Three PhDs from a large consulting firm sat across the table from us and quickly proceeded to dive into their presentation. They provided us with a one-inch thick, spiral-bound report on the status of employee engagement at the company. For the next hour and a half, they presented the high-level findings as well as their recommendations on the activities leadership may want to consider implementing to improve things.

It was at this point the CHRO turned to me, an overwhelmed look on her face, and asked what I thought about the presentation and the data. I replied honestly (much to the chagrin of the consultants sitting across from us), and made the observation that in the last hour and a half we’d been talking about employee engagement. Yet, at no point in the conversation did any recommendation include the engagement of employees. Rather, all of the recommendations provided were geared toward what leaders could do to increase engagement.

While this didn’t make me any friends amongst the consultants that day, I felt that the CHRO needed my perspective. The mindset of, “Once a year I’ll ask my employees what they don’t like, and I’ll spend the next year of my life as a leader trying to fix it all,” is what’s fundamentally wrong with the whole employee engagement situation to begin with.

Annual Employee Engagement Doesn’t Work

Gallup recently reported that employee engagement levels stayed stagnant in 2015. According to their data, 32% of employees are engaged with their jobs. And this isn’t new. In fact, these levels of engagement have remained flat for the last 5 years.

The longstanding cycle of annual input from employee engagement surveys is fraught with shortcomings that only serve to further disengage your employees. Here are a few reasons why:

The data gets stale. Often, by the time leaders even see the data it can be weeks or even months old, especially in larger organizations. That data may not be a true indication of reality by the time you get your hands on it. If that’s the case, you’re making decisions based on something that’s not even relevant. You wouldn’t do this with financial data; why would you do it in this situation?

Leaders feel like they have to try to save the world. Leaders fancy themselves as problem-solvers, so it’s no surprise that they often get the results of the latest engagement survey and jump into that role. In many cases, I’ve seen leaders fall into the trap of attempting to solve all of the challenges of their organization single-handedly. Of course, this never works. They take on a hundred things and they wind up accomplishing none. It begins a cycle of asking employees what they think, doing nothing tangible, asking them again next year, and wondering why engagement scores are tanking and response rates are falling off a cliff.

Employees have little to no skin in the game. The cycle described above not only sets leaders up to fail, it also creates a dysfunctional dynamic where employees take on a role of disengagement and dependency. Over time, they begin to expect leaders to serve at their beck and call. This cycle never ends well, yet we keep engaging in it hoping that we’ll have different outcomes next time.

Today’s employees expect to have a voice. Increasingly, employees expect to have a voice in their work environment. A once-a-year survey cannot be the sole source of input employers rely on to engage their employee base. It may still have a potential value to an organization, but not the employees directly.

It’s Time to Rethink Employee Engagement

So, knowing this, how can we evolve the way we structure our employee feedback processes so they model true employee engagement?

Make employee input and feedback a more continuous process. Leveraging technology where possible can help facilitate more continuous engagement and input. Those who want to actively engage with their employer are free to do so. Those who don’t can chime in when they’re ready, rather than feeling forced to participate or hold their opinions until next year. More continuous interaction also allows leaders to see bumps in the road before they become mountains. Rather than waiting a year to identify a potential issue, these things can come to light in the moment and be addressed quickly.

Create an environment where employees feel free to provide input without fear of retribution. Leaders who expect to get honest feedback from employees need to understand their role in creating a safe environment for the process to play out. If your first reaction is to get defensive or—worse yet—to go after employees who provide more critical input, the only thing you’ll succeed in doing is destroying any hopes of getting people to share the truth with you ever again.

Actively engage employees in being a part of the solution. Break the cycle of leaders solving all employee woes by not only asking for employees’ input, but by also enlisting their help in making sense of the data. Better yet, encourage them to take an active role in partnering with leaders to create positive change within the organization.

Make it fun. While the primary purpose of soliciting input and engaging your team in solving issues is to drive business performance, it helps to have some fun with it. At gothamCulture, we utilize a cloud-based engagement and crowdsourcing platform to keep folks up-to-speed and actively providing input. We have a geographically dispersed team, so meetings don’t always work well for us. We gain a tremendous amount of continuous input on business topics, but we also take time to have a little fun and allow space for people to engage with each other in ways that help build personal connections between each other and our brand.

