PREDICTIVE ANALYTICS, COFFEE AND THE FAILURE OF EMPLOYEE FEEDBACK

If I was to ask you what type of coffee you like, the vast majority of you would say you want a dark, rich, hearty roast. Well Howard Moscowitz who has a doctorate from Harvard and is a Psycho-Physicist found during an extensive study commissioned by Nescafe that only 30% of us like a dark, rich, hearty roast. In fact the vast majority of us like weak, milky coffee. I bet if I ask most people, “would you like a weak, milky coffee” – very few would own up to it!
So what does this have to do with exit interviews and employee feedback? For years HR and OD professionals thought we could find out what made our employees happy, what would make them more productive, more likely to be retained, more likely to join us in the first place. What we thought we needed to do was just ask them. We’d run surveys, engagement, climate, culture, exits, probation, onboarding and focus groups and listen blindly to anecdotal feedback. More on why your retention and engagement strategies don't work