Everyone knows that external image is important when trying to attract the best candidates to your company. Most owners will be promoting their business to the outside world to make sure that they are perceived as an employer of choice, but a lot of business owners can also be proud, arrogant and defensive when it comes to their own company.
Why would you want to hear negative feedback when you already know that you are doing everything you can? After all, no one’s perfect, and everyone is happy inside the business, aren’t they? Why does it matter if one or two old employees have been derogatory about the business? They were fired because they weren’t performing; who’s going to listen to them anyway? You spent ages writing copy for your website, it’s great. If people don’t ‘get it’ then they’re not the sort of people you want to attract. You’re not in habit of hiring idiots.
That might all be extreme, but how many of us go out of our way to actively seek other people’s opinions, especially the negative ones and then listen without being defensive? Good feedback is very easy to listen to, but it’s the negative feedback that will tell us the most about how to improve our business and so it is that is the most valuable.
How much better would your business be tomorrow, if you did the following today?
External agencies:
Which recruitment companies supply in to your business? They will be speaking to people every day about your company and so should have heard most of the reservations out there. You need to pick someone you trust will give you an honest opinion (and it might not be the one that supplies the most in to your business). If a recruiter has spent a long time trying to get on your PSL, is trying to increase the business they get from you, or has a number of offers awaiting your sign off, are they really going to say your business is awful and very few people want to join because of the neurotic and over controlling boss? Probably not.
You need to have a good enough relationship for them to know that you will not take it personally. If you haven’t got this then ask their MD; they are more likely to understand your reasons for asking and shouldn’t be so paranoid that the answers they give will affect them hitting target that month (or not). Could you pay them a day rate to canvas ‘x’ number of their candidates and feedback their finding? Next time you get a cold call from a recruitment company wanting to supply then could you ask them to list 3 negative things about your business; it will show that they’ve done their homework, can think on their feet, and have the confidence to give you an honest opinion – all good traits for someone that could be representing your business.
Your company website:
I would look at this in 2 different ways; the content and the technical aspect.
For the content you could ask your customers, clients, staff etc. Make it a positive thing for people to look at ways in which you could improve it and make it easy for them to feed this back to you. Make sure you go back to them with the way in which you’re going to improve it, or a sensible reason as to why you can’t at this time (but if they can see a way in which it could still work then to let you know). If any of this process is difficult to do or you don’t feedback on someone’s idea then their enthusiasm to help is going to rapidly decline. Could you incentivise people to do this?
On the technical side you could invite a number of web design companies who specialise in your market (or perhaps not for a completely different perspective) to look at your website and suggest improvements. The one that suggests the best ideas will be awarded the work. This way you are getting a lot of ideas/feedback from a lot of different sources which should highlight any major problems or improvements.
There are also websites such as Fiverr where you can ask professionals from around the world to critique and review your site (amongst a lot of other things) for only $5 a time. That’s over 30 independent and unbiased opinions for less than £100.
Ex employees and the ones that got away:
People that used to work at the business will be privy to a lot of the gossip, rumours and complaints of your existing staff and will be more likely to tell you, albeit they will most likely want to keep any specific names confidential. That’s fine, as it’s the feedback you’re after and if you act on it then it will no longer be a problem for your exiting team.
Another good source of feedback is the candidates that you wanted to hire but they didn’t join the business for one reason or another. If you call them in the following days then you’re most likely going to get a stock answer, and so follow up a month or so later to find out the real reason they didn’t take the role. You might find that they respond really well to an MD that goes out of his way to improve the business and approach you again in the future.
Both of these rely on you handling the people that leave your business and those that don’t join with maturity, fairness and respect in the first instance. If you didn’t then there is a strong chance that neither will want to speak to you and it might be worth hiring an external agency to do this for you with guaranteed anonymity when requested.
Competitors:
Unless you have a great relationship with your competitors then this can be a tricky one, but your competitors are going to be the ones that know all of the negative thoughts and feelings about you in the market (true or not) and sell against it every day.
Is there anyone in your competitors that you (or your staff) used to work with? Can they find out for you? Can you have an open agreement with your counterpart to feed back any negativity that they hear? Granted, they will lose the negative sell angle, but if it is reciprocal then it will benefit you both.
Negative feedback is never pleasant to hear, but far better that you hear it and do something about it rather than bury your head in the sand and do nothing about it. It is the companies that act that are continuing to grow and adapt, and are hiring and keeping the best people.
And so……does my bum look big in this? Perhaps we need to stop blaming the trousers and address the real cause.
Have you had negative feedback about your business? How did you react and what did you do about it?
