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Uncertain. Unclear. Unheard.
Employees are asking for more transparency from business leadership after being left in the dark by their employers. With only 53% of employees trusting their organization (Per Gartner, 2023), a lack of communication on key goals is damaging the faith employees have in core issues from pay transparency to the use of AI.
Amid widespread lay-offs, DE&I debate, and AI upheaval – alongside many other factors driving uncertainty – it’s more important than ever for employees to have clear communication from strategic leaders within their organization.
Firstly, transparency offers a channel for feedback and strategy co-creation, a crucial part of any culture of continuous performance improvement.
Secondly, building trust brings a host of benefits from retention to innovation. The same Gartner study found in high-trust organizations, 79% of employees bring new ideas to their managers. This number drops to 17% in low-trust organizations.
Thirdly, A 2024 study from Personio has found a direct correlation between employees who perceive their organization as transparent on a range of factors from compensation to training opportunities, and higher levels of satisfaction, engagement, performance, loyalty, and motivation.
SaaS provider Couchbase is one such organization that has prioritized transparency in the past year, after seeking ways for employees to feel more connected to its strategy framework.
“We wanted to ensure that each executive was driving actions within their functional area that supported the overall strategy,” shares Fidelma Butler, Chief People Officer, Couchbase. “Our CEO and I came up with an idea to make the priorities of each functional area transparent to our employees.”
In Couchbase’s most recent engagement survey in September, employees rated their understanding of their role in executing the company strategy very highly, with a 93% favourability.
This approach to transparency from business leadership is a non-negotiable for employees in 2024 and beyond. What can you do to open up channels and create a cycle of communication and feedback?
1. Make goals and expectations clear
Clear transparency starts with employees understanding what they should expect from their leadership, and what their leadership expects from them.
Research from Bain and Company in 2019 found only 40% of employees across organizations have any idea what the goals of their company are. HR leadership must work across their peer group to ensure company goals are clearly defined and communicated throughout the organization.
At Couchbase, for example, each executive was tasked with publishing the following:
The vision for their ‘area’ or division
Three to five key areas of focus in support of the strategy
Three to five initiatives under each focus area
The metrics that would indicate success or failure
Butler offers an example from her division. “I set out my vision for the team,” she begins, "Including the four focus areas such as drive employee engagement and retention; actions under each area like drive engagement action planning; and the measures, namely the engagement outcomes I’m aiming for.”
The four requirements for each division fit on one simple slide, on one single deck, available on the Couchbase intranet.
Employees must understand what the company’s primary goals are, and how their work will contribute toward those goals. Building a close partnership with internal communications is a crucial step.
Understanding company-level goals, including the members of the leadership team ultimately responsible for each, can also increase accountability. “Each quarter, the exec teams review their progress in the previous quarter with our CEO and other execs,” explains Butler. “We adjust initiatives as needed and check progress against metrics.”
Consistent and transparent updates on performance against these goals are a valuable path to building trust and opening up channels for feedback. Indeed, Couchbase executives are preparing revised slides for the next financial year, which it will publish in March at a company summit and make available once again on the company intranet.
2. Transparent decision-making
Research from Slack indicates over 80% of workers want a better understanding of how decisions are made.
In the case of hybrid working, plenty of employees have become frustrated with employers citing productivity as the driving force behind return-to-office (RTO) mandates, instead accusing employers of using RTO mandates to squeeze out employees as an alternative to lay-offs, among other ulterior motives.
Creating visibility, including paper trails and insight into decision-making processes themselves, as to how decisions are made, ensures transparent, ethical, and compliant decision-making.
3. Improve your employee listening capabilities
Yes, employee listening should focus on what employees have to say, rather than the organization itself. However, a crucial part of communicating strategy is creating clear avenues for feedback and acknowledging and acting on employee input.
“Providing opportunities for employees to give regular feedback, for example through surveys and pulse polls, is an important way to engage employees,” says Pete Cooper, Director of People Partners & DEI at Personio. “But it needs to be a two-way conversation, and leadership needs to communicate with employees to show that feedback is being listened to and taken seriously.”
Improving employee listening capabilities gives employees a chance to voice frustrations and builds trust when they feel those frustrations are being heard.
4. Even better, try co-creation from the start
Co-creating company strategy is a proven discipline across all areas of the business. From HR strategy around L&D and the employee experience to product innovation, bringing employees into the strategy creation process offers countless benefits.
Increasing the diversity of thought, creating far tighter feedback loops, and transparency at this level all result in better buy-in for decision-making and any major changes coming to the organization.
Take, 2023’s biggest buzzword, AI. A Quantum Workplace study found only 25% of employees believe in their organization's AI strategy.
This number would no doubt jump if more organizations took the approach of involving employees in planning how their work, teams, and departments could best take advantage of the capabilities AI technology can bring.
Or, take your pick from the number of high-profile cases of employees signing open letters against their employer in 2023, like the letter 95% of OpenAI employees signed threatening to resign if ousted CEO Sam Altman was not reinstated.
These examples are a window into the worst-case scenario when executive boards and C-Suite teams make major strategic decisions without employee input.
Building transparency through co-creating strategy with employees means more ideas, feedback, and investment; and less anxiety, uncertainty, and frustration. HR leaders must adopt Butler’s approach and work closely with their fellow executives to champion this type of culture.
