Easy Ways to Get Frontline Employee Feedback

We’ve said this many times before, but it bears repeating: gathering feedback from your frontline employees is one of the best things you can do for business performance. 

They're the face of your company, interacting directly with customers and shaping the brand experience. But how to get frontline employee feedback effectively? 

While anonymous surveys are the best way to consistently and accurately get employee feedback and measure their engagement, there are plenty of methods you can use. What’s most important is making sure you’re getting feedback, period.

Why Frontline Employee Feedback is Crucial

Before diving into methods, it's essential to understand the value of frontline feedback. Dive into some of our other posts to learn about how frontline feedback:

• Directly impacts customer experience
• Shapes product and service improvements
• Improves employee retention and morale

With such pivotal impacts, finding the best ways to get frontline employee feedback becomes a priority.

Top Methods for Gaining Frontline Feedback

• Open Forums: Hosting regular gatherings or town halls creates an environment where employees can share thoughts and insights, adding a personal touch to the feedback process. This works best if there’s already a trusting relationship between the frontline and frontline leadership.
  
  
• Feedback Boxes: A blend of anonymity and simplicity, these boxes—be they digital or physical—encourage candid responses from employees. Sometimes old-school still works!
   
• One-on-One Conversations: Frontline leaders should be having one-on-ones with their direct reports already, and they’re a great way to get honest feedback. Direct dialogues between managers and employees often unearth deeper insights and individual concerns, providing a richer understanding of frontline sentiments.
  
  
• Engagement Activities: Workshops and team-building events can indirectly gauge engagement, with feedback post-event offering unique insights into team dynamics.
  
  
• Free survey platforms: When it comes to frontline surveying and analytics, we’re definitely biased toward goHappy’s Feedback module, but if you’re just starting your feedback journey and you’d like to try something free, there are plenty of platforms out there. We have clients who have used SurveyMonkey or Google Forms in the past. 

The Best Strategy for Frontline Employee Feedback

There are plenty of ways to consistently gather employee feedback. As you can see, many of them are easy, cheap, or even free. The best strategy of all is to just pick a method and start, even if it’s not perfect. 

For businesses aiming to excel, the ultimate goal is to listen, understand, and act upon the invaluable insights your frontline offers. So, whether you lean towards the goHappy Feedback module, other surveys, or any of the diverse methods above, it's the genuine feedback that counts.

And if you decide you’re ready to explore a method tailored specifically for the frontline, we hope you’ll reach out. goHappy’s Feedback module can help you take frontline feedback to the next level with real-time, actionable insights, industry benchmarking data, and even predictive analytics.