organisation.

Why employee feedback matters

In 2010, Kevin Ruck, renowned internal comms research and author, claimed that listening to employees was still not fully understood. Now, as we forge into the end of 2025, I would argue that the dial hasn’t shifted a great deal. Listening to employee feedback and doing something with it, is still something I rarely see done effectively. I confess to many giant eye rolls when I discover a workplace considers their annual pulse survey as their feedback loop. 

Yet when done right, employee feedback has a huge impact. It is no coincidence that some of the world’s most successful businesses (Google, IBM, Salesforce) make employee feedback part of their culture. The benefits are numerous: increased employee wellbeing, innovation, trust, advocacy…the list goes on. If your culture doesn’t yet have a feedback loop, that can certainly be improved upon. What we must avoid is becoming those who hear, but don’t show listening or action. This erosion of trust can give rise to employee cynicism which can be very difficult to bounce back from.

Employee feedback is one of the most powerful drivers of workplace success. When used well, feedback fuels:

• Higher engagement and wellbeing

• Greater innovation and problem-solving

• Stronger trust and psychological safety

• Better decision-making

• Improved employer reputation and advocacy 

But let’s keep this – as good feedback should be – solution focused. 

Here are 3 pillars to ensure your workplace effectively uses employee feedback. 

1. Start with the end in mind 

Before you measure, you must be clear on what matters and will make a difference to your workplace culture. Consider the following questions:

• What does the best workplace culture look like for your business? 

• What does the business require of its people to succeed? 

• How are you living up to your Employee Value Proposition (EVP)? 

There is no doubt that it is helpful to check in on employee engagement and happiness, but take it further by pinpointing what factors influence those feelings whilst moving you closer to the culture you need. Not only will this shift dials for your employees, it will also ensure that senior stakeholders see a robust business case behind your logic. Take a leaf from customer-facing functions who farm, analyse and act on customer feedback to continually improve their NPS (Net Promoter Score). Workplace culture should be no different by raising their e-NPS score. 

 2. Use technology to gather and understand feedback

Once you know the shifts you need to see, are you able to collect the data, measure it and do something with it?  

For larger or dispersed workforces, internal comms tools like employee apps or intranet platforms will be a great companion to help you to either create quickfire polls or build out employee surveys. You can tailor them to each segment of the workforce to ensure you get feedback that is relevant and specific to each job type, whether it’s frontline, HQ, part-time or remote staff you need to deep dive into. Keeping all of your insights within a secure platform means that it’s easily accessible at any time, plus, it’s up to you whether you encourage anonymity or require identifiable feedback to enable you to follow up with focus groups or responses.

Ensure you gather actionable feedback, both from all-employee events and small focus groups, but also have the ability to curate opinion and suggestions on an ad hoc basis in a time and place (virtually or in person) that works for the daily rhythms of employees. The latter is where you are most likely to get that in-the-moment data around opportunities and barriers to employee experience. In addition to this, ensure you have the right feedback loops baked into your people processes. For example, create a performance review structure that runs throughout the year, avoiding the dreaded annual appraisal many of us will know and hate.  

How to use technology effectively:

• Use employee apps or intranet platforms to run polls, surveys and pulse checks

• Tailor surveys to different workforce segments (frontline, hybrid, HQ, part-time)

• Store all insights in one secure, accessible platform

• Choose between anonymous or identified responses depending on the outcome you need

• Combine surveys with focus groups, quick polls and real-time input opportunities 

Tech and AI are your friends here because internal comms people (although often considered the jack of all trades!) are not always fully equipped with the tools or resources to analyse and use the data most effectively.  

3. Leadership determines feedback’s impact 

No doubt technology and AI will mean the data we can collect and analyse will revolutionise, but that data alone does not mean there is the intention to listen or change. Harvard Business Review beautifully summed this up in their recent article, ‘culture isn’t built by soliciting feedback—it’s built by how leaders respond when that feedback is hard to hear.’ There must still be human interpretation of the data and inspection of specific insights and company-specific nuance, rather than just pasting your employee feedback into an AI tool and actioning the suggested results straight away. 

Feedback-ready leaders must provide psychologically safe workplaces. This term gets bandied around a lot but for the sake of this post, we’re talking workplaces that genuinely embrace feedback because the leaders feel secure and safe enough themselves to listen, then walk the talk. It means 360-degree feedback that really is 360-degree feedback and not a half turn away when they don’t like what they hear. It means encouraging a culture who learns to give solution-based feedback because that’s what they see from their leaders. It means acknowledging you cannot lead alone. You need the many different minds alongside you and ensuring they feel safe to speak up.  

What feedback ready leadership looks Like

Key takeaway: Feedback only works when you act on it

Collecting employee sentiment isn’t enough. Organisations unlock potential when they:

• Listen consistently

• Analyse insights meaningfully

• Respond transparently

• Take visible action

• Involve leaders at every step

When these elements come together, employee feedback becomes one of the most powerful tools for cultural transformation and organisational success.

When you’ve listened to the employee feedback, you’ll identify what each group within the workforce has or requires, which will help you to tailor your approach accordingly. Use our internal audience persona template to guide you through the improvements based on feedback from each employee type across the organisation.