Sentiment Matters: Gathering and Using Employee Feedback to Drive Innovation

It is often said that necessity is the driver of innovation. This adage is true yet successful business owners know it only tells part of the story. Feedback from employees, customers and others also catalyzes innovation, especially within the hospitality industry. Harri is here to help your business collect such feedback, analyze it and take meaningful action.

Harri Engage and Harri’s team communication tools are invaluable tools for gaining insight into everything from operations to the quality of service and ultimately keeping your dedicated employees engaged. 

When used properly, employee feedback triggers change and lasting success. This is your inside look at the connection between the employee experience and the guest experience.

The Essential Role of Employee Feedback in Hospitality Workplaces

Employee sentiment plays a critically important role in spurring innovation. Closely review employee feedback, put that information to use and you’ll transform the quality of your service and efficiency.

Understanding Employee Sentiment and Its Impact

Imagine walking a mile in the shoes of your hospitality staff. Every day, they interact with a diverse array of guests, handle various challenges, and witness firsthand the intricacies of your operations. This unique perspective is a goldmine for insights. When you ask for their feedback and carefully review their responses, you open the door to invaluable information that can significantly improve guest experiences.

Employee feedback goes beyond just pinpointing flaws. It’s a crucial tool for identifying areas ripe for innovation and enhancement. For example, a front-desk employee might have a brilliant idea for speeding up the check-in process, or a housekeeper might suggest a more efficient cleaning method. These insights, born from day-to-day experiences, are critical for continuous improvement.

Ultimately, listening only represents half of the feedback battle. Acting on suggestions is the most important part of this process. When you implement changes based on employee suggestions, you not only improve operational aspects but also boost morale and job satisfaction. This can lead to better employee retention rates, which is crucial in the hospitality industry known for high turnover.

Employee Engagement Survey: A Tool for Innovation

Employee engagement surveys are helpful tools for gathering actionable feedback. The subtleties of such surveys matter a great deal. Mind the structure of the employee engagement survey you pass out to your team and you’ll identify trends in employee responses.

Harri Engage: Facilitating a Feedback-Friendly Culture

Harri Engage encourages employees to engage in meaningful discourse. This tech tool stimulates a productive dialogue between employees and management that proves mutually beneficial to both parties. This transparency and openness can ultimately lead to meaningful improvements in both service quality and operational efficiency. 

Creating an Open Culture for Feedback

Utilize Harri Engage to the fullest and you’ll find it improves your retention rate, makes your team feel valued and maintains those all-important lines of communication. Your workforce will find that the best part is that they don’t need to download an additional application and they can provide quick suggestions within digital locations they already are every day. This is the consolidated app for gauging employee sentiment, schedule-checking and shift-swapping every hospitality business needs. 

In particular, Harri Engage is especially helpful for highlighting opportunities to help new hires receive the proper training in the initial weeks and months on the job. 

Harri Engage ultimately provides restaurant and hotel managers with the information necessary to know when the time is right to intervene and guide employees toward better outcomes.

Team Communication Tools: The Bridge to Employee Insights

Harri’s team communication tools make it easier to obtain ongoing feedback. Leverage these tools at your business and you’ll have the information necessary to act in response to employee insights.

Harri communication tools both unify and streamline communications, setting the stage for efficient teamwork. Our platform is a consolidated space for collaborations, dialogue and cooperation. Managers can even create custom message groups and channels for group messaging within a dedicated app that fosters collaboration to advance the collective interest. 

Harri communication tools make it easy to organize by location, employee responsibilities, roles and more. Upload media as desired and you’ll be able to transmit information with unparalleled efficiency. This is the workplace social network you’ve been waiting for.

Best Practices for Collecting and Implementing Employee Feedback

Let’s shift our attention to the most effective methods for collecting employee feedback to spur innovation in the workplace.

Effective Feedback Collection Methods

There are both indirect and direct approaches to collecting employee feedback. Some businesses have anonymous suggestion or feedback boxes in hallways or break rooms where employees can drop off handwritten notes in the spirit of collectivism. Other businesses distribute employee engagement surveys directly to employees, review the responses and react accordingly. 

