Better performance, lower psychosocial risk, and fewer people quietly deciding to leave

If you’re like most leaders I've been talking to recently, you’ve got some clear aims for the next 12 months.

You want performance to improve across your organisation, you’re increasingly aware of psychosocial risk not just as a people issue but as a clear legislative requirement, and you really don’t want to be losing good people when there was a chance to do something earlier.

I feel like what's changed over the last few years is that these things are no longer separate conversations. The thing that gets in the way of someone performing well can just as easily become a source of psychosocial stress, and if that stress isn’t noticed or addressed, it often ends with that person quietly leaving the organisation. And don't rely on any of this being revealed in an exit interview as by that stage, people are ready to move on without burning any bridges or awkwardness.

Visibility

So for me, this is all about visibility.

You can’t improve performance if you don’t really understand what’s getting in the way. You can’t manage psychosocial risks (as they develop) if they can't be safely flagged (as they develop). And you can’t keep good people if the first clear signal is a resignation email.

Sidenote: Also, please remember that in Australia, psychosocial risk has moved firmly into the core of workplace responsibility. The regulators have been really clear that sustained workload pressure, lack of role clarity, poor support and weak communication are just some of the everyday hazards that need to be identified, monitored, and addressed in the same way physical risks are.

The question

This all raises a simple (but often) uncomfortable question when you stop and think about it.

How often are you actually getting open, honest insights from people about what’s really going on?

If you can't say with absolute confidence "X times a year" along with some concrete examples of really surprising comments, ideas, trends or risks that your staff have given you recently, then maybe there's some extra work you can do in this area.

In my experience, the leaders that do in fact answer this well, haven’t discovered some silver bullet. What they’ve done (over time) is to allow themselves to become super comfortable with receiving the insights that's needed to meet those aims we talked about at the start. The true visibility that will finally reveal the real performance blocks, psychosocial risks and reason(s) for staff turnover.

The approach

That usually shows up as giving people more chances to anonymously have their say, asking fewer questions and only on the things that genuinely matter right now, and being more open than ever on what is (or quite often isn't) happening with the staff feedback that’s been shared.

We recommend this approach here at Teamgage, because then feedback becomes a regular part of how work happens, and not this huge once-a-year event. Over time people learn that it's safe to be truly honest. When people can see that something actually changes as a result, even in small ways, trust builds naturally. Not in this polished, massive culture-program roll-out sense, but in a smaller, more regular, practical, everyday ways.

So here's a quick checklist:

• Find a way to hear from people regularly in a safe, secure, anonymous way
• Keep the questions short and focused on what actually matters right now
• Be clear about what will happen next (if anything) so feedback doesn’t disappear into a black hole

And if you’d like to see how the Teamgage platform can facilitate this for you, let us know.