Look people in the eye… and talk to them. Surveys and technology can and do serve an important function in today’s business world. But relying solely on tools to engage employees is not the way to go. True engagement requires actually engaging with employees. Nothing beats actually sitting down, looking people in the eye and talking with them. Listening to their experience and collaborating with them to find solutions to things that are important to them. You don’t have to solve it for them, but you do need to be able to ask the right questions, listen, and be willing to help them help themselves.

In an era where employee engagement is a top concern, yet levels of engagement remain stagnant at best, it’s time to rethink the way we actually interact with our employees. You’d be surprised at what you might find if you take the time to sit down and talk with your people.

Don’t fall victim to the employee engagement cycle of deploying an annual survey that then becomes your sole responsibility to solve as a leader. It’s a no-win situation that only helps reinforce the very thing that you are trying to avoid.

This article originally appeared on Forbes.

The post It’s Time to Redefine the Rules of Employee Engagement appeared first on gothamCulture.

The traditional feedback process that’s become the norm in most businesses today relies on anonymous systems so employees can feel safe being open and honest with their employers. But there’s something fundamentally wrong if your employees are fearful to be open when providing feedback.

Meanwhile, leaders worry their employees won’t be forthcoming with their opinions unless they’re anonymous, so they default to the nameless employee survey, which limits their ability to follow up with employees who have particularly helpful ideas.

The idea of anonymity is outdated and ultimately unproductive. In fact, the confidentiality can interfere with the accountability you’re looking to build on your team and lead to other unintended consequences, including:

1. Skewed results. In most organizations, a small minority harbors a tremendous amount of anger toward leadership or their workplace in general. An anonymous survey just gives them a platform to vent. When their names aren’t attached, their feedback can be pointed, jaded, and even inflammatory, which can skew your results.

2. Misinterpreted feedback. The purpose of feedback is to gather information to help you make better business decisions. Unfortunately, with unidentified feedback, there’s no way to understand the context of issues that may only affect one department or even one employee. You may end up misinterpreting the data, which can cause you to make the wrong decisions.

3. A lack of follow-up. If a respondent has a moment of brilliance in an anonymous survey, you have no way to dig deeper into his ideas or recognize this visionary for his contribution. On the other hand, if an employee is unhappy about something, you miss the chance to have a productive conversation to identify solutions.

Non-anonymous feedback allows you to initiate that conversation and build upon the feedback loop throughout the year.

4. Limited responsiveness. Gathering anonymous feedback is time-consuming. You must first ask employees to fill out a survey, take part in a focus group, or share opinions in a confidential interview. By the time someone has gathered and processed the data, the information may no longer be relevant.

5. The inability to hold leaders accountable.Unfortunately, some leaders will react inappropriately to feedback, which is why organizations favor anonymity in the first place. Rather than tailoring this process to ineffective leaders, you need to start holding them accountable.

An open feedback system establishes an environment where leaders must learn how to accept criticism so employees feel comfortable being open and honest.

How to Create a Transparent Feedback Loop

If you want to encourage transparency and increase engagement in your organization, it’s time to ask employees to cowboy up and take ownership of their ideas. With that said, you’re also going to have to take responsibility for creating an environment where people feel safe sharing.

Moving from an anonymous survey to a transparent feedback loop won’t be easy or painless, but there are several things you can do to make the transition successful:

• Invest in a platform to gather feedback. Thanks to techie wizards, a variety of platforms are now available to tackle the issue of employee engagement. Software likeOfficevibe, Vennli, and 15Five allows you to gather meaningful feedback from employees on a regular basis that you can use to make critical business decisions.

• Coach supervisors on how to respond to feedback. For this process to work, leadership must understand how their reactions to feedback can shut down an employee’s willingness to participate. In those instances when a supervisor responds inappropriately to feedback, you must be willing to take swift action. If employees can’t go to leadership with their concerns, resentment may spread within the ranks.

• Show employees it’s OK. Such a drastic change in feedback style will be met with some apprehension. However, the best approach is to jump in with both feet and reward people who provide useful feedback. Look for ways to demonstrate how you’re using feedback to implement positive changes so employees see that it’s safe — and even commendable — to be honest.

Removing anonymity allows your employees to become active players in the decision-making process, which can boost their dedication and allow your team to benefit from multiple perspectives. When you open an honest dialogue with employees, you can expand on ideas, gather continual feedback, and arrive at productive solutions to improve your company.

This article originally appeared on Forbes

The post Is Your Anonymous Employee Survey Doing More Harm Than Good? appeared first on gothamCulture.