Taking The Vote To The Office
The ability to vote is obviously an integral facet of our culture, but technology has allowed voting to occur in many places outside of the traditional ballot box. Marketers have increasingly tapped into their customer’s voice in order to get instant feedback on existing and potential products and services.
For instance, Frito-Lay has developed new flavors of Lay’s potato chips based on social media suggestions. More recently, with the rollout of Twitter polls, nearly every major brand is reaching out their fans for instantaneous feedback. This past January, Amazon used the following Twitter poll: “We're at CES tomorrow & letting you choose what we cover. Vote now and watch our Periscope tomorrow!” In real time, they gathered votes from their fans, and with 39% of the vote, “gaming” beat out “3D printing”, “virtual reality”, and “robotics.”
Clearly social media has made seismic waves in the marketing and advertising world with the proliferation of social media and real time voting and polling. But these strides in surveys and polling have not just been confined to the external realm. Businesses are also leveraging these types of tools within their organization. There are an array of enterprise social platforms and specific surveying tools that allow leaders to enable peer-to-peer collaboration, moderated discussions, and qualitative or quantitative polling.
This week, the Wall Street Journal featured an interesting article on this growing trend in workplace democracy. They profiled a number of organizations actively using this technique to give their staff a voice. While some of the polling examples they mention are for trivial questions, like the naming of a conference room, other examples involved more integral decisions. For instance, “At Whole Foods, new store employees must win approval from two-thirds of their departmental colleagues to stay on past a trial period of up to 90 days.” http://www.wsj.com/articles/workplace-democracy-catches-on-1459117910
While these tools are very effective in empowering employees to feel heard, it is important that leaders follow through on the advice they have received. When employees can see visible proof of how their voice has made an effect, it proves to them that the feedback has been thoughtfully considered. If polling occurs in a vacuum with little follow through by management, usage and trust in these types of tools will drop.
Personally, I am encouraged by this rise in workplace democracy. It allows employees an outlet for their comments, suggestions, and questions; and creates an inclusive environment where everyone feels acknowledged. This is especially important given the surge of millennials in the workforce. This generation has been trained from a young age to express their opinions and make persuasive arguments about when they see something that is not working. Polling is a perfect platform for these types of opinions. However, that does not mean that there is no room for hierarchical structures in today’s “democratic” business environment. Clear divisions of hierarchy provide order and necessary decision-making authority for crucial decisions. While I do advocate inviting employee opinions on certain aspects of the business, there are still a number of high-level decisions that need to be made in a more traditional fashion.
Here are a few more tips for you to consider if you are thinking of incorporating polling into your employee communications.
- Find the tool that is most tailored to what your company needs. There is a wide array of tools and platforms with different features, strengths, offerings, and pricing structures. Picking the one that will be most effective for your company requires due diligence and an understanding of your employees appetite for social media.
- Ensure top-down leadership support from the launch. Tap into thought leaders and influencers to become advocates for the tool
- Create a moderated communications plan that will be administrated and analyzed by a designated ownership team over time.
- Avoid over-polling. Like anything in life, moderation is key. If you are constantly peppering employees with unnecessary polls, they will get fatigued.
If you have any questions about polling platforms or internal communication strategies, please let us know