Regardless of how you approach collecting employee feedback, prioritize anonymity so your employees don’t feel the need to lie or tell half-truths. Allowing employees to remain anonymous promotes transparency and allows them to be much more forthright when responding to questions. 

Engage in active listening after posing questions to employees. Continue to ask employees for ideas and input to get a sense of how they would change operations or other aspects of the business for improved engagement, customer service and profitability.

In particular, it is important to listen to those who work as front-line staffers as these hardworking individuals have their fingers on the metaphorical pulse of the organization. 

Front-line workers understand what customers desire, what approaches are optimal and the inefficient use of resources. Front-line staffers also provide invaluable insight regarding how to modify alterations for maximum efficiency. Leverage the information plucked through active listening, surveys, suggestions boxes and more, put that information to use and you’ll eventually notice an impact in employee morale as well as the bottom line. As the service economy evolves, it’s never been more important to prioritize meeting the needs of your frontline workforce to the same or even greater extent as back-office employees. 

Above all, communicating an open-door policy at your organization is the best way to ensure feedback is solicited cross-functionally and across all workforce levels. Make it clear that your managers, human resources professionals, supervisors and others are always willing to engage in a constructive dialogue. 

The primary benefit of an open-door policy is to obtain insightful feedback in real time, ideally when staffers desire to be heard. It is during these important moments that employees’ true feelings and thoughts about operations are revealed. 

Though it might not always be possible to halt the flow of work to engage in an open-door discussion with staffers, the opportunity for such a discussion should be available within a reasonable period of time. If necessary, create an easily accessible calendar that employees can access to schedule a prompt open-door discussion with a manager, supervisor or human resources. 

Acting on Feedback: Success Stories

Harri is proud to have made a quantifiable difference to the operational efficiency and employee turnover rates of hotel and restaurant groups across the globe. The Harri team met with the Chesterford Group to obtain feedback on how our tech platform improved their operational efficiency. Both employees and management reported the platform made it easy to obtain feedback that spurred both change and innovation. It is these changes that made a monumental difference in the quality of guest experiences. 

The Chesterford team points out how the use of Harri maximized manager time efficiency, empowering them to use their extra time to focus on problem-solving. This is the forward approach every business needs to maximize operational efficiency and employee engagement for better outcomes.

Leveraging Employee Insights for Long-Term Success

The true power of employee feedback lies not just in its collection but in its application towards long-term success. Leveraging these insights effectively transforms workplace dynamics, improves service quality, and drives innovation.

The journey from gathering feedback to implementing change is crucial. It’s about converting raw, unfiltered employee insights into actionable strategies that align with business goals. Regularly analyzing this feedback helps identify patterns and areas needing attention, allowing for strategic planning and informed decision-making.

Creating a culture of continuous feedback is essential for sustained growth. Regular touchpoints, whether through digital platforms like Harri or in-person meetings, ensure that feedback is not just a one-off exercise but a continuous loop of communication. This approach keeps the team engaged, responsive, and aligned with the evolving needs of the hospitality industry.

Give the Harri platform some time to make an impact in your business and you’ll find it provides extensive long-term benefits for both employees and your restaurant, hotel or other business. Be patient as the journey from employee feedback collection to analysis and implementation plays out. This process will take some time and work yet that effort and patience is handsomely rewarded in the end.

Transform Your Operations and Engagement with Harri

Capitalize on employee insights and your business will make meaningful progress toward fulfilling its true potential. Insights driven by employees provide a meaningful strategic advantage that makes the business as a whole that much more competitive. It is the collective’s competitiveness that ultimately determines the fate of every hospitality industry enterprise.

If you own or manage a hotel, restaurant or other customer-facing business, your organization will greatly benefit from the Harri platform. Human resources professionals at hospitality businesses also report the Harri platform has helped their company improve employee engagement, heighten retention and improve the customer experience.

We invite you to explore Harri’s employee experience platform yourself to get an idea of how it transforms the approach to employee feedback, engagement and the customer experience. 

Request a Demo today and you’ll quickly find out why more than 20,000 hotels and restaurants employing millions of hardworking employees trust the Harri platform.